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What is Culture?

The word culture has many different meanings. For

some it refers to an appreciation of good literature, music,art, and food. For a biologist, it is likely to be a colony ofbacteria or other microorganisms growing in a nutrientmedium in a laboratory Petri dish. However, foranthropologists and other behavioral scientists, culture isthe full range of learned human behavior patterns. Theterm was first used in this way by the pioneer EnglishAnthropologist Edward B. Tylor in his book, PrimitiveCulture, published in 1871. Tylor said that culture is "thatcomplex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, custom,

and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as a member ofsociety." Of course, it is not limited to men. Women possess and create it aswell. Since Tylor's time, the concept of culture has become the central focusof anthropology.

Culture is a powerful human tool for survival, but it is a fragile phenomenon. Itis constantly changing and easily lost because it exists only in our minds. Ourwritten languages, governments, buildings, and other man-made things aremerely the products of culture. They are not culture in themselves. For thisreason,archaeologistscan not dig up culture directly in their excavations.

The broken pots and other artifacts of ancient people that they uncover areonly material remains that reflect cultural patterns--they are things that weremade and used through cultural knowledge and skills.

Layers of Culture

There are very likely three layers or levels of culture that are part of yourlearned behavior patterns and perceptions. Most obviously is the body ofcultural traditions that distinguish your specific society. When people speak of

Italian, Samoan, or Japanese culture, they are referring to the sharedlanguage, traditions, and beliefs that set each of these peoples apart fromothers. In most cases, those who share your culture do so because theyacquired it as they were raised by parents and other family members whohave it.

Edward B. Tylor(1832-1917)
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The second layer of culture that may be part of

your identity is a subculture . In complex,diverse societies in which people have comefrom many different parts of the world, theyoften retain much of their original culturaltraditions. As a result, they are likely to be partof an identifiable subculture in their newsociety. The shared cultural traits of subcultures set them apart from the restof their society. Examples of easily identifiable subcultures in the UnitedStates include ethnic groups such as Vietnamese Americans, AfricanAmericans, and Mexican Americans. Members of each of these subculturesshare a common identity, food tradition, dialect or language, and other culturaltraits that come from their common ancestral background and experience. Asthe cultural differences between members of a subculture and the dominant

national culture blur and eventually disappear, the subculture ceases to existexcept as a group of people who claim a common ancestry. That is generallythe case with German Americans and Irish Americans in the United Statestoday. Most of them identify themselves as Americans first. They also seethemselves as being part of the cultural mainstream of the nation.

These Cuban Americanwomen in Miami, Floridahave a shared subcultureidentity that is reinforcedthrough their language,

food, and other traditions

The third layer of culture consists of cultural universals. These are learnedbehavior patterns that are shared by all of humanity collectively. No matterwhere people live in the world, they share these universal traits. Examples ofsuch "human cultural" traits include:

1. communicating with a verbal language consisting of a limited setof sounds and grammatical rules for constructing sentences

2. using age and gender to classify people (e.g., teenager, seniorcitizen, woman, man)

3. classifying people based on marriage and descent relationshipsand having kinship terms to refer tothem (e.g., wife, mother, uncle, cousin)

4. raising children in some sort of family setting

5. having a sexual division of labor (e.g., men's work versus
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women's work)

6. having a concept of privacy

7. having rules to regulate sexual behavior

8. distinguishing between good and bad behavior

9. having some sort of body ornamentation

10. making jokes and playing games

11. having art

12. having some sort of leadership roles for the implementation ofcommunity decisions

While all cultures have these and possibly many other universal traits,different cultures have developed their own specific ways of carrying out orexpressing them. For instance, people in deaf subcultures frequently use

their hands to communicate with sign language instead of verbal language.However, sign languages have grammatical rules just as verbal ones do.

Culture and Society

Culture and society are not the same thing. While cultures arecomplexes of learned behavior patterns and perceptions, societies aregroups of interacting organisms. People are not the only animals that havesocieties. Schools of fish, flocks of birds, and hives of bees are societies. In

the case of humans, however, societies are groups of people who directly orindirectly interact with each other. People in human societies also generallyperceive that their society is distinct from other societies in terms of sharedtraditions and expectations.

