Cultural variation refers to the rich diversity in social practices that different cultures exhibit around the world. Cuisine and art all change from one culture to the next, but so do gender roles,
economic system
An economic system, or economic order, is a system of production, resource allocation and distribution of goods and services within an economy. It includes the combination of the various institutions, agencies, entities, decision-making proces ...
s, and social hierarchy among any number of other humanly organised behaviours. Cultural variation can be studied across cultures (for example, a cross-cultural study of ritual in Indonesia and Brazil) or across generations (for example, a comparison of
Generation X
Generation X (often shortened to Gen X) is the Demography, demographic Cohort (statistics), cohort following the Baby Boomers and preceding Millennials. Researchers and popular media often use the mid-1960s as its starting birth years and the ...
and
Generation Y
Millennials, also known as Generation Y or Gen Y, are the demographic Cohort (statistics), cohort following Generation X and preceding Generation Z. Researchers and popular media use the early 1980s as starting birth years and the mid-1990 ...
) and is often a subject studied by anthropologists, sociologists and cultural theorists with subspecialties in the fields of economic anthropology, ethnomusicology, health sociology etc. In recent years, cultural variation has become a rich source of study in
neuroanthropology,
cultural neuroscience, and
social neuroscience
Social neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field devoted to understanding the relationship between social experiences and biological systems. Humans are fundamentally a social species, and studies indicate that various social influences, includi ...
.
See also
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Cultural diversity
Cultural diversity is the quality of diverse or different cultures, as opposed to Monoculturalism, monoculture. It has a variety of meanings in different contexts, sometimes applying to cultural products like art works in museums or entertainment ...
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Cultural anthropology
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 ...
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Cultural studies
Cultural studies is an academic field that explores the dynamics of contemporary culture (including the politics of popular culture) and its social and historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers investigate how cultural practices rel ...
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Culture theory
Culture theory is the branch of comparative anthropology and semiotics that seeks to define the heuristic concept of culture in operational and/or scientific terms.
Overview
In the 19th century, "culture" was used by some to refer to a wide a ...
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Neuroanthropology
References
Further reading
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* Lende, D. H., & Downey, G. (2012). The encultured brain: an introduction to neuroanthropology. MIT press.
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External links
Global Sociology
Cultural geography
Cultural economics
Cultural politics
Multiculturalism
Majority–minority relations
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