How Anthropologists Understand Culture

1. What is Anthropology and how do Anthropologists Understand Culture?

In a broad explanation, anthropology is the study of the human experience. Anthropology studies the human experience on multiple levels. There are four general categories of anthropology including, physical and biological anthropology, archeology, linguistics, and cultural anthropology. In order to better analyze the human experience, we can use the anthropological lens. The anthropological lens has three different categories, cross-cultural comparison (seeing how cultures may compare and contrast), holism (the notional that all elements of culture are connected and the effects of these connections, similar to the concept of the butterfly effect), and cultural relativism (accepting the differences between cultures and acknowledging your own bias).

Cultural anthropologists work to uncover how culture is created, reinforced, and changes. It’s important to note that the concept of culture can be difficult to grasp as the definitions for culture vary. There comes the nature versus nurture debate within the concept of culture. Have we inherited our culture or have we been conditioned to learn our culture? In a sense, both nature and nurture play roles in the concepts of culture. We have the basic biological necessities that need to be fulfilled for survival that have been engrained into us over time. We need to eat, reproduce, find shelter, and be loved, to name a few examples. Moreover, culture is learned, shared, symbolic, integrated, adaptive, and performed. In other words, we may discover and adapt to our culture over time as well as we are exposed to our