While human societies and cultures are not the same thing, they areinextricably connected because culture is created and transmitted to others ina society. Cultures are not the product of lone individuals. They are thecontinuously evolving products of people interacting with each other. Culturalpatterns such as language and politics make no sense except in terms of the

interaction of people. If you were the only human on earth, there would be noneed for language or government.

Is Culture Limited toHumans?
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There is a difference of opinion in thebehavioral sciences about whether ornot we are the only animal thatcreates and uses culture. Theanswer to this question depends onhow narrow culture is defined. If it isused broadly to refer to a complex oflearned behavior patterns, then it isclear that we are not alone in creating and using culture. Many other animalspecies teach their young what they themselves learned in order to survive.This is especially true of the chimpanzees and other relatively intelligent apesand monkeys. Wild chimpanzee mothers typically teach their children aboutseveral hundred food and medicinal plants. Their children also have to learnabout thedominance hierarchyand the social rules within their communities.As males become teenagers, they acquire hunting skills from adults. Femaleshave to learn how to nurse and care for their babies. Chimpanzees evenhave to learn such basic skills as how to perform sexual intercourse. Thisknowledge is not hardwired into their brains at birth. They are all learnedpatterns of behavior just as they are for humans.

Non-human culture?This orangutan mother isusing a specially preparedstick to "fish out" food froma crevice. She learned thisskill and is now teaching it

to her child who is hangingon her shoulder and intentlywatching.
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Characteristics of Culture

In order to better understand culture, it is useful to closely examine its

characteristics and their ramifications. In this section of the tutorial, you willlearn about the specific advantages that culture gives our species. You willalso learn about culture's limitations and shortcomings.

Culture Is An Adaptive Mechanism

The first humans evolved in tropical and subtropical regions of Africa about2.5 million years ago. Since then, we have successfully occupied all of themajor geographic regions of the world, but our bodies have remainedessentially those of warm climate animals. We cannot survive outside of thewarmer regions of our planet without our cultural knowledge and technology.What made it possible for our ancestors to begin living in temperate andultimately subarctic regions of the northern hemisphere after half a millionyears ago was the invention of efficient hunting skills, fire use, and, ultimately,clothing, warm housing, agriculture, and commerce. Culture has been ahighly successfuladaptive mechanismfor our species. It has given us amajor selective advantage in the competition for survival with other life forms.Culture has allowed the global human population to grow from less than 10million people shortly after the end of the last ice age to more than 6.5 billion

people today, a mere 10,000 years later. Culture has made us the mostdangerous and the most destructive large animal on our planet. It is ironicthat despite the power that culture has given us, we are totally dependent on itfor survival. We need our cultural skills to stay alive.

Expanding human geographic range into new environmental zonesmade possible by the evolution of culture (The ranges during latertime periods include those of earlier periods)
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Over the last several hundred thousand years, wehave developed new survival related cultural skillsand technologies at a faster rate than naturalselection could alter our bodies to adapt to theenvironmental challenges that confronted us. Thefact that cultural evolution can occur faster thanbiological evolution has significantly modified theeffect of natural selection on humans. Oneconsequence of this has been that we have notdeveloped thick fat layers and dense fur coats likepolar bears in the cold regions because our culture provided the necessarywarmth during winter times.

Culture is learned

Human infants come into the world with basic drives such as hunger andthirst, but they do not possess instinctive patterns of behavior to satisfy them.Likewise, they are without any cultural knowledge. However, they aregenetically predisposed to rapidly learn language and other cultural traits.New born humans are amazing learning machines. Any normal baby can beplaced into any family on earth and grow up to learn their culture and accept itas his or her own. Since culture is non-instinctive, we are not geneticallyprogrammed to learn a particular one.

Every human generation potentially can discover newthings and invent better technologies. The new culturalskills and knowledge are added onto what was learned inprevious generations. As a result, culture iscumulative. Due to this cumulative effect, most highschool students today are now familiar with mathematicalinsights and solutions that ancient Greeks such asArchimedes and Pythagoras struggled their lives todiscover.

