In North America the discipline's largest branch, cultural anthropology, applies the comparative method and evolutionary perspective
to human culture. Culture represents the entire database of knowledge, values, and
traditional ways of viewing the world, which have been transmitted from one generation
ahead to the next--nongenetically, apart from DNA--through words, concepts, and symbols.
Cultural anthropologists study humans through a descriptive lens called the ethnographic
method, based on participant observation, in tandem with face-to-face interviews, normally
conducted in the native tongue. Ethnographers compare what they see and hear themselves
with the observations and findings of studies conducted in other societies. Originally,
anthropologists pieced together a complete way of life for a culture, viewed as a whole.
Today, the more likely focus is on a narrower aspect of cultural life, such as economics,
politics, religion or art.
Cultural anthropologists seek to understand the internal logic of another society. It
helps outsiders make sense of behaviors that, like face painting or scarification, may
seem bizarre or senseless. Through the comparative method an anthropologist learns to
avoid "ethnocentrism," the tendency to interpret strange customs on the basis of
preconceptions derived from one's own cultural background. Moreover, this same process
helps us see our own society--the color "red" again--through fresh eyes.
We can turn the principle around and see our everyday surroundings in a new light, with
the same sense of wonder and discovery anthropologists experience when studying life in a
Brazilian rain-forest tribe. Though many picture cultural anthropologists thousands of
miles from home residing in thatched huts amid wicker fences, growing numbers now study
U.S. groups instead, applying anthropological perspectives to their own culture and
society.
