====1800s to 1940s====
From its beginnings in the early 19th century through the early 20th century, anthropology in the United States was influenced by the presence of [[Native Americans in the United States|Native American]] societies.
[[Image:FranzBoas.jpg|thumb|right|Franz Boas, one of the pioneers of modern anthropology, often called the "Father of American Anthropology"]]
[[Cultural anthropology]] in the United States was influenced greatly by the ready availability of Native American societies as ethnographic subjects. The field was pioneered by staff of the [[Bureau of Indian Affairs]] and the Smithsonian Institution's [[Bureau of American Ethnology]], men such as [[John Wesley Powell]] and [[Frank Hamilton Cushing]]. [[Lewis Henry Morgan]] (1818-1881), a lawyer from [[Rochester, New York]], became an advocate for and ethnological scholar of the [[Iroquois]]. His comparative analyses of religion, government, material culture, and especially kinship patterns proved to be influential contributions to the field of anthropology. Like other scholars of his day (such as [[Edward Tylor]]), Morgan argued that human societies could be classified into categories of cultural evolution on a scale of progression that ranged from ''savagery'', to ''barbarism'', to ''civilization''. Generally, Morgan used technology (such as bowmaking or pottery) as an indicator of position on this scale.<ref>This would be influential on the ideas of [[Karl Marx]], who dedicated [[Das Kapital]] to Morgan.</ref>{{unreferenced|date=November 2006}}
'''Cultural anthropology''' is one of four fields of [[anthropology]] (the holistic study of [[human race|humanity]]) as it developed in the [[United States]]. It is the branch of anthropology that has developed and promoted "[[culture]]" as a meaningful scientific concept, studied cultural variation among humans, and examined the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities.
The anthropological concept of "culture" reflects in part a reaction against earlier Western [[discourse]]s based on an opposition between "[[culture]]" and "[[nature]]", according to which some human beings lived in a "state of nature". Anthropologists have argued that culture ''is'' "human nature," and that all people have a capacity to classify [[experience]]s, encode classifications symbolically (i.e. in [[language]]), and teach such abstractions to others. Since humans acquire culture through the [[learning]] processes of [[enculturation]] and [[socialization]], people living in different places or different circumstances develop different cultures. Anthropologists have also pointed out that through culture people can adapt to their environment in non-genetic ways, so people living in different environments will often have different cultures. Much of anthropological theory has originated in an appreciation of and interest in the tension between the local (particular cultures) and the global (a universal human nature, or the web of connections between people in distinct places/circumstances).
Parallel with the rise of cultural anthropology in the United States, [[social anthropology]], in which ''sociality'' is the central concept and which focuses on the study of social statuses and roles, groups, institutions, and the relations among them, developed as an academic discipline in Britain. An umbrella term socio-cultural anthropology makes reference to both cultural and social anthropology traditions.<ref>Campbell, D.T. (1983) The two distinct routes beyond kin selection to ultrasociality: Implications
for the Humanities and Social Sciences. In: The Nature of Prosocial Development: Theories
and Strategies D. Bridgeman (ed.), pp. 11-39, Academic Press, New York</ref>
== A brief history ==
Modern cultural anthropology has its origins in, and developed in reaction to, 19th century "[[ethnology]]", which involves the organized comparison of human societies. Scholars like [[Edward Burnett Tylor|E.B. Tylor]] and [[James Frazer|J.G. Frazer]] in [[England]] worked mostly with materials collected by others – usually missionaries, explorers, or colonial officials – this earned them their current sobriquet of "arm-chair anthropologists". Ethnologists had a special interest in why people living in different parts of the world sometimes had similar [[belief]]s and practices. In addressing this question, ethnologists in the 19th century divided into two schools of thought. Some, like [[Grafton Elliot Smith]], argued that different groups must somehow have learned from one another, however indirectly; in other words, they argued that cultural traits spread from one place to another, or "[[Diffusion (anthropology)|diffused]]". Other ethnologists argued that different groups had the capability of inventing 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]]).
20th century anthropologists largely reject the notion that all human societies must pass through the same stages in the same order. Some 20th century ethnologists, like [[Julian Steward]], have instead argued that such similarities reflected similar adaptations to similar environments (see [[cultural evolution]]). Others, like [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]] (who was influenced both by American cultural anthropology and by French [[Emile Durkheim|Durkheimian]] [[sociology]]), have argued that apparent patterns of development reflect fundamental similarities in the structure of human thought (see [[structuralism]]).
In the 20th century most cultural (and social) anthropologists turned to the study of [[ethnography]], in which an anthropologist actually lives among another society for a considerable period of time, simultaneously [[participant observation|participating in and observing]] the social and cultural life of the group. [[Bronisław Malinowski]] (who conducted [[fieldwork]] in the [[Trobriand Islands]] and taught in England) developed this method, and [[Franz Boas]] (who conducted fieldwork in [[Baffin Island]] and taught in the [[United States]]) promoted it. Boas's students drew on his conception of culture and [[cultural relativism]] to develop cultural anthropology in the United States. Simultaneously, Malinowski and [[Alfred Radcliffe-Brown|A.R. Radcliffe Brown]]´s students were developing [[social anthropology]] in the United Kingdom. Whereas cultural anthropology focused on symbols and values, social anthropology focused on social groups and institutions. Today socio-cultural anthropologists attend to all these elements.
