What do you call the study of current culture? Im not sure if what im looking for is called anthropology?

Question

like in this paper i want to talk about different cultures in places of the world. Like i want to talk about chinese culture and maybe spanish culture. like basically i want to talk about the different foods they eat their traditions their religions and other stuff like that. I just dont know what thats called. im not sure if its called anthropology because anthropology just talkes about ancient history and culture of the first cavemen and stuff like that

Answer 1

I do not think anthropology is limited to ancient times ... but sociology seems like a better match when you look at things involving entire society, like religion.

Answer 2

socio-cultural anthropology, cultural studies, asian studies (for China), sociology (but sociology courses in university are like watered dumbed down socio-cultural anthropology courses because sociology students are STUPID!)

Answer 3

It also talks about current groups. Sociology might be term though

Answer 4

its definately not sociology!

its quite obvious that its cultural anthropology.

Answer 5

Sociology.

Answer 6

That's definitely anthropology. Archaeology is a subfield of anthropology, and that's the only part that studies past cultures.

Anthropology is the study of humans - kind of a wide open field, eh? Cultural anthropology studies different cultures, understanding how they work, how they are different and similar to each other, trying to see a society from inside. Linguistic anthropology studies the evolution and practice of languages. Medical anthropology studies how different societies deal with sickness and health and understand the body. Physical anthropology generally deals with evolution, genetics and physicality, and has the off-shoot of forensic anthropology which studies bone structure and human remains.

Sociology is similar to cultural anthropology, but in my experience it relies more on statistics and gathered data to document a society rather than trying to subjectively understand it through long-term first-hand research. I've always considered anthropology to be the term when studying a culture different from your own, and sociology to be studying your own culture - but really it's more a question of methodology than anything.

Answer 7

That is Anthropology.  I believe you may be confusing its scope with one of its subfields, Archeology.  Social (aka Cultural) Anthropology studies modern cultures.