This scientific discipline cannot be unambiguously qualified, because the subject of its research is ambiguous. That is why, in a modern interpretation, cultural anthropology is considered both in a broad sense and in a narrow one.
In a broad sense, this scientific discipline explores the life activity of various peoples and races, depending on the types of culture characteristic of these peoples. In this sense, it should not be confused with physical anthropology, which uses primarily the generalized psychophysical properties of societies as a subject of science. Cultural anthropology, which studies the various manifestations of human life from the point of view of their mediation by the very nature of the human race, differs in this from philosophical anthropology.
In a narrow sense, this scientific discipline is comparable to social anthropology, since the objective direction of research is approximately the same. Both of them study, first of all, various social institutions that are present in the life of different peoples and social communities.
As a confirmation of this thesis, the fact that social and cultural anthropology have similar methodological apparatuses can serve. They use research methods, which, in addition to them, are widely used by other social sciences - ethnography, history, sociology, ethnopsychology, statistics and others.
Cultural anthropology proper deals with the following cognitive tasks:
- a description of the customs, traditions, languages, patterns of thinking and behavior of various peoples;
- the study of development trends in the interactions of cultural spaces and the peoples inhabiting them;
- consideration of issues related to the study of the identification criteria of peoples and communities in modern cultural diversity;
- study of the genesis of cultural institutions of various peoples and their comparison in the spatio-temporal dimension;
- deepening understanding of the culture of one’s people or community and its place in cultural diversity;
- the study of the nature, methods and manifestations of the influence of cultural phenomena of the people on the formation of the individual worldview of the population;
- a study of the very nature of cultural-ethnic phenomena in all its contradictory manifestations.
It should be emphasized that in the Western scientific tradition, the term “cultural anthropology” is interpreted even more narrowly, at the level of independent teaching, which is referred to by the definitions of “culturalism”, “historical school”, the authors and developers of which are recognized by Fr. Boas, E. Sapir, A. Kreber, R. Benedict, M. Herskowitz. This teaching is characterized by descriptiveness and juxtaposition of cultural phenomena of various peoples in their entirety for the purpose of comparison. Methodologically, this is solved by collecting relevant scientific information about the life of a particular nation (community), its classification, grouping around any leading feature and identifying dominant factors. As a result of such a scientific approach, culture becomes, as it were, the indisputable basis for ensuring survival for any people or society.
As a scientific phenomenon, this discipline is characterized by:
- a sharp denial of evolution in general and the type of cultural development of peoples in particular;
- pronounced cultural relativism - the desire to evaluate the phenomena of culture, based on the values and criteria of this culture;
- special attention to the problem of interaction "man - culture", where the role of the surrounding society is not accepted at all;
- reducibility of all cultural phenomena to a certain integrity, which allows without special difficulties to identify the cultural genotype of the people and compare it with others.
Thus, this scientific discipline is a complex substrate, where complexity is determined by both the multiplicity of approaches to isolating the subject of research, and the variety of applied methodologies for obtaining knowledge. It turns out that cultural anthropology explores a wide range of issues.
