Cultural Anthropology: Global Forces, Local Lives, 3rd ed.

“The scientist has come to the conclusion – more defiantly than it should have been – that culture matters. The scientist is clearly right – culture matters.” In fact, culture has entered the public consciousness and political discourse, often, in the literal sense, for revenge. This fact requires examination, for man has always had culture, i.e., educated and common ways of living; Even some non-humans can and should learn basic skills and habits. Human cultures have always been diverse: humans in different groups in different places and times inevitably developed different directions and codes of thought and behavior - sometimes strikingly and surprisingly different. However, people have not always, in fact until recently in general, appreciated the significance and value of these differences, and certainly have not set out actively and systematically to study and explain these differences. Instead, "our species" was considered truly human, and other species were judged as less so. Obviously, this is not a situation that anyone can tolerate. Cultural anthropology is the modern science of human behavioral diversity. While initially intended to describe "primitive cultures", it has always had the ambition and potential to be an entire subject of human ways of life, including "modern" urban and technological life. In recent years, cultural anthropology has begun to realize that potential, while at the same time narrowing the distance between "others" and "ourselves". For example, there is no such thing as a "primitive" culture. It is to present and celebrate the achievements of cultural anthropology, and to indicate the contributions it can make to our understanding of contemporary and future cultural conditions, and that this book has been written