Cultural evolution is due to the cumulative effect of culture. We nowunderstand that the time between major cultural inventions has becomesteadily shorter, especially since the invention of agriculture 8,000-10,000years ago. The progressively larger human population after that time wasvery likely both a consequence and a cause of accelerating culture growth.The more people there are, the more likely new ideas and information willaccumulate. If those ideas result in a larger, more secure food supplies, the

Successful cultural technologyfor adapting to very cold winterenvironments

North American childreninformally learning theculture of their parents


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population will inevitably grow. In a sense, culture has been the humansolution to surviving changing environments, but it has continuouslycompounded the problem by making it possible for more humans to stayalive. In other words, human cultural evolution can be seen as solving aproblem that causes the same problem again and again. The ultimate cost ofsuccess of cultural technology has been a need to produce more and morefood for more and more people.

Parallel Growth of the Human Population and Cultural Technology

The invention of agriculture made it possible for our ancestors to have a morecontrollable and, subsequently, dependable food supply. It also resulted insettling down in permanent communities. This in turn set the stage for furtherdevelopments in technology and political organization. The inevitable resultwas more intensive agriculture, new kinds of social and political systems

dominated by emerging elite classes, the first cities, and ultimately theindustrial and information revolutions of modern times. City life brought with itthe unexpected consequence of increased rates of contagious diseases.Large, dense populations of people make it much easier for viruses, bacteria,and other disease causing microorganisms to spread from host to host. As aresult, most cities in the past were periodically devastated by epidemics.

Agriculture based ancient city(Thebes, Egypt)

Modern post-industrial city(New York)

The rate of cultural evolution for many human societies during the last twocenturies has been unprecedented. Today, major new technologies are


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invented every few years rather than once or twice a century or even lessoften, as was the case in the past. Likewise, there has been an astoundingincrease in the global human population. It is worth reflecting on the fact thatthere are people alive today who were born before cell phones, computers,televisions, radios, antibiotics, and even airplanes. These now elderlyindividuals have seen the human population double several times. The worldthat was familiar to them in their childhood is no longer here. It is as if theyhave moved to a new alien culture and society. Not surprisingly, they oftenhave difficulty in accepting and adjusting to the change. The psychologicaldistress and confusion that accompanies this has been referred to asfutureshock.

Cultures Change

All cultural knowledge does not perpetually accumulate.At the same time that new cultural traits are added,some old ones are lost because they are no longeruseful. For example, most city dwellers today do nothave or need the skills required for survival in awilderness. Most would very likely starve to deathbecause they do not know how to acquire wild foodsand survive the extremes of weather outdoors. What ismore important in modern urban life are such things as the ability to drive acar, use a computer, and understand how to obtain food in a supermarket orrestaurant.

The regular addition and subtraction of cultural traits results in culturechange. All cultures change over time--none is static. However, the rate ofchange and the aspects of culture that change varies from society to society.For instance, people in Germany today generally seem eager to adopt newwords from other languages, especially from American English, while manyFrench people are resistant to it because of the threat of "corrupting" their ownlanguage. However, the French are just as eager as the Germans to adoptnew technology.

Tool of modern technology
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Change can occur as a result of both invention within

a society as well as thediffusion of cultural traitsfrom one society to another. Predicting whether asociety will adopt new cultural traits or abandon othersis complicated by the fact that the various aspects ofa culture are closely interwoven into a complexpattern. Changing one trait will have an impact onother traits because they are functionallyinterconnected. As a result, there commonly is aresistance to major changes. For example, many men in North America andEurope resisted the increase in economic and political opportunities forwomen over the last century because of the far ranging consequences. Itinevitably changed the nature of marriage, the family, and the lives of all men.It also significantly altered the workplace as well as the legal system and the

decisions made by governments.

People Usually are not Aware of Their Culture

The way that we interact and do things in our everyday lives seems "natural"to us. We are unaware of our culture because we are so close to it and knowit so well. For most people, it is as if their learned behavior was biologicallyinherited. It is usually only when they come into contact with people fromanother culture that they become aware that their patterns of behavior are notuniversal.

