Doing cultural anthropology

Cultural anthropology is essentially the study of extant (living) societies. There are several ways to do cultural anthropological research, including library research, using questionnaires, or doing actual fieldwork. Cultural anthropologists working directly with people have a number of ethical obligations. Among the numerous mental challenges that anthropologists commonly face are the struggle to be accepted by the group being studied, culture shock, loneliness, feeling like an ignorant outsider, being socially awkward in a new cultural setting, and struggling with one’s inherent ethnocentrism. Anthropological fieldwork will always impact the society under study. Their typical behavior will be altered by the presence of an anthropologist, meaning the record of their behavior will always be a bit biased. There are always differing viewpoints: the etic view is that of an outsider of a subject group; that is, the view of the anthropologist of the studied group. The emic view is that of the insider of themselves.