Cultural Anthropology

     Cultural anthropology is the study of human society and culture. The focus of cultural anthropologists is understanding the similarities and differences among contemporary cultures around the world. Cultural anthropologists study individual cultures as well as search for universal cultural characteristics. All aspects of human experience are open for examination, so cultural anthropologists may study subsistence, kinship, religion, patterns of exchange, language, ecology, political organization and culture change among hundreds of other subjects. McGee, for example, has worked over thirty years with the Lacandon Maya in Chiapas Mexico. He started working with the Lacandon because they were not Christian. In order to understand their religious concepts and mythology he first studied the Maya language. McGee’s study of Lacandon religion led him to study Lacandon subsistence (they are rainforest farmers), and studying Lacandon farming required him to know more about rainforest ecology. A solar eclipse during McGee’s field work led him to examine Lacandon concepts of the sky, constellations, and planets, while Lacandon conceptions of disease and medicinal plants were another subject that came from his study of Lacandon religion. Most recently, McGee has looked at the effects of tourism on Lacandon society and collaborated with archaeologists studying Lacandon cave and rock shelter shrines. In addition, in trying to further cross-cultural understanding, cultural anthropologists also seek to decrease cross-cultural miscommunications and misunderstandings that can lead to intolerance, prejudice, and violence among the world's peoples.

Doing Anthropology

Fieldwork

     The key method that cultural anthropologists use to study other cultures is participant observation. Participant observation means actually living in another culture, learning their language, and trying to understand life from their point of view. In the late 19th century, the first anthropologists were drawing conclusions based on second hand information from travelers, and this led to a lot of distortions in interpreting other cultures. They are sometimes referred to as “armchair anthropologists” because many did not actually conduct fieldwork.

     An early advocate of participant observation was Bronislaw Malinowski, but he became a champion of participant observation by accident. Malinowski had gone to the Trobriand Islands, which are in the Pacific near Australia, to do research. He was in Australia when World War I broke out. Being a German citizen, he was considered an enemy and was not allowed to leave, but he was able to convince officials to let him go back to the Trobriand Islands and continue his research. Because the war forced him to stay in the field for four years, the quality of the information that he was able to obtain in his lengthy stay was spectacular, and consequently he became an advocate for participant observation.

     Malinowski argued that anthropologists needed to actually live with the people they studied. While this may seem obvious today, many of the earliest anthropologists either made only brief visits to other cultures or did not go into the field at all. He argued that living with the people and observing their day-to-day interactions was critical to beginning to understand their perspectives. The approach is integral for being able to develop a holistic view of culture.

     Secondly, he argued that anthropologists needed to learn the native language. Before Malinowski, most anthropologists worked through interpreters and so never had a direct conversation with the people they studied. Many problems exist with using interpreters. One can never be guaranteed that the interpreter has a sufficient grasp of the two languages to be able to translate between them. This can be a very serious problem. Often, languages have concepts that do not translate well into another language. This occurs even in languages that are closely related, like German and English, but is much more pronounced in languages that are very different from one another, which is common in the field. Using a translator also puts a barrier between two speakers, making their interaction more impersonal. Without a command of the native language, one can never have more than a superficial understanding of another culture.

     Participant observation also helps to distinguish between the real and ideal. All cultures have ideological systems and value systems. In addition, it is not uncommon for members of a culture to hold ethnocentric beliefs, valorizing their own way of life and devaluing the ways of life of others. If one were to only interview members of a culture and not share their lives, there is often a tendency to present a filtered view, describing only the best of the culture and the way that people believe things should be. For example, in American society, one might elicit a value that it is wrong to lie and it is considered a negative behavior to criticize others. But knowing those values does not tell you the way that people actually behave towards one other on a day-to-day basis. Participant observation allows one to get beyond what people say, and observe how they actually behave. Fieldwork and participant observation are two of the things that make anthropology different from any other social science and it is a transformative experience as illustrated in the video Participant Observation.