The common response in all societies to other cultures is to judge them interms of the values and customs of their own familiar culture. This

is ethnocentrism . Being fond of your own way of life and condescendingor even hostile toward other cultures is normal for all people. Alien culturetraits are often viewed as being not just different but inferior, less sensible,and even "unnatural." For example, European cultures strongly condemnother societies that practicepolygamyand the eating of dogs--behavior thatEuropeans generally consider to be immoral and offensive. Likewise, many

people in conservative Muslim societies, such as Afghanistan and SaudiArabia, consider European women highly immodest and immoral for going outin public without being chaperoned by a male relative and without their bodiescovered from head to toe so as to prevent men from looking at them.Ethnocentrism is not characteristic only of complex modern societies. Peoplein small, relatively isolated societies are also ethnocentric in their views aboutoutsiders.

North American woman in ajob that formerly would nothave been open to women
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Our ethnocentrism causes us to be shocked andeven disgusted at attitudes about other animals indifferent cultures. This North American womanconsiders her dog to be a close friend and essentiallya member of her own family. In the Muslim world,dogs are generally considered to be dirty animals that

are likely to be kicked if they get in the way. In someareas of Southeast Asia, dogs have multiple functions,including being a source of food for people.

Our ethnocentrism can prevent us from understanding and appreciatinganother culture. When anthropologists study other societies, they need tosuspend their own ethnocentric judgments and adopt a cultural relativityapproach. That is, they try to learn about and interpret the various aspects ofthe culture they are studying in reference to that culture rather than to theanthropologist's own culture. This provides an understanding of how suchpractices as polygamy can function and even support other cultural traditions.Without taking a cultural relativity approach, it would otherwise be difficult, for

example, to comprehend why women among the Masai cattle herdingpeople of Kenya might prefer to be one of several co-wives rather than have

amonogamous marriage.

Masai women

Taking a cultural relativity approach is not only useful for anthropologists. It isa very useful tool for diplomats, businessmen, doctors, and any one else whoneeds to interact with people from other societies and even other subcultureswithin their own society. However, it can be emotionally difficult anduncomfortable at first to suspend one's own cultural values in these situations.

From an objective perspective, it can be seen that ethnocentrism has bothpositive and negative values for a society. The negative potential is obvious.Ethnocentrism results in prejudices about people from other cultures and therejection of their "alien ways." When there is contact with people from othercultures, ethnocentrism can prevent open communication and result inmisunderstanding and mistrust. This would be highly counterproductive forbusinessmen trying to negotiate a trade deal or even just neighbors trying to
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get along with each other. The positive aspect of ethnocentrism has to dowith the protection that it can provide for a culture. By causing a rejection ofthe foods, customs, and perceptions of people in other cultures, it acts as aconservative force in preserving traditions of one's own culture. It can helpmaintain the separation and uniqueness of cultures.

We Do Not Know All of Our Own Culture

No one knows everything about his or her own culture. In all societies, thereare bodies of specialized cultural knowledge that aregenderspecific--they areknown to men but not women or vice versa. In many societies there are alsobodies of knowledge that are limited largely to particular social classes,occupations, religious groups, or other special purpose associations.

Gender based skills, knowledge, and perceptions largely stem from the factthat boys and girls to some extent are treated differently from each other in allsocieties. While there may be considerable overlap in what they are taught,there are some things that are gender specific. In the Western World, forinstance, it is more common to teach boys about the skills of combat and howmachines work. Girls are more often exposed to the subtleties of socialinteraction and the use of clothing and makeup to communicate intentions.Not surprisingly, men are more likely to know how to fix their car or computer,while women generally are better at predicting the outcome of socialinteraction and make finer distinctions in fabric and color terms. You can test

your own gender related cultural knowledge with the following pictures ofrelatively common items from North America:

What are the intended functionsof these objects?

Click the button to seeif you are correct.
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How would you describe thecloth pattern of the materialused in this woman's skirt?


Do you think that this womanis wearing makeup? If so, whatkinds of makeup is she using?

Look closely and take your time.


