Cultural anthropology

were of great interest to me. Among them, cultural, evolutionary, and social psychology were particularly appealing to me. However, it was cultural psychology that really stood out from the rest. Given that I aspire to someday be a cultural anthropologist, I can hardly say I found this to be surprising. It makes sense that applying the same cultural focus, that I have always had a strong interest in, to psychology would successfully appeal to me. Cultural psychology is a specialty that studies…

companies are hiring anthropologists increasingly. Anthropologists who work with Microsoft were recorded the second-largest employer of the anthropologists in the world. Intel has an in-house cultural anthropologist in the world. Companies are curious and questioning why giant corporations are seeking for cultural expertise. Anthropologists know customers wants and needs, especially that products play a huge part of the everyday life. The information study by anthropologist are more valuable…

telling about the culture. When anthropological images transitioned from being moral to scientific this problem became more prevalent when informants were taken out of everyday life and posed in front of grids. Grid photographs are major disruptions to cultural life, but there are subtler disruptions as…

Cross-Cultural Miscues Culture can be defined using many different phrases; one way of phrasing culture is a system of shared ideas or meanings. Different parts of the world have vastly different cultures that they practice in their society. Since so many contrasting cultures are present, not everyone knows about what is acceptable in every culture. This leads to cultural “norms” being violated resulting in a cross-cultural miscue. Cross-cultural miscues happen because the actions or languages…

The first Anthropology course I took at Southern with Dr. Daniel Bass dealt with living cultures. The work we got to learn about with the tribes of Papua, New Guinea was so interesting. One of the things that I remember was how men had sex with younger males and how…

2001), thus it is a system of behaviour that is learned. There is no one version of culture or an idea that different cultures are completely the same, as Edward Tyler reinstates “culture… is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, anthropology morale, law, custom and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member of society” (Tyler 1871) There are three moments displayed in the evolution of culture, the Boasian moment, Geertian moment and the Postmodern moment.…

whereas a positive or adaptive reaction would mean most of society would change the way they treat their bodies in a negative, unhealthy way. 9) Cultural relativism is a belief that cultures cannot be superior than one another. For example, religion or political beliefs of an individual are in terms to their society. Ethnocentrism is the contrast of cultural relativism. The belief is that one’s culture values or ethics are better than the other, primarily looking at a culture through one…

Every day, those in social science aim to do research while remaining ethical. Some situations involve tough decisions based on ethics, and cannot always be looked at in the cultural perspective of the one doing research. Such cases are beneficial and can help educate others about the decisions anthropologists have to make without being ethnocentric. Two anthropologists, Terry Kelly and Rose Stone, were given tough situations revolving around ethics. In the end, they both made the right…

by ethnicity when observed in a diverse multicultural place such as Westminster mall? This paper describes my ethnographic work and study of the people I analyzed at Westminster mall on April 28, 2016. In the Cultural Anthropology book Welsch and Vicanco state that “Since the 1960’s cultural anthropologists have focused more intensively on the symbolic lives of people in all societies. I learned that there is many types of ethnicities and every ethnicity does particular things differently.…

should also include interpretations, commentary and comments on the interpretations. In this essay, I will discuss Varsity Cup Finals and my experience there off. I will argue that the Varsity Cup is not simple a rugby game it represents the current cultural phenomena at universities especially Stellenbosch university. The varsity cup is a representation of the sexist, resist, patriarchal and immoral behaviour of students that has been suppressed that it becomes very visible at the sporting…