Chapter 1 of Roger Keesing’s book Cultural Anthropology: A Contemporary Perspective prefaces the lives and profession of anthropologists, specifically those interested in the study of cultural anthropology. First, he discusses the subcategories of cultural anthropology and its branches. Prehistoric archaeology, also known as prehistory, is a major subcategory in which anthropologists study lives of people unaccompanied by any written records. They study people from the Near East to middle America, theorizing about the social advances and adaptations; they tend to steer away from investigating the culture of ancient Greeks and Romans. Cultural anthropologists in the early twentieth century concentrated their studies on comparing people discovered on the borders of European expansion and colonization. It was only until the 1920s when the studies shifted to researching and theorizing human social behavior and society. Therefore, social anthropology began to rise as a major subcategory of cultural anthropology.

Keesing describes the aim of anthropologists, which is to study those of simple lifestyles (he calls it “primitive peoples”) distinguishing them from political scientists and sociologists. Unlike anthropologists who generally collaborate with people in urban areas whether in a Western society or not, political scientists and sociologists have shifted their research focus to non-Western societies. Additionally, anthropological approaches are not only an accumulation of evidence on those around the world. By studying the tradition and daily tasks of a community, anthropologists have a set of research styles and methods that astranges anthropology from social sciences. These studies are catered more to understanding the meanings of their everyday lives rather than the theories and abstractions sociologists investigate. “There is nothing to measure, count, or predict.” (7)

As cultural anthropologists may not attend to the science factor in a community’s lives as psychologists or sociologists are, they tend to focus more on communication— which can be a little bit of an issue. They work with groups of people from across gulfs, seas, and land, so they have to take into account the cultural and environmental differences that these groups contrast in, despite being in the same ethnic group or tribe. Communication is often found difficult when using polls, tests, questionnaires, or experiments.

So, do anthropologists only observe these groups? Although watching and speculating lives are key factors in a study, cultural anthropologists will also attempt to imitate these lives. This means that they will participate in some of the groups’ patterns of life, learn their language, and communicate. They must learn to understand ideas and practices quickly, and interpret new experiences as familiar experiences. When one observes closely, the world of every individual in any given cultural group varies. Some anthropologists pay close attention to only adult men, or adult women, or children in a period. These anthropologists have to be trained in close study of the actual behavior and emotional states of people as they undergo their daily practices.

Lastly, because only a small fraction of the larger population is being studied, inaccurate ideas or stereotypes are formed as a product. Some stereotypes can exaggerate the diversity of cultures, minimize individual diversity, stability, isolation, and more.