Cultural Anthropology’s Principles

There are four main principles that guide cultural anthropology as a field.

• Cross-culturalism
  • A perspective that sees the world as an interdependent, interconnected system of global cultures
• Cultural relativism
  • Traits of a given culture are best comprehended when viewed upon by the context of being a part of that society
• Ethnocentrism
  • Viewing features of a culture in another society in the term’s of one’s own society
• Holism
  • Looking at parts of a cultural system and seeing how they interrelate