Cultural adaptation, Anthropology.?

Question

What makes this apporach popular in explaining cultural variation? and what are the limitation of this apporach?

Answer 1

Limitation?. Adaption is a strict evolutionary biology term. You can see or quantify adaption. What would a cultural adaption look like? I wish you social scientists would quite using our terms in your too vapid even to be wrong style.

Answer 2

Ah, opposites again?  Cultural adaptation means having a similar culture; variation would be "not the same".

Cultural adaptation is definitely a real phenomenon; early peoples "kept up with the Joneses" by intermarrying.  If one tribe had more men than women of "marrying age" and another tribe had more women than men, they would trade so their would be a balance between the sexes.  In doing so, any advance made by one tribe would be carried over to another tribe.  Thus, advances were made "across the board".  Today, most of the world emulate the U.S. in so many ways; you can go to Paris, France, and youths are wearing blue jeans and tennis shoes!

According to historical accounts, variation is diminishing; peoples around the world are once again emulating other societies, in large part due to TV and the media; more so due to the internet.

As to explaining the variation, I would say that new approaches to anything often leads to innovation, so I would say that by imitating another society, people begin to wonder what new adaptations can they derive and try to surpass the other society.

Answer 3

Cultural adaptation is when a person moves from one culture to another and learns to live in their new culture.  Interviewing them can be useful because people that grow up outside the culture being studied and then learn it have a different perspective, including knowledge of the differences between their two cultures.  They may notice things as odd or important that natives take for granted.  They can give insights that natives can't.  However, they aren't suitable as the only primary source in a study unless you're studying cultural adaptation.  They don't have the perspective of natives of the culture and retain some aspects from their own native culture.