There are many professions in large-scale societies. Each one usually has itsown terminology and specialized tools. Lawyers, medical doctors, soldiers,and other specialists use numerous technical terms in their professions. To

make it even more obscure for outsiders, these professionals often useabbreviations to refer to their technical terms. For instance, orthopedicsurgeons commonly refer to a particular kind of knee operation as ACLsurgery. ACL stands for anterior cruciate ligament. Most people outside ofthe medical fields who have not had this surgery are unlikely to know wherethis ligament is and what it does, let alone know what the abbreviationmeans. You can test your knowledge of another common profession in NorthAmerica with the following picture:

Who is most likely to use this

tool? What is its function?

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Culture Gives Us a Range of Permissible BehaviorPatterns

Cultures commonly allow a range of ways in which men can be men andwomen can be women. Culture also tells us how different activities should beconducted, such as how one should act as a husband, wife, parent, child, etc.These rules of permissible behavior are usually flexible to a degree--there aresome alternatives rather than hard rules. In North America, for instance,culture tells us how we should dress based on our gender, but it allows us todress in different ways in different situations in order to communicate variedmessages and statuses. The clothing patterns of women in this society canbe particularly rich and complex. Their clothing can be intentionally business-like, recreational, as well as sexually attractive, ambiguous, neutral, or even

repulsive. North American women are generally more knowledgeable thanmen about the subtleties of using clothing and other adornment tocommunicate their intentions. The wide range of permissible ways of being awoman in North America today makes women somewhat unpredictable asindividuals when others are trying to understand their intentions but do notfully comprehend the cultural patterns. It is particularly hard for men fromother cultures to comprehend the subtle nuances. This at times can result inawkward or even dangerous situations. For instance, the easy friendlinessand casual, somewhat revealing dress of young North American women in thesummertime is sometimes interpreted by traditional Latin American and

Middle Eastern men as a sexual invitation. What messages do the clothesand body language of the women in the pictures below communicate to you?How do you think they might be interpreted by members of the oppositegender and by people in other cultures? Do you think that the age of theobserver might play a part in their interpretation?


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The range of permissible ways of dressing and acting as a man or woman areoften very limited in strictly fundamental Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Hindusocieties. In Afghanistan under the Taliban rule during the late 1990's, menwere expected to wear traditional male clothing and were beaten or jailed bymorality police for not having a full beard, playing or listening to music, orallowing female family members to go out in public unchaperoned. Womenwere similarly punished for being in public without wearing a plain loose outergown that covered their face and entire body including their feet. They alsowere not allowed to go to school or to work outside of the home. To thesurprise of Europeans and North Americans, many of these conservativecultural patterns did not disappear with the end of Taliban control. They aredeeply ingrained in the Islamic tradition of Afghanistan and in the moreconservative nations of the Middle East.

Conservative Muslim women in the

Middle East. They are fully coveredfor modesty in public and are beingescorted by a male relative

(Note: women in some predominantlyMuslim countries lead lives that aremuch less constrained by tradition.)

Cultures No Longer Exist in Isolation

It is highly unlikely that there are any societies stillexisting in total isolation from the outside world. Evensmall, out of the way tribal societies are now beingintegrated to some extent into the global economy.That was not the case a few short generations ago.Some of the societies in the Highlands of New Guineawere unaware of anyone beyond their homeland untilthe arrival of European Australian miners in the1930's. A few of the Indian tribes in the UpperAmazon Basin of South America remained unaware of the outside world until

explorers entered their territories in the 1950's and 1960's. Members of thesesame New Guinean and Amazonian societies today buy clothes andhousehold items produced by multinational corporations. They are developinga growing knowledge of other cultures through schools, radios, and eventelevisions and the Internet. As a result of this inevitable process, theirlanguages and indigenous cultural patterns are being rapidly replaced.Virtually all societies are now acquiring cultural traits from the economically

Australian Aborigine wearingEuropean style clothes


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dominant societies of the world. The most influential of these dominantsocieties today are predominantly in North America and Western Europe.However, even these societies are rapidly adopting words, foods, and othercultural traits from all over the world.

