Cultural anthropology is a field work

Cultural anthropology is the field study of living human beings. Cultural anthropology’s principal method is field work, the way we do natural history.

The field refer to the areas in space in which cultural anthropologists find a living population to study.

It is the “interacting field” for various forces propelled by human activities.

The field need not have a hard boundary, it may not even be a single geographical area, but all told, a particular ethnographic filed is usually some form of community.

The natural history method distinguishes cultural anthropology from the other social sciences.

This method is founded on meticulous observation. The observation interact over natural time cycles (days, seasons, years, generations, a lifetime).

This observation to be controlled and cross checked by repeating them and questioning – interviewing – the subjects for information about past activities.

By this way, repetitive charting and cross checking of human events we can distinguish pattern and processes. These in turn enable, to arrive at conclusions that are theories – statements of order, limits, probability and natural law – derived from the field itself, seen as part of nature.

Theories may descriptive, relational, prescriptive or predictive. Natural history theories are above all descriptive and relational.

They are sometimes prescriptive, especially in applied anthropology: they can indicate a recommended area of conduct.

But anthropologist seldom make predictions on the basis of their theories. It is important to realize that prediction is not the only test of a theory.
Cultural anthropology is a field work