Читать книгу Anthropology For Dummies - Cameron M. Smith - Страница 61

Cultural anthropologists have devised many fascinating and complex bodies of theory to explain humanity and the diversity and commonalities of human cultures. Among them:

 Evolutionary approaches (including materialist approaches) that seek explanations by looking for the adaptive advantages of various cultural practices — such as cannibalism or social ranking — worldwide. These theories seem to explain some things, but critics argue that they ignore the significance of individual action, which is sometimes known as agency.

 Functionalist approaches that understand elements of culture as each working in an integrated way to promote the culture’s welfare. Critics claim that these approaches ignore the importance of conflict, which is always present in culture (particularly those with social rank or class differences).

 Postmodern approaches that focus on conflicts, individual agency, and other nonstandard aspects of culture. Critics argue that such approaches, though they admirably give voice to common people, often ignore physical, material, and evolutionary realities of the fact that humans are evolving animals.

As with single-factor attempts to describe all of cultural change, I can confidently say no one explanation of the complexity of culture has convinced all anthropologists of its validity; single-factor models never seem to pan out.