Definition of cultural anthropology

Cultural anthropology is the academic discipline that investigates the cultural diversity of current and historically recent human societies.

As its name suggests, the main focus of this subfield is culture.

The Englishman E.B Tylor was one of the founders of the field that was later to become cultural anthropology.

In 1871, he wrote that culture is ‘that complex whole which include knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, customs, and any other, capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member do society’.

Culture is the core concept in cultural anthropology and is an important concept in sociology. Cultural anthropology studies human behavior that is learned, shared and typical of a particular human group, known as culture.

Cultural anthropologists attempt to understand culture as the major way in which human beings adopt to their environment.
Definition of cultural anthropology