As a discipline, cultural analysis is based on using qualitative research methods of the arts, humanities, social sciences, in particular ethnography and anthropology, to collect data on cultural phenomena and to interpret cultural representations and practices; in an effort to gain new knowledge or understanding through analysis of that data and cultural processes. This is particularly useful for understanding and mapping trends, influences, effects, and affects within cultures.
There are four themes to sociological cultural analysis:
1. Adaptation and Change
This refers to how well a certain culture adapts to its surroundings by being used and developed. Some examples of this are foods, tools, home, surroundings, art, etc. that show how the given culture adapted. Also, this aspect aims to show how the given culture makes the environment more accommodating.
2. How culture is used to survive
How the given culture helps its members survive the environment.
3. Holism, Specificity
The ability to put the observations into a single collection, and presenting it in a coherent manner.
4. Expressions
This focuses on studying the expressions and performance of everyday culture.
This developed at the intersection of cultural studies, comparative literature, art history, fine art, philosophy, literary theory, theology, anthropology. It developed an interdisciplinary approach to the study of texts, images, films, and all related cultural practices. It offers an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis of cultural representations and practices.
Cultural analysis is also a method for rethinking our relation to history because it makes visible the position of researcher, writer or student. The social and cultural present from which we look at past cultural practices—history— shapes the interpretations that are made of the past, while cultural analysis also reveals how the past shapes the present through the role of cultural memory for instance. Cultural analysis understands culture, therefore, as a constantly changing set of practices that are in dialogue with the past as it has been registered through texts, images, buildings, documents, stories, myths.
In addition to having a relation to disciplines also interested in cultures as what people do and say, believe and think, such as ethnography and anthropology, cultural analysis as a practice in the humanities considers the texts and images, the codes and behaviours, the beliefs and imaginings that you might study in literature, philosophy, art history. But cultural analysis does not confine the meanings to the disciplinary methods. It allows and requires dialogue across many ways of understanding what people have done and what people are doing through acts, discourses, practices, statements. Cultural analysis crosses the boundaries between disciplines but also between formal and informal cultural activities.
The major purpose of cultural analysis is to develop analytical tools for reading and understanding a wide range of cultural practices and forms, past and present.
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Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavior, while cultural anthropology studies cultural meaning, including norms and values. A portmanteau term sociocultural anthropology is commonly used today. Linguistic anthropology studies how language influences social life. Biological or physical anthropology studies the biological development of humans.
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The term sociocultural anthropology includes both cultural and social anthropology traditions.
Musicology is the scholarly analysis and research-based study of music. Musicology departments traditionally belong to the humanities, although some music research is scientific in focus. Some geographers and anthropologists have an interest in musicology, so the social sciences also have an academic interest. A scholar who participates in musical research is a musicologist.
Social science is one of the branches of science, devoted to the study of societies and the relationships among individuals within those societies. The term was formerly used to refer to the field of sociology, the original "science of society", established in the 18th century. In addition to sociology, it now encompasses a wide array of academic disciplines, including anthropology, archaeology, economics, human geography, linguistics, management science, communication science, and political science.
Semiotics is the systematic study of sign processes (semiosis) and meaning-making. Semiosis is any activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, where a sign is defined as anything that communicates something, usually called a meaning, to the sign's interpreter. The meaning can be intentional, such as a word uttered with a specific meaning; or unintentional, such as a symptom being a sign of a particular medical condition. Signs can also communicate feelings and may communicate internally or through any of the senses: visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, or gustatory (taste). Contemporary semiotics is a branch of science that studies meaning-making and various types of knowledge.
Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behavior of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behavior.
Linguistic anthropology is the interdisciplinary study of how language influences social life. It is a branch of anthropology that originated from the endeavor to document endangered languages and has grown over the past century to encompass most aspects of language structure and use.
Anthropological linguistics is the subfield of linguistics and anthropology which deals with the place of language in its wider social and cultural context, and its role in making and maintaining cultural practices and societal structures. While many linguists believe that a true field of anthropological linguistics is nonexistent, preferring the term linguistic anthropology to cover this subfield, many others regard the two as interchangeable.
In the social sciences and related fields, a thick description is a description of human social action that describes not just physical behaviors, but their context as interpreted by the actors as well, so that it can be better understood by an outsider. A thick description typically adds a record of subjective explanations and meanings provided by the people engaged in the behaviors, making the collected data of greater value for studies by other social scientists.
Visual anthropology is a subfield of social anthropology that is concerned, in part, with the study and production of ethnographic photography, film and, since the mid-1990s, new media. More recently it has been used by historians of science and visual culture. Although sometimes wrongly conflated with ethnographic film, visual anthropology encompasses much more, including the anthropological study of all visual representations such as dance and other kinds of performance, museums and archiving, all visual arts, and the production and reception of mass media. Histories and analyses of representations from many cultures are part of visual anthropology: research topics include sandpaintings, tattoos, sculptures and reliefs, cave paintings, scrimshaw, jewelry, hieroglyphics, paintings and photographs. Also within the province of the subfield are studies of human vision, properties of media, the relationship of visual form and function, and applied, collaborative uses of visual representations.
Autoethnography is a form of ethnographic research in which a researcher connects personal experiences to wider cultural, political, and social meanings and understandings. It is considered a form of qualitative and/or arts-based research.
Performance studies is an interdisciplinary academic field that uses performance as a lens and a tool to study the world. The term performance is broad, and can include artistic and aesthetic performances like concerts, theatrical events, and performance art; sporting events; social, political and religious events like rituals, ceremonies, proclamations and public decisions; certain kinds of language use; and those components of identity which require someone to do, rather than just be, something. Performance studies draws from theories and methods of the performing arts, anthropology, sociology, literary theory, culture studies, communication, and others.
Visual sociology is an area of sociology concerned with the visual dimensions of social life.
Culturology or the science of culture is a branch of the social sciences concerned with the scientific understanding, description, analysis, and prediction of cultures as a whole. While ethnology and anthropology studied different cultural practices, such studies included diverse aspects: sociological, psychological, etc., and the need was recognized for a discipline focused exclusively on cultural aspects.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to anthropology:
Ethnoscience has been defined as an attempt "to reconstitute what serves as science for others, their practices of looking after themselves and their bodies, their botanical knowledge, but also their forms of classification, of making connections, etc.".
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to social science:
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the humanities:
Design studies can refer to any design-oriented studies but is more formally an academic discipline or field of study that pursues, through both theoretical and practical modes of inquiry, a critical understanding of design practice and its effects in society.
Visual ethnography is an approach to ethnography that uses visual methods such as photography, film and video. There are many methods available to conduct visual ethnography. According to Sarah Pink, visual ethnography is a research methodology that brings “theory and practice of visual approaches to learning and knowing about the world and communicating these to others”. As a methodology, visual ethnography can guide the design of research as well as the methods to choose for data collection. Visual ethnography suggests a negotiation of the participants’ view of reality and a constant questioning on the part of the researcher.