Cognitive anthropology is a subfield of anthropology that examines how people from different cultures perceive, categorize, and think about the world. It focuses on understanding how cultural knowledge is structured and transmitted, often using methods from linguistics, psychology, and cognitive science. This field emerged in the mid-20th century as a reaction to earlier anthropological theories that emphasized either material conditions (e.g., cultural materialism) or social structures (e.g., structural-functionalism).
Differences from Earlier Theories:
- Focus on Mental Processes – Unlike earlier anthropological theories that concentrated on external behaviors, social institutions, or economic factors, cognitive anthropology looks at how people internally represent and process knowledge.
- Linguistic Influence – Drawing from linguistics, cognitive anthropologists study semantic domains (how different cultures classify things like colors, kinship, and plants), whereas older approaches focused more on social roles or economic survival.
- Rejection of Cultural Evolutionism – Earlier anthropologists (e.g., 19th-century evolutionists like Lewis Henry Morgan) often ranked cultures in a hierarchy of development. Cognitive anthropology instead sees cultural knowledge as diverse and structured by human cognition rather than as progressing through fixed stages.
- Methods and Data Collection – Cognitive anthropology employs techniques like ethnoscience, componential analysis, and schema theory to understand how people conceptualize their world. This contrasts with earlier approaches that relied more on qualitative observation and generalization.
- Connection to Cognitive Science – Unlike earlier anthropological approaches, cognitive anthropology integrates insights from psychology and neuroscience, exploring how universal cognitive structures shape cultural differences.