Wikipedia: Cultural anthropology/Talk

Cultural Anthropology studies human beings and the development and dynamics of their cultures. Sociology is a statistical study of human social issues (my layman's definition). And Social Psychology studies individual human thought and behavior in social settings.

Welcome to compartmentalized academia. --Invictus

Thanks! But heck, I knew that much. I wanted a longer, more in-depth answer! I'll say so on the cultural anthropology page. --LMS

Ah, I wondered if that was your question, but since you had logged on anonymously (for that entry) and that didn't exactly seem like a question you'd ask, I just decided to write a rather brief description. What the heck, I need to do some academic reading this weekend, I can try to put together a more descriptive article.

Nope nope and nope... No arguments about Social psychology but Cultural anthropology and sociology are not distinguished by statics/cynamics. Traditional (and equally wrong) distinctions would have anthropology looking at whatever non-western and sociology looking at (yup) Western (euroamerican etc.) societies.

OK, so what is the difference between cultural anthropology and sociology, or do you think there is no difference? Do sociologists study non-Western societies? If not, then one might call sociology a branch of cultural anthropology. --LMS

I wanted to comment a bit about 146.230.128.xxx 's addition of Oct. 29, which I think needs to be entirely rewritten.

: Cultural Anthropology: this is essentially the study of or inquiry into the "transmitted and created content and patterns of values, ideas, and other symbolic-meaningful systems as factors in shaping of human behavior and the artifacts produced through behavior" (Alfred L. Kroeber and Talcott Parsons: "The Concepts of Culture and of Social System." American Sociological Review, 23(1958), 582-583). This definition agreed upon by the pre-eminent scholars in their respective fields of Anthropology and Sociology at the time,

I find that hard to believe--that "the pre-eminent scholars," every one of them, agreed completely on something that two people wrote, particularly the something defining the field. I guess we just need to know more abut the nature of the consensus.

Also, why does it matter that the sociologists agreed?

: has gradually replaced the materialist conceptions developed by Edward Tylor.

Who? What materialist conceptions? Your readers don't know what you're talking about. Moreover, how is the definition above-given not "materialist"? (I could have a materialist theory of "values, ideas, and other symbolic-meaningful systems.")

: A major influence on Kroeber and Parsons would have been Franz Boas. In its earlier formation, cultural anthropology would have applied largely to what has also been considered as "anthropology" in the strict sense.

What strict sense? We haven't learned about that yet, have we?

: Later, the methods and categories developed under the influence of the Kroeber and Parsons consensus

Such as? Again, without background, we just don't know what you're talking about.

: were applied to those human aggregations that had properly been the study of sociologists, and this development has been a major impetus in the development of cultural studies.

What "human aggregations" are meant here? Remember, we're trying to make this clear as an introduction to the field, for people who don't yet know what the field is about.

: Cultural Studies: Generally taken to refer to the study of developed human societies in terms of the catgories and methods of cultural anthropology.

What is this doing in this article? Is cultural studies often regarded as a branch of cultural anthropology?

: Historically, however, cultural studies as a named field of research and teaching begins with the application of the methods and categories of literary criticism to the object of study of British social anthropology.

This probably most of your readers know a little more about, but can you indeed give some characterization of "the methods and categories of literary criticism"?

: The latter overlaps with "sociology" in the broad sense. This early formation is attributed mainly to Richard Hoggart's establishment of the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at Birmingham University in the early 1960s. Key texts for this early development are usually given as Hoggart's The Uses of Literacy (1957); Raymond Williams's Culture and Society (1958) and The Long Revolution 1961); and Edward P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class (1960?). The association of Williams's work with Communications Studies topics (especially television) brought the conception of a separate "cultural studies" to the attention of US communications studies scholars. With time, the influence of the Kroeber-Parsons consensus has infiltrated US cultural studies, meshing cultural anthropology with literary criticism to create the dominant form of cultural studies in terms of publications and teaching programmes.

This is rather hard to follow: the article is using "cultural anthropology," "literary criticism," "sociology," and "cultural studies" as if they already had clear, well-understood meanings, when you're trying to explain what "cultural studies" and "cultural anthropology" mean!

Perhaps the discussion could use some examples.

: Other influential cultural studies schools are those in Australia -- with their focus on post-coloniality

Huh?

: and their subsequent influence on cultural inquiry along the Indian Ocean Rim -- and that developed from the experience of Southern and Central American social movements, with its special development of the thought of Paulo Freire.

: The strengths and problems with cultural studies are fairly difficult to differentiate, because the strengths of the field in nominalist logics

Another term that needs defining.

: is clear because of the absorbed influence of Nietzsche's philosophy via Michel Foucault and Stuart Hall.

Well, no, it's not clear, not to this philosopher. If it's not clear to me, how can you expect it to be clear to most of the people who are simply interested in what cultural anthropology is?

: The latter is easily the most influential figure in cultural studies after Hoggart, Williams, and Thompson. However, in a realist logical framework, the exceptional vagueness of definitions of "culture" derived from the Kroeber-Parsons consensus leads to the lack of concretely inferred conclusions in terms of which social, cultural, and political bodies can act.

The latter sentence makes zero sense to me.

: There is some indication that a philosophically realist approach based on C.S. Peirce's logical doctrine of pragmaticism might lend more definition to the subject-matter of cultural studies.

Some indication on the part of whom? You, the author?

I suspect we should remove all but the clearest part of the above text. --Larry Sanger

Yes, it seems as if it was written by Sokal. - MMGB