Cultural anthropology: what it is and how it studies the human being

Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology.because, like herself, she is very young and is still forming.

Understanding what other cultures are like has never been easy, especially considering that no one can disassociate from their own culture to try to see other groups with the greatest objectivity ethnic.

Next we will go into more detail about the definition of this anthropological branch, in addition to talk about what he understands as culture, its development as a discipline and what is its methodology.

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What is cultural anthropology?

Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology which focuses on the study of human beings through their culture, understood as the set of customs, myths, beliefs, norms and values ​​that guide and regulate the behavior of a certain social group.

Cultural anthropology starts from the premise that human beings are social animals, which means that we live in groups. In these groups, in which several individuals have contact, the individual visions of each one are shared, which is represented in their way of behaving and thinking. This, once shared and assimilated jointly by the group as a whole, make up the culture.

It should be noted that there are certain differences between cultural anthropology and social anthropology. The latter places more emphasis on how a society is organized, that is, what is its social structure, while cultural anthropology focuses on culture, leaving aside how it can be organized socially.

Historical background and development of this discipline

Trying to understand what other cultures are like and what characteristics define them is something that has been done throughout history. However, the way it was done in the past was rather lax, plus more than an interest in finding out how other ethnic groups the real reason, on many occasions, was to 'demonstrate' how superior their own culture was in comparison to others.

Among the first to be curious about people from other cultures we have the Greeks. Among them we can highlight the figure of Herodotus (484-425 a. C), who studied other peoples such as the Egyptians and the Scythians, a Eurasian people.

Several centuries later, in the Middle Ages, there was a certain daring to explore beyond Europe. One of the most striking cases is the expeditions of the Italian Marco Polo, who served as a link between Western and Asian culture. In his writings, he described countless peoples from the Far East, although not without leaving aside his own vision of the world.

However, It is from the fifteenth century that the real boom in exploration occurs, both towards the new continent for Europeans, America, and for civilizations as ancient and at the same time as unknown as Cathay, current China, or Cipango, current Japan. These explorers, despite their extensive knowledge of the world, were not expert anthropologists (discipline did not yet exist) and they could not get out of their minds the undoubted bias they had in their perception of the world.

Whatever world they got to see, these travelers, missionaries, soldiers, settlers, and Others were still European people, which prevented them from having an objective vision of non-European cultures. westerners.

Thus, the origins of cultural anthropology are somewhat obscure. Given the limitations in those centuries to move around the world, many scholars in the field were forced to trust the testimonies of travelers, who, as As we have already said, they hardly saw the outside world objectively, reflecting their own stereotypes regarding the ethnic group with which they had established contact.

However, the solution began to take shape already at the beginning of the 20th century. Bronisław Malinowski, a Pole who is a fundamental figure in anthropology, carried out a series of works that brought about a great change in the way in which cultural anthropology studied the human being. Unlike what he had mostly done up to then, he opted to investigate the towns by going to study them directly, through field work.

Thus, any interpretation made from, in turn, interpretations made by people not trained in the matter, such as the already mentioned case of missionaries and merchants, was avoided. Ethnographic fieldwork, directly studying the people to be studied, became the most widespread methodology.

Although almost a century has passed since Malinowski produced his first works until now, and cultural anthropology has evolved and changed many of its visions, especially once related to a colonialist perspective of everything that was not European, the efforts of the Polish anthropologist continue to be valid and have an impact today.

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anthropological method

Cultural anthropology, along with social anthropology, uses participant observation as the best method to study the habits, traditions and other customs of a culture. In this way, the anthropologist obtains first-hand information about the ethnic group that is the object of his study. The researcher becomes familiar with the members of the culture he wants to study. and, at the same time, these members are also accepting the presence of the anthropologist and may even come to accept him as a new member.

In doing so, in addition to seeing firsthand how members of that culture behave, the anthropologist cultural can understand what are the functions of a certain practice and what meaning it acquires in the place. That is, he allows understand the context by which a custom is performed or why they have acquired a particular habit.

The most effective way to achieve rigorous and comprehensive data collection is to do everything that the culture under study does, that is, "wherever you go, do what you see." So that, the anthropologist must try strange foods, learn the language of the region, agree to perform the rituals of the area, observe and participate in traditional games, and a long etcetera.

Participant observation is not an exclusively anthropological method. It is also present in other disciplines, such as psychology, sociology, human geography, political science, among others. What is remarkable about this method is that cultural anthropology has transformed it into the fundamental pillar of its identity as a human science.

What does anthropology understand by culture?

Unlike the concept most widespread in popular culture, anthropologists understand the concept of culture beyond the sphere of art and leisure.

Culture, anthropologically speaking, is a much broader concept. In fact, this concept has become increasingly complex thanks to the discoveries that have been made in fields such as primatology, biology, neuroscience and other sciences related to nature, given that anthropology not only draws on concepts from the social sciences and human.

According to Edward B. Tylor (1832-1917), culture could be defined as all that knowledge, science, art, law, morality, customs and other habits acquired by a human being being a member belonging to a certain society.

According to Tylor, all culture evolved along a path from a "barbarian" state to "civilization.". It must be understood that classifying a certain culture as barbarians today is something that supposes a supremacist and Eurocentric vision, but at the time, and with the cultural bias that Tylor himself must have had, was seen as an appropriate definition of the degree of cultural sophistication that a certain group could have ethnic.

Tylor himself maintained that the pinnacle of world civilization was England in the 19th century, the country of which he happened to be a citizen. In keeping with the supremacist view of Middle Victorian English, England was the benchmark for advanced culture and, therefore, the rest of the societies were inherently inferior.

This view was criticized by another anthropologist, Franz Boas (1858-1942), of German-American origin. He based himself on the German concept of 'kultur', a word cognate with the English term 'culture' and 'cultura' in Spanish. The German kultur was understood as the set of behaviors and traditions, both local and personal, that an individual can manifest.

For Boas, cultures did not evolve in a linear fashion., going from the less civilized to the more civilized, but a different degree of complexity was developed based on the historical events experienced by the ethnic group in question and how they was driving.

Today, the definition of culture from cultural anthropology is closer to Boas's idea: culture It is an integrated system of symbols, values, and ideas that must be studied as if it were an organic being. will try

Culture can be divided into two distinct categories. The big culture, or big C, and the little culture, little c. To better understand this differentiation, according to Boas, Argentine culture would be, for example, one of the type big C, while the traditions of the city of La Plata would come to be understood as small c.

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Culture as second nature

From cultural anthropology, the idea is proposed that in order to understand the human being it is necessary to also know the environment in which it develops. The environment directly influences their way of being, both behaviorally and in terms of personality and intelligence.

The culture of each ethnic group constitutes a kind of second nature. It is an environment in which certain patterns of behavior are accepted and there are certain social norms that must be abided by each of its members so that they can develop as subjects fully adjusted to the place they inhabit.

The human being, as he develops as a member within any group, is assimilating and internalizing norms present in the place where he is, becoming something hardly questioned and seen as something logical.

Some aspects of this type are the ethics and morals present in that ethnic group that, in view of other groups may be seen as very ridiculous, but the members of the group in question see it as completely normal. This is highly variable depending on the historical period.

Bibliographic references:

• Harris, M. (2011). cultural anthropology. Spain. Editorial Alliance.
• Tylor, E. (1920). Primitive Culture. Vol 1. New York: J.P. Putnam's Sons.
• Fisher, W. F. (1997). 1997. Annual Review of Anthropology. 26. 439–64. doi: 10.1146/annurev.anthro.26.1.439.