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

Fieldwork

Throughout the nineteenth century anthropology was often a hobby of well to do scholars who are able to travel to out of way places and study exotic people.

A number of anthropologists also analyzed accounts written by other, especially if they could not afford time and expense of a field expedition.

This armchair anthropologist, based on travel diaries and missionary accounts rather than field search, lead to a particular styles of analysis that could not hope to capture the true nature of traditional societies.

Even those who could do field research there was no systematic attempt to meet true research standards.

It was not until the twentieth century that anthropologists became really concerned with the quality of their research and began to develop a set of standard for the field worker.

A leader in the movement toward uncontrolled research methods for cultural anthropology was Bronislow Malinowski.

Born in what is called now Poland, Malinowski was trained in mathematic but early in life he became interested in anthropology.
Fieldwork

Kalervo Oberg (1901 -1973) – anthropologist who introduced the term ‘culture shock’

Kalervo Oberg (1901 -1973) – anthropologist who introduced the term ‘culture shock’
He was born in British Columbia to Finnish parents in 1901. Kalervo Oberg was known as a world renowned anthropologist. He was a civil servant and a teacher.

He graduated from University of British Columbia with Bachelor of Economics before proceed to Master of Economics from University of Pittsburgh. He earned his doctorate from University of Chicago with dissertation, the Social Economy of the Tlingit Indians of Alaska.

He loved with his fieldwork and his extensive and wide ranging fieldwork was his biggest accomplishment. Oberg then worked in various government postings overseas, including the Institute of Inter-American Affairs, forerunner of the U.S. Agency for International Development, with assignments including Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, and Surinam.

He traveled the world and wrote about the experiences so others could enjoy them as well. He was a world-renowned applied anthropologist. He was the first to introduce the term "Culture shock" and he was the best known coined for the idea in 1954. He found that all human beings experience the same feelings when they travel to or live in a different country or culture.

He found that culture shock is almost like a disease: it has a cause, symptoms and a cure. Kalervo Oberg died in 1973.
Kalervo Oberg (1901 -1973) – anthropologist who introduced the term ‘culture shock’