Читать книгу Anthropology For Dummies - Cameron M. Smith - Страница 62

People often confuse cultural anthropology with the related discipline of sociology, but you can note at least two clear distinctions between the two fields:

 Cultural anthropology focuses on nonindustrial societies. These groups are often called traditional societies because they have many things in common with societies that existed before the recent, massive global changes associated with post–World War II globalism. On the other hand, sociology tends to focus on industrial or Western civilization (particularly urban civilization).

 Cultural anthropology tends to rely on direct interviews with the members of traditional societies. Many of these people don’t read or write, and sociologists tend to gather data with questionnaires.

Academic departments of sociology and anthropology often have close connections and sometimes merge, but their theoretical backgrounds are very different. Sociology’s roots are in economics and anthropology’s in the humanities. Although they share some similarities, it’s probably best to keep these fields separate.

One of the most important tools for the cultural anthropologist is the ethnography, a document describing some aspect of some culture, written by a trained observer — a cultural anthropologist who often participates, to some degree, in the culture he’s observing. See Chapter 12 for more on ethnographies.