Participant/Observation: A Digital Story by Wynne Maggi

Ethnography, Ethnology, and Ethnohistory

     The work of a university-based cultural anthropologist does not end with gathering data. Fieldwork experiences are compiled in an ethnography, which is a written account of a culture. An ethnography provides a holistic account of a culture, including information about history, environment, language, economics, politics, kinship, art, religion, gender roles, subsistence practices, and many other aspects of the culture. On the other hand, Ethnology involves comparing and analyzing the similarities and differences among cultures. Ethnographic accounts often take the form of research monographs or books on the culture. Ethnological comparisons which investigate the patterns among cultures may appear in books, or may take the form of journal articles that explore a particular characteristic pattern that may appear in several cultures.

     Many cultural anthropologists also engage in ethnohistory research. This often involves examination of documents such as colonial records in archives in order to gain historical insight into cultures that did not keep written histories. Often the interpretation of settlers and colonial administrators are ethnocentric, but these records may be helpful in reconstructing a wide range of data, such as migration patterns.

     Cultural anthropologists engage in a variety of other methods depending on the specific circumstances of the fieldwork. These may involve incorporating the techniques from other disciplines into anthropological research. For example, an anthropologist conducting ethnobotanical research into indigenous medicinal plants would use methods from botany in collecting plants. Another method used is the life history approach. Rather than describing the general beliefs and behaviors of a group, the life history follows the experiences of one individual throughout his or her life to understand a person’s experiences in the context of the larger society.

     In summary, the methods and approaches of cultural anthropology are holistic, comparative, and relativistic. Each culture must be understood as a whole system. All dimensions of a culture are interrelated and interconnected. Cultural anthropology is also comparative. Our research does not just involve understanding the behavior of one culture, but comparing cultures in order to discover similarities that can be found in any group under study. Finally, cultural anthropology is relativistic. A fundamental principle of anthropology is that we understand other cultures in their own contexts rather than solely through the lens of our own cultural experience.

     The experience of fieldwork also makes anthropologists sympathetic to the concerns of the people they study. Consequently, many cultural anthropologists are also sensitive to the issue of power within and between cultures. One work that represents this type of understanding is David Valentine’s 2007 book Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category in which he described how the term transgender was adopted by social service professionals, scholars, and political activists, while many who were labeled transgender, particularly poor persons of color, rejected the term. They conceived of gender and sexuality differently than gay rights activists and social service workers and felt that the label transgender ignored their experiences.

     Cultural anthropology began in the study of other cultures, and anthropology textbooks still use a lot of examples from places like Africa and New Guinea. However, cultural anthropology is actually a practical discipline and as you learn more you will see anthropological concepts being acted out in front of you. After all, you practice certain patterns of exchange with friends and family, you belong to a kinship group, and you followed a variety of cultural rules to get dressed, eat breakfast, and come to campus. If you are a university student, especially a student at a large public university with a diverse student body, you have the opportunity to do anthropology on a daily basis without traveling to some exotic location. One of the useful things about a university is that it brings together large numbers of people from different backgrounds and gives them a chance to get to know each other. When you first came to campus you were probably struck by the variety of people you first encountered, and how different they were from your circle of friends in high school. At Texas State University, which is located between the cities of Austin and San Antonio, a student who grew up in a predominately white, Christian, suburb of Austin, Houston or Dallas, might have their first opportunity to interact with Black, Hispanic, Muslim and Hindu students. Between classes you might talk with students who belong to student organizations representing sets of people that you might not have encountered before such as a campus LBGTQ group. If you take the time to get to know people who come from different backgrounds and start to learn about issues outside of your individual experience, you have started to act like a cultural anthropologist. If you join a meditation group to learn about Buddhism, you have taken your first steps into fieldwork. If you are a cisgender man or woman who makes an effort to talk with gay, lesbian, or trans students and you start to understand the discrimination they experience (in Texas it is legal to fire a person because they are gay) you are beginning to understand what cultural anthropology is about. You don’t have to go to another country to start thinking like a cultural anthropologist. All it takes is a willingness to accept that it is ok for people to be different from you, and that you try to appreciate and understand those differences. To sum this all up, the goal of participant observation is to spend sufficient time to overcome your initial impressions and gain a deeper and more accurate understanding of the ways of life of people different from you.