Editing Cultural anthropology (section)

==Theoretical foundations==

===The concept of culture===
One of the earliest articulations of the anthropological meaning of the term "[[culture]]" came from Sir [[Edward Burnett Tylor|Edward Tylor]]: "Culture, or civilization, taken in its broad, ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society."<ref>[[Edward Burnett Tylor|Tylor, Edward]]. 1920 [1871]. ''[https://books.google.com/books?id=VxZMk2PEUsoC&pg=PP1 Primitive Culture] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221215161535/https://books.google.com/books?id=VxZMk2PEUsoC&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1 |date=2022-12-15 }}''. Vol 1. New York: J.P. Putnam's Sons.</ref> The term "civilization" later gave way to definitions given by [[V. Gordon Childe]], with culture forming an umbrella term and civilization becoming a particular kind of culture.<ref name="Magolda 24–46">{{Cite journal|last=Magolda|first=Peter M.|date=March 2000|title=The Campus Tour: Ritual and Community in Higher Education|journal=Anthropology & Education Quarterly|volume=31|pages=24–46|doi=10.1525/aeq.2000.31.1.24}}</ref>

Kay Milton, former Director of Anthropology Research at Queen's University Belfast, distinguishes between general and specific cultures. This means culture can be something applied to all human beings or it can be specific to a certain group of people such as African American culture or Irish American culture. Specific cultures are structured systems which means they are organized very specifically and adding or taking away any element from that system may disrupt it.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Milton|first=Kay|title=Environmentalism and Cultural Theory: Exploring the role of anthropology in environmental discourse|publisher=Routledge Press|year=1996|isbn=0415115302|location=New York|pages=8–37|language=English}}</ref>

===The critique of evolutionism===
Anthropology is concerned with the lives of people in different parts of the world, particularly in relation to the discourse of [[belief]]s and practices. In addressing this question, [[Ethnology|ethnologists]] in the 19th century divided into two schools of thought. Some, like [[Grafton Elliot Smith]], argued that different groups must have learned from one another somehow, however indirectly; in other words, they argued that cultural traits spread from one place to another, or "[[Diffusion (anthropology)|diffused]]".
[[File:Cultural evolution.PNG|thumb|left|300px|In the [[unilineal evolution]] model at left, all cultures progress through set stages, while in the [[multilineal evolution]] model at right, distinctive culture histories are emphasized.]]

Other ethnologists argued that different groups had the capability of creating similar beliefs and practices independently. Some of those who advocated "independent invention", like [[Lewis Henry Morgan]], additionally supposed that similarities meant that different groups had passed through the same stages of [[cultural evolution]] (See also [[classical social evolutionism]]). Morgan, in particular, acknowledged that certain forms of society and culture could not possibly have arisen before others. For example, industrial farming could not have been invented before simple farming, and metallurgy could not have developed without previous non-smelting processes involving metals (such as simple ground collection or mining). Morgan, like other 19th century social evolutionists, believed there was a more or less orderly progression from the primitive to the civilized.

20th-century anthropologists largely reject the notion that all human societies must pass through the same stages in the same order, on the grounds that such a notion does not fit the empirical facts. Some 20th-century ethnologists, like [[Julian Steward]], have instead argued that such similarities reflected similar adaptations to similar environments. Although 19th-century ethnologists saw "diffusion" and "independent invention" as mutually exclusive and competing theories, most [[Ethnography|ethnographers]] quickly reached a consensus that both processes occur, and that both can plausibly account for cross-cultural similarities. But these ethnographers also pointed out the superficiality of many such similarities. They noted that even traits that spread through diffusion often were given different meanings and function from one society to another. Analyses of large human concentrations in big cities, in multidisciplinary studies by [[Ronald Daus]], show how new methods may be applied to the understanding of man living in a global world and how it was caused by the action of extra-European nations, so highlighting the role of [[Ethics]] in modern anthropology.

Accordingly, most of these anthropologists showed less interest in comparing cultures, generalizing about human nature, or discovering universal laws of cultural development, than in understanding particular cultures in those cultures' own terms. Such ethnographers and their students promoted the idea of "[[cultural relativism]]", the view that one can only understand another person's beliefs and behaviors in the context of the culture in which they live or lived.

