Can someone help summarize cultural anthropology for me?

Question

Most of my teachers say I would grow up to be a great linguist or a cultural antrhroplogist. Only problem is I don't know exactly what it is.

Answer 1

cultural anthropology

n.

The scientific study of the development of human cultures based on ethnologic, ethnographic, linguistic, social, and psychological data and methods of analysis.

Answer 2

Cultural anthropologists:

1-Cultural anthropologists study humans through a descriptive lens called the ethnographic method, based on participant observation, in tandem with face-to-face interviews, normally conducted in the native tongue.

2-They compare what they see and hear themselves with the observations and findings of studies conducted in other societies.

3- The focus is on aspects of cultural life, such as economics, politics, religion or art.

4-Cultural anthropologists seek to understand the internal logic of another society. It helps outsiders make sense of behaviors that, like face painting or scarification, may seem bizarre or senseless.

Linguistic anthropologists:

1-They look at the history, evolution, and internal structure of human languages.

2-They study prehistoric links between different societies, and explores the use and meaning of verbal concepts with which humans communicate and reason.

3-The focus is on language.

4-They seek to explain the very nature of language itself, including hidden connections among language, brain, and behavior.

Answer 3

Cultural anthropology is one of four fields of anthropology (the holistic study of 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; it is also the branch of anthropology that studies cultural variation among humans.

The anthropological concept of "culture" reflects in part a reaction against earlier Western discourses based on an opposition between "culture" and "nature", according to which some human beings lived in a "state of nature". Anthropologists argue that culture is "human nature," and that all people have a capacity to classify experiences, encode classifications symbolically, and teach such abstractions to others. Since humans acquire culture through learning (the processes of enculturation and socialization), people living in different places or different circumstances may 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 Great Britain. Some anthropologists have drawn on both traditions and identify themselves as socio-cultural anthropologists