Cultural Variation

Cultural anthropology focuses on the study of similarities and differences in culture. Chapter 2 covered certain key sociocultural universals. This chapter examines more of the ethnological variation anthropologists have concerning those same universals. That is, this chapter is about the differences, focusing on the specific institutions of humankind that exhibit cultural variation. Cultural variation comes about through historical contingencies. Societies have their own unique histories of political developments, population growth or decline, and technological change. They have experienced different patterns of immigration and emigration, acculturation, assimilation, and environmental change. These contingencies have made societies different from each other since the first modern humans left Africa some 70,000–100,000 years ago.