Anthropology › Section C · The culture concept › Topic C.5
Modes of cultural analysis
Since the 19th century anthropologists have asked different questions of culture: where it came from, what it does, what patterns of thought lie beneath it, and what counts as real. Each question produced a school of analysis, and each still shapes how the field works.
In this topic
- Many questions, many methods
- Unilineal evolutionism
- Boas and historical particularism
- Ecology and materialism
- Malinowski's functionalism
- Structural functionalism
- Structuralism
- The ontological turn
- Worked example: cattle in India
- Worked example: naming the mode
- Common mistakes to avoid
- Key takeaways
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