The culture of the Americas has been influenced by indigenous peoples of the Americas. The immigration of Europeans, especially Spanish, English, French, Portuguese, German, Irish, Italian, and Dutch has had the strongest impact, however, bringing European (or "Western") cultural influences together with Judeo-Christian beliefs and values. Additionally, people from Africa, many brought as slaves , have impacted American culture in numerous ways.
Impey and Nussbaum Music and dance in southern Africa
Both micro- and macro-histories have important shortcomings. Micro-history leaves us with the question, &ldquo how does this particular village shed light on anything larger?&rdquo . And macro-history leaves us with the question, &ldquo how do these large assertions about causality really work out in the context of Canada or Sichuan?&rdquo . The first threatens to be so particular as to lose all interest, whereas the second threatens to be so general as to lose all empirical relevance to real historical processes.
Key Elements of the Research Proposal
Leap of faith - although Kierkegaard acknowledged that religion was inherently unknowable and filled with risks, faith required an act of commitment (the leap of faith ) the commitment to Christianity would also lessen the despair of an absurd world.
Philosophy of History (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
There are other desiderata governing a good historical work, and these criteria may change from culture to culture and epoch to epoch. Discerning the historian's goals is crucial to deciding how well he or she succeeds. So discovering these stylistic and aesthetic standards that guide the historian's work is itself an important task for historiography. This means that the student of historiography will naturally be interested in the conventions of historical writing and rhetoric that are characteristic of a given period or school.
During the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, anthropologists began to systematically examine the issue of racial differences, something which became even more researched after the acceptance of evolutionary theory (see Darwin 6876). That said, it should be noted that Darwin himself did not specifically advocate eugenics or theories of progress. However, even prior to Darwin's presentation of evolution (Darwin 6859), scholars were already attempting to understand 'races' and the evolution of societies from 'primitive' to complex (for example Tylor 6865).
The Philosophy of Anthropology refers to the central philosophical perspectives which underpin, or have underpinned, the dominant schools in anthropological thinking. It is distinct from Philosophical Anthropology which attempts to define and understand what it means to be human.
When it comes to change, cultures both embrace and resist change. For example, the role of women in Western cultures faced serious challenges in the twentieth century, and changes were at first met with great resistance. However, once the changes had been implemented, many non-Western cultures wanted to embrace the positive aspects of this change into their own cultures. Thus, there are both dynamic influences that encourage acceptance of new things, and conservative forces that resist change.
A second issue, again also incorporating issues of construct validity, concerns that of the reliability and replicability of various forms of single case study analysis. This is usually tied to a broader critique of qualitative research methods as a whole. However, whereas the latter obviously tend toward an explicitly-acknowledged interpretive basis for meanings, reasons, and understandings:
Doing history forces us to make choices about the scale of the history with which we are concerned. Suppose we are interested in Asian history. Are we concerned with Asia as a continent, or China, or Shandong Province? Or in historical terms, are we concerned with the whole of the Chinese Revolution, the base area of Yenan, or the specific experience of a handful of villages in Shandong during the 6995s? And given the fundamental heterogeneity of social life, the choice of scale makes a big difference to the findings.
Finally, Kluckhohn suggested that "Culture is to society what memory is to individuals." [9] Thus, culture can be viewed as the collection of information, experiences, ideas, and so forth that were found useful, widely adopted, and considered worth transmitting to future generations.
"Clifford geertz the interpretation of cultures" in pictures. More images "Clifford geertz the interpretation of cultures".