Others, such as [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]] (who was influenced both by American cultural anthropology and by French [[Émile Durkheim|Durkheimian]] [[sociology]]), have argued that apparently similar patterns of development reflect fundamental similarities in the structure of human thought (see [[structuralism]]). By the mid-20th century, the number of examples of people skipping stages, such as going from [[hunter-gatherers]] to post-industrial service occupations in one generation, were so numerous that 19th-century evolutionism was effectively disproved.<ref>Diamond, Jared. ''Guns, Germs and Steel''.</ref>

===Cultural relativism===
{{main|Cultural relativism}}
Cultural relativism is a principle that was established as [[axiom]]atic in [[anthropology|anthropological]] research by [[Franz Boas]] and later popularized by his students.  Boas first articulated the idea in 1887: "...civilization is not something absolute, but ... is relative, and ... our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes."<ref name="Levitsky 2009 115–133">{{Cite journal|last1=Levitsky|first1=Steven|last2=Murillo|first2=Maria|s2cid=55981325|date=2009|title=Variation in Institutional Strength|journal=Annual Review of Political Science|volume=12|pages=115–33|doi=10.1146/annurev.polisci.11.091106.121756|doi-access=free}}</ref> Although Boas did not coin the term, it became common among anthropologists after Boas' death in 1942, to express their synthesis of a number of ideas Boas had developed. Boas believed that the sweep of cultures, to be found in connection with any sub-species, is so vast and pervasive that there cannot be a relationship between culture and [[Race (classification of humans)|race]].<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.utpa.edu/faculty/mglazer/theory/cultural_relativism.htm |title=Cultural Relativism |access-date=2007-06-13 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070613222929/http://www.utpa.edu/faculty/mglazer/Theory/cultural_relativism.htm |archive-date=2007-06-13 }}</ref> Cultural relativism involves specific [[epistemology|epistemological]] and methodological claims.  Whether or not these claims require a specific [[ethics|ethical]] stance is a matter of debate. This principle should not be confused with [[moral relativism]].

Cultural relativism was in part a response to Western [[ethnocentrism]]. Ethnocentrism may take obvious forms, in which one consciously believes that one's people's arts are the most beautiful, values the most virtuous, and beliefs the most truthful. Boas, originally trained in [[physics]] and [[geography]], and heavily influenced by the thought of [[Immanuel Kant|Kant]], [[Johann Gottfried Herder|Herder]], and [[Alexander von Humboldt|von Humboldt]], argued that one's culture may mediate and thus limit one's perceptions in less obvious ways. This understanding of culture confronts anthropologists with two problems: first, how to escape the unconscious bonds of one's own culture, which inevitably bias our perceptions of and reactions to the world, and second, how to make sense of an unfamiliar culture.  The principle of cultural relativism thus forced anthropologists to develop innovative methods and heuristic strategies.{{citation needed|date=August 2020}}

Boas and his students realized that if they were to conduct scientific research in other cultures, they would need to employ methods that would help them escape the limits of their own ethnocentrism.  One such method is that of [[ethnography]]. This method advocates living with people of another culture for an extended period of time to learn the local language and be enculturated, at least partially, into that culture. In this context, cultural relativism is of fundamental methodological importance, because it calls attention to the importance of the local context in understanding the meaning of particular human beliefs and activities.  Thus, in 1948 Virginia Heyer wrote, "Cultural relativity, to phrase it in starkest abstraction, states the relativity of the part to the whole.  The part gains its cultural significance by its place in the whole, and cannot retain its integrity in a different situation."<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Heyer | first1 = Virginia | year = 1948 | title = In Reply to Elgin Williams | journal = American Anthropologist | volume = 50 | issue = 1| pages = 163–66 | doi=10.1525/aa.1948.50.1.02a00290| s2cid = 161978412 | doi-access =  }}</ref>

===Theoretical approaches===
{{div col|colwidth=22em}}
* [[Actor–network theory]]
* [[Cultural materialism (anthropology)|Cultural materialism]]
* [[Culture theory]]
* [[Feminist anthropology]]
* [[Structural functionalism|Functionalism]]
* [[Symbolic anthropology|Symbolic and interpretive anthropology]]
* [[Political economy in anthropology]]
* [[Practice theory]]
* [[Structural anthropology|Structuralism]]
* [[Post-structuralism]]
* [[Systems theory in anthropology]]
{{div col end}}

===Comparison with social anthropology===
The rubric ''cultural'' anthropology is generally applied to [[ethnographic]] works that are holistic in approach, are oriented to the ways in which [[culture]] affects individual experience or aim to provide a rounded view of the knowledge, customs, and institutions of a people. ''Social'' anthropology is a term applied to ethnographic works that attempt to isolate a particular system of social relations such as those that comprise domestic life, economy, law, politics, or religion, give analytical priority to the organizational bases of social life, and attend to cultural phenomena as somewhat secondary to the main issues of social scientific inquiry.<ref>{{cite web|title=Anthropology for beginners: Social and cultural anthropology|date=11 June 2010|url=http://sumananthromaterials.blogspot.com/2010/06/social-and-cultural-anthropology.html|access-date=18 March 2014|archive-date=6 June 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210606163720/http://sumananthromaterials.blogspot.com/2010/06/social-and-cultural-anthropology.html|url-status=live}} Academic blog post explaining the similarities/differences between social and cultural anthropology.</ref>

Parallel with the rise of cultural anthropology in the United States, social anthropology developed as an academic discipline in Britain and in France.<ref name="Ho 2009 739–747">{{Cite journal|last=Ho|first=Karen|date=2009|title=Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street|journal=Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews|volume=41|pages=739–47}}</ref>