Cross-cultural studies

Part of a series on
Anthropology
Outline History
Types Archaeological Biological Cultural Linguistic Social
Archaeological Aerial Aviation Battlefield Biblical Bioarchaeological Environmental Ethnoarchaeological Experiential Feminist Forensic Maritime Paleoethnobotanical Zooarchaeological
Biological Anthrozoological Biocultural Evolutionary Forensic Molecular Neurological Nutritional Paleoanthropological Primatological
Social Cultural Applied Art Cognitive Cyborg Development Digital Ecological Environmental Economic Political economy Feminist Food Historical Institutional Kinship Legal Media Medical Museums Musical Political Psychological Public Religion Symbolic Transpersonal Urban Visual
Linguistic Anthropological Descriptive Ethnological Ethnopoetical Historical Semiotic Sociological
Research framework Anthropometry Ethnography cyber Ethnology Cross-cultural comparison Participant observation Holism Reflexivity Thick description Cultural relativism Ethnocentrism Emic and etic
Key concepts Culture Development Ethnicity Evolution sociocultural Gender Kinship and descent Meme Prehistory Race Society Value Colonialism / Postcolonialism
Key theories Actor–network theory Alliance theory Cross-cultural studies Cultural materialism Culture theory Diffusionism Feminism Historical particularism Boasian anthropology Functionalism Interpretive Performance studies Political economy Practice theory Structuralism Post-structuralism Systems theory
Lists Anthropologists by nationality Anthropology by year Bibliography Journals List of indigenous peoples Organizations
v t e

Cross-cultural studies, sometimes called holocultural studies or comparative studies, is a specialization in anthropology and sister sciences such as sociology, psychology, economics, political science that uses field data from many societies through comparative research to examine the scope of human behavior and test hypotheses about human behavior and culture.

Cross-cultural studies is the third form of cross-cultural comparisons. The first is comparison of case studies, the second is controlled comparison among variants of a common derivation, and the third is comparison within a sample of cases.^[1] Unlike comparative studies, which examines similar characteristics of a few societies, cross-cultural studies uses a sufficiently large sample so that statistical analysis can be made to show relationships or lack of relationships between the traits in question.^[2] These studies are surveys of ethnographic data, or involve qualitative data collection.^[3]

Cross-cultural studies are applied widely in the social sciences, particularly in cultural anthropology and psychology.

History

The first cross-cultural studies were carried out by 19th-century anthropologists such as Edward Burnett Tylor and Lewis H. Morgan. One of Edward Tylor's first studies gave rise to the central statistical issue of cross-cultural studies: phylogenetic autocorrelation also known as Galton's problem.^[4] In the recent decades^[when?] historians and particularly historians of science started looking at the mechanism and networks by which knowledge, ideas, skills, instruments and books moved across cultures, generating new and fresh concepts concerning the order of things in nature. In Cross-Cultural Scientific Exchanges in the Eastern Mediterranean 1560–1660 Avner Ben-Zaken has argued that cross-cultural exchanges take place at a cultural hazy locus where the margins of one culture overlaps the other, creating a "mutually embraced zone" where exchanges take place on mundane ways. From such a stimulating zone, ideas, styles, instruments and practices move onward to the cultural centers, urging them to renew and update cultural notions.^[5]

Modern era

The modern era of cross-cultural studies began with

With the widespread access of people to the Internet and the high influence of online social networks on daily life, users behavior in these websites have become a new resource to perform cross-cultural and comparative studies. A study on Twitter examined the usage of emoticons from users of 78 countries and found a positive correlation between individualism-collectivism dimension of Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory and people's use of mouth-oriented emoticons.^[9] Another user experience study on the usage of smileys from users of 12 countries showed that emoji-based scales may ease the challenges related to translation and implementation for brief cross-cultural surveys.^[10]

See also

• Comparative cultural studies
• Cross-cultural
• Cross-cultural capital
• Cross-cultural communication
• Cross-cultural psychiatry
• Cross-cultural psychology
• Cultural bias
• Cultural relativism
• Ethnocentrism
• Human Relations Area Files
• Kluckhohn and Strodtbeck's values orientation theory
• Standard cross-cultural sample
• Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory

References

Bibliography

• Ember, Carol R., and Melvin Ember. 1998. Cross-Cultural Research. Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology / Ed. by H. R. Bernard, pp. 647–90. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
• Ember, Carol R., and Melvin Ember. 2001. Cross-Cultural Research Methods. Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.
• ISBN 0-7734-6310-0
• Franco, F.M., and D. Narasimhan. 2009. Plant names and uses as indicators of traditional knowledge. Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge. [1]
• Franco, F.M., D. Narasimhan and W. Stanley. 2008. Relationship between four tribal communities and their natural resources in the Koraput region. Ethnobotany Research and Applications, Vol. 6. [2]
• Levinson, David, and Martin J. Malone. 1980. Toward Explaining Human Culture: A Critical Review of the Findings of Worldwide Cross-Cultural Research. New Haven, CT: HRAF Press.
• Macfarlane, Alan. 2004. To Contrast and Compare, pp. 94–111, in Methodology and Fieldwork, edited by Vinay Kumar Srivastava. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
• de Munck V. Cultural Units in Cross-Cultural Research Archived 2013-07-22 at the Wayback Machine // Ethnology 39/4 (2000): 335–348.
• Murdock, George P. 1949. Social Structure. New York: Macmillan.
• Murdock, George P. 1967. Ethnographic Atlas: A Summary. Pittsburgh: The University of Pittsburgh Prsrtjh sdxthgn fdty a45tesjtukcn bess.
• Murdock, George P. 1970. Kin Term Patterns and their Distribution. Ethnology 9: 165–207.
• Murdock, George P. 1981. Atlas of World Cultures. Pittsburgh: The University of Pittsburgh Press.
• Murdock, George P., and Douglas R. White. 1969. Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. Ethnology 8:329–369.
• Whiting, John W.M. 1986. George Peter Murdock, (1897–1985). American Anthropologist. 88(3): 682–686.

External links

Wikisource has original text related to this article:

Body Ritual among the Nacirema

Journals

• Cross-Cultural Research
• Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
• World Cultures
• Structure and Dynamics: eJournal of the Anthropological and Related Sciences
• Transtext(e)sTranscultures: Trilingual Journal of Global Cultural Studies
• Social Evolution & History

Associations

• Society for Cross-Cultural Research
• Institut d'études Transtextuelles et Transculturelles (IETT), Institute for Transtextual and Transcultural Studies, Lyons, France.