The emergence of what is essentially a shared global culture is not likely toresult in the current major cultures disappearing in the immediate future thesame way many of the small indigenous ones have. Language differencesand ethnocentrism will very likely prevent that from happening. There arepowerful conflicting trends in the world today. At the same time that many

people are actively embracingglobalism , others are revivingtribalism .The break-up of the former empire of the Soviet Union into largely ethnicbased nations is an example of the latter. Likewise, some of the nations inAfrica whose boundaries were arbitrarily created by Europeans during thecolonial era are now experiencing periodic tribal wars that may result in thecreation of more ethnically based countries.
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Methods for Learning About Culture

Anthropologists learn about the culture of another society through fieldwork

and first hand observation in that society. This kind of research iscalled ethnography . Since culture primarily relates to the way peopleinteract with each other, it is not possible to adequately observe it in alaboratory setting. Imagine how much more would be learned about theactual patterns of interaction of a typical American family by living in theirhome rather than asking one of the family members in a college or universityoffice.

Cultural anthropologists also do systematic comparisons of similar

cultures. This is called ethnology . An example of an ethnological study

would be a comparison of what cultures are like in societies that haveeconomies based on hunting and gathering rather than agriculture. The datafor this sort of ethnology would come from the existing ethnographies aboutthese peoples. In other words, an ethnology is essentially a synthesis of thework of many ethnographers.

Participant Observation

Anthropologists have discovered that the best way

to really get to know another society and its cultureis to live in it as an active participant rather thansimply an observer. This is called participant

observation . By physically and emotionallyparticipating in the social interaction of the hostsociety, it is possible to become accepted as amember. In practice this requires learning theirlanguage and establishing close friendship ties. Italso usually involves living within the community as a member, eating whatthey eat, and taking part in normal family activities with them. This can be a

physical hardship and emotionally stressful, particularly when the host societyis in a rural area of an underdeveloped nation. Sanitation may be poor ornon-existent, the diet may be unsatisfying, and there may be minimal privacyfor personal hygiene and your sex life. However, the trust and familiarity thatcan result from participant-observation reduces the cultural barriers andallows anthropologists to understand the culture of the host society they arestudying.

Participant observation in aTibetan Buddhist monastery
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Ideal behavior: these childrenposing for a photograph with theQueen of England are on theirbest behavior. Do you suppose

that this is how they act all of thetime?

In the more traditional regions of Latin America, the idealbehavior of men and women is usually more dissimilarthan it is in most of North America and Northern Europe.

Latin American men are expected to be macho's --i.e.,they should be overtly masculine, confident, strong,dignified, brave, always in control of their emotions, andsexually demanding. Women are expected to beemotional, nurturing, faithful, and passive in response tothe demands of their husbands. In other words, men andwomen should have polar opposite but complementarypersonalities and roles in life. There is no room in this ideal Latin Americanperception for passive men and aggressive women. In reality, however, fewpeople actually fit the ideal of extreme masculinity or femininity in their dailylives. This discrepancy between male and female ideal and actual behavior isnot limited to Latin America, but the contrasts are more apparent in maledominated societies that tolerate little variation in their permissible culturalpatterns. The cattle ranching life of Western North America is anothersubculture that has traditionally placed high value on the ideal of strong, "incontrol" men and supportive, faithful women.

Observant visitors usually can find clues to the fact that itis difficult to live up to the cultural ideals for gender roles.In rural South China, for instance, there is a traditionalsaying that encapsulates the complicated relationshipbetween husbands and wives. It is "the husband is theoutside master, the wife is the inside master." This

alludes to the fact that the public image in the past wasone in which Chinese husbands were in total control oftheir wives and families, but within the home when no oneelse was present, wives shared in the decision makingprocess. The reality of urban life in mainland China todayhas begun to alter this husband and wife relationship.Beginning in the late 1970's, the national government's

North American cowboyideal of a "man's man"

Contemporary Chinesehusband and wife with"modern" expectations(Shanghai, China)
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desire to stem population pressure led to a one child policy. Most couples areonly allowed to have one child without paying stiff penalties. Because of thetraditional pressure on parents to have a son, girl babies have often beenaborted even though this practice is illegal. The result has been adisproportionately high percentage of boy babies being born over the lastseveral decades. An unexpected consequence of this has been that youngmarriageable women are now in relatively short supply. They are in a positionto make greater demands on prospective husbands. Young men in China arefaced with the reality that if they want to have a good chance of finding aneducated wife, they must secure a well paying job and have enough money tobuy her a car and a new condo. In addition, they must be prepared to cook,wash dishes, and do other home maintenance jobs traditionally done bywives.

