Culture

• Culture is an adaptive mechanism, a behavior or technique for obtaining food and ensuring survival in a particular environment. This behavior is not instinctive but rather must be learned by individuals within a society. You could consider the ways that culture is learned, through socialization, for example. You also could look at how culture changes and develops over time; for example, early American values were much different than those of today. You also could focus on how culture varies between societies. Polygamy, for example, is considered immoral and illegal in many European countries and the United States but is accepted in parts of the Middle East.
  
  

Methods

• You could focus on the methods employed by cultural anthropologists when they research a society. Consider ethnography, where a researcher records and describes the experiences of a culture from first-hand observations. What are the potential benefit and drawbacks of associated methods, such as participant observations and interviews? In contrast, you could focus on the usefulness of ethnology, the process of comparing two cultures to understand their similarities and differences.
  
  

Issues

• Meeting and researching a new society can present certain issues or problems for cultural anthropologists as they try to immerse themselves in a different way of life. Culture shock, for example, can cause confusion and stress when a researcher is confronted with values and practices that differ significantly from her own. Ethnocentrism is another common problem for cultural anthropologists; this occurs when a researcher judges a society based on his own experiences and expectations. You could explore how culture shock and ethnocentrism can affect the quality and validity of data and possible solutions for overcoming these problems.
  
  

Theory

• You could decide to focus on the various theoretical backgrounds that inform the study of cultural anthropology and consider their contributions to the field. Historical Particularism, for example, was developed by Franz Boas in the early 20th century. It maintains that a culture can only be understood in its historical context, and that cultural anthropologists should focus on ideology to understand a society. In contrast, Julian Steward's Cultural Ecology contends that culture is the product of the local environment and technological advances.