Although 19th century ethnologists saw "diffusion" and "independent invention" as mutually exclusive and competing theories, most ethnographers quickly reached a consensus that both processes occur, and that both can plausibly account for cross-cultural similarities. But these ethnographers pointed out the superficiality of many such similarities, and that even traits that spread through diffusion often changed their meaning and functions as they moved from one society to another. Accordingly, 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 he or she lived.
In the early 20th century socio-cultural anthropology developed in different forms in [[Europe]] and in the United States. European "social anthropologists" focused on observed social behaviors and on "social structure", that is, on [[interpersonal relationship|relationships]] among social [[role]]s (e.g. husband and wife, or parent and child) and social [[institution]]s (e.g. [[anthropology of religion|religion]], [[economic anthropology|economy]], and [[political anthropology|politics]]). American "cultural anthropologists" focused on the ways people expressed their view of themselves and their world, especially in [[symbol]]ic forms (such as [[art]] and [[Mythology|myth]]s). These two approaches frequently converged ([[kinship]], for example, and [[leadership]] function both as symbolic systems and as social institutions), and generally complemented one another. Today almost all socio-cultural anthropologists refer to the work of both sets of predecessors, and have an equal interest in what people do and in what people say.
== Contemporary theory and methods ==
Today [[ethnography]] continues to dominate socio-cultural anthropology. Nevertheless, many contemporary socio-cultural anthropologists have rejected earlier models of ethnography which they claim treated local cultures as bounded and isolated. These anthropologists continue to concern themselves with the distinct ways people in different locales experience and understand their [[personal life|lives]], but they often argue that one cannot understand these particular ways of life solely from a local perspective; they instead combine a focus on the local with an effort to grasp larger political, economic, and cultural frameworks that impact local lived realities. Notable proponents of this approach include [[Arjun Appadurai]], [[James Clifford]], [[George Marcus]], [[Sidney Mintz]], [[Michael Taussig]] and [[Eric Wolf]].
A growing trend in anthropological research and analysis seems to be the use of multi-sited ethnography, discussed in George Marcus's article "Ethnography In/Of the World System: the Emergence of Multi-Sited Ethnography"]. Looking at culture as embedded in macro-constructions of a global social order, multi-sited ethnography uses traditional methodology in various locations both spatially and temporally. Through this methodology greater insight can be gained when examining the impact of world-systems on local and global communities. Also emerging in multi-sited ethnography are greater interdisciplinary approaches to fieldwork, bringing in methods from cultural studies, media studies, science and technology studies, and others. In multi-sited ethnography research tracks a subject across spatial and temporal boundaries. For example, a multi-sited ethnography may follow a "thing," such as a particular commodity, as it transfers through the networks of global capitalism. Multi-sited ethnography may also follow ethnic groups in diaspora, stories or rumours that appear in multiple locations and in multiple time periods, metaphors that appear in multiple ethnographic locations, or the biographies of individual people or groups as they move through space and time. It may also follow conflicts that transcend boundaries. Multi-sited ethnographies, such as [[Nancy Scheper-Hughes]]'s ethnography of the international black market for the trade of human organs. In this research she follows organs as they transfer through various legal and illegal networks of capitalism, as well as the rumours and urban legends that circulate in impoverished communities about child kidnapping and organ theft.
Sociocultural anthropologists have increasingly turned their investigative eye on to [[western culture|"Western" culture]]. For example, [[Philippe Bourgois]] won the [[Margaret Mead Award]] in 1997 for ''In Search of Respect'', a study of the entrepreneurs in a Harlem crack-den. Also growing more popular are ethnographies of professional communities, such as laboratory researchers, Wall Street investors, law firms, or IT computer employees.<ref> Dissertation Abstract [http://www.ingentaconnect.com/search/expand?pub=infobike://mcb/161/1995/00000008/00000003/art00003&unc=]</ref>
==References==
{{Reflist}}
==Related topics==
<div class="references-small">
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* [[Anthropology of art]]
* [[Anthropology of media]]
* [[Anthropology of religion]]
* [[Applied anthropology]]
* [[Cross-cultural studies]]
* [[Cyber anthropology]]
* [[Development anthropology]]
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* [[Dual inheritance theory]]
* [[Environmental anthropology]]
* [[Economic anthropology]]
* [[Ecological anthropology]]
* [[Ethnobotany]]
* [[Ethnography]]
* [[Ethnomusicology]]
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* [[Ethnozoology]]
* [[Evolutionary anthropology]]
* [[Feminist anthropology]]
* [[Human behavioral ecology]]
* [[Medical anthropology]]
* [[Psychological anthropology]]
* [[Political anthropology]]
{{Col-4-of-4}}
* [[Public anthropology]]
* [[Social anthropology]]
* [[Symbolic anthropology]]
* [[Urban anthropology]]
* [[Visual anthropology]]
{{Col-end}}
</div>
== See also ==
<div class="references-small">
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* [[Community studies]]
* [[Dual inheritance theory]]
* [[Ernest Gellner]]
* [[Human behavioral ecology]]
* [[Hunter-gatherers]]
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* [[Intangible Cultural Heritage]]
* [[Neuroanthropology]]
* [[Nomad]]s
* [[Sociology]]
* [[Symbolic anthropology]]
{{Col-end}}
</div>
== External links ==
* http://www.movinganthropology.org - The Moving Anthropology Student Network-website offers tutorials, information on the subject, discussion-forums and a large link-collection for all interested scholars of cultural anthropology
* [http://ijea.asu.edu/v8r2/ Review of Nettl's 2005 revised edition of "The Study of Ethnomusicology"]
[[Category:Cultural anthropology|*]]
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