Cultures

A detailed Summary of Cultures


Cultures have been studied and written about for over a century. There are many types of cultures and a technique called ethnography enables us to step into any culture we decide to study. It describes a culture from the natives' point of view. Anthropology is based on the findings of ethnography fieldwork. It has brought back many important findings.

According to Malinowski, ethnography is meant "to grasp the natives point of view, his relation to life, to realize his vision of his world". We, the fieldworker, have to get inside the culture and interact. Through the fieldwork we learn from people. These people are the subjects of study and can also sometimes become informants. Informants are often friends the fieldworkers make during his study. They give the fieldworker useful knowledge in how the culture works and sometimes what needs to be done to survive. By interacting in their native ways it is easier to get inside their heads. Feeling what they do and being able to be acc


epted will ultimately give you the best views. Spradley believes this to be the goal of ethnography.

One of the most mysterious elements to a culture is that of tacit knowledge. This is where we perform certain actions and can not explain it. There may be a deep meaning or explanation, but overall the answer is unknown. An example of tacit knowledge is where a tribe has to roll a huge boulder for a mile after the death of a tribesman. They cannot not explain why they do this, however, they know it has to be done. This makes it hard on the ethnographer because there is no explanation of why. The why is one of the main reasons for the studies.

Symbolic interactionism is very important in interpreting the meanings of human behavior. As people see certain events take place they do not choose to act toward what the event is, they act to what the event means. In many cases events can have several meanings to different cultures. This is very important to understand, however it

Some common words found in the essay are:
According Malinowski, , tacit knowledge, culture people, act event,

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