Gathering Data About Culture

In most ethnographic fieldwork, only a portion of the host society is actuallystudied intensively. Due to the practical impossibility of observing and talkingat length with everyone, only a sample of a community is selected. If thesample of people is chosen carefully, there is an expectation that it will berepresentative of the entire community. This is referred to as a probability

sample --i.e., a sample that has a high probability of reflecting the entirepopulation. Choosing who will be in the sample can be difficult, especially atthe beginning of a research project when the first contacts are made and thecomposition of the society and its culture are still poorly understood.

Usually ethnographers opt for one of three types of probability samples--

random, stratified, or judgment. A random sample is one in which peopleare selected on a totally random, unbiased basis. This can be accomplishedby assigning a number to everyone in a community and then letting acomputer generate a series of random numbers. If a 10% sample is needed,then the first 10% of the random numbers will indicate who will be the focus ofthe research. This sampling approach is reasonable for ethnographic

research only when there does not seem to be much difference between thepeople in the population. Since this is rarely the case, random sampling is notoften used for ethnographic research.

A stratified sample is one in which people are selected because theycome from distinct sub-groups within the society. This is essentially what theU.S. Census Bureau does in its national census every 10 years. One member
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from each family is asked to answer for the entire family. This approach maybe used by ethnographers as well if there are distinct, identifiable groups ofpeople in the society and the information that is being sought is notspecialized knowledge such as the esoteric activities of a secret organizationwith restricted membership.

Random sampling Stratified sampling

Most ethnographers rely on a judgment sample . This is a limited number

of key people selected on the basis of criteria deemed critical to the researchquestions. For example, religious leaders would be the focus if researchconcerns religious beliefs and practices. Likewise, talking mostly to womenwould make sense if the research concerned women's roles within society.

The judgment sample approach works best if good informants can befound. These are people who are not only knowledgeable about their ownculture but who are able and willing to communicate this knowledge in anunderstandable way to an outsider. Not everyone has the ability to do this.The quality of data usually depends on the relationships with informants.Ethnographers try to develop a warm and close relationship with theirinformants. This makes it more likely that they will learn what the host cultureis really like.

Culture Shock

Any person, including an anthropologist, who goes to live in another societythat is culturally very different is likely to initially develop culture shock. This isa feeling of confusion, distress, and sometimes depression that can resultfrom the psychological stress that commonly occurs during the first weeks or

months of a total cultural immersion in an alien society. Until the new culturebecomes familiar and comfortable, it is common to have difficulty incommunicating and to make frustrating mistakes in interactions with people inthe host society. This is usually compounded by feelings of homesickness.These feelings can be emotionally debilitating. However, culture shockeventually passes and productive fieldwork can begin.
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Conclusion

Ethnographers can collect reliable data and develop a realistic understandingof the cultural patterns in another society through a combination of five things:

1.Proper mental preparation (including adopting the culturalrelativity perspective)

2. Participant-observation

3. Competence in using the host culture's language

4. Long-term residence

5. Luck in being at the right place at the right time.

Over months and years, the cultural distance between an ethnographer andthe people being studied is reduced. As a result, the complex culturalpatterns become understandable. These five things apply whether researchis in a small-scale society or a large one. They also apply to non-anthropologists who want to learn about another culture.

In the course of research, anthropologists may gather information aboutindividuals in the host society that can be embarrassing or even dangerous if

made public. For instance, if during the study of a Maya Indian village inCentral America, paramilitary soldiers arrive and terrorize or even killcommunity members, it could be very dangerous for the survivors. Publishinga report of the incident might result in the soldiers returning to the village andkilling potential witnesses named in your account. In an attempt to help theIndians by exposing what happened to them, you could be putting their lives ineven greater danger. In these cases, a sense of professional ethics usuallykeeps anthropologists from reporting the incident. These are not easydecisions to make.0

Maya village woman
http://anthro.palomar.edu/culture/sounds/Maya.mp3