nterpretations of its natural and social environment.
Ethnographers are concerned with all aspects of culture in the contemporary world and attempt to present a perspective from which to understand modern society. They stress the observation and collection of actual data. In comparing the social organization of variant societies, ethnographers emphasize the interrelationship between the individual and the family, clan, tribe, and other groups (for example, social, political, religious) that may exist within a society. In making comparisons, ethnographers must differentiate between responses peculiar to the society and those that are general to humankind. This differentiation clarifies the role of learned behavior in the development of distinctive cultures. Some studies analyze relationships between social phenomena and ecological adaptations and all ethnographers examine the family as the fundamental unit of social structure, the only unit common to all groups of people.
The family unit has specific functions with relation to its members and to the total society. It is the primary social institution, serving as the means of transferring culture from one generation to another. Division of labor between sexes is a strong influence in keeping the family together. The institution takes different forms among different peoples but it is always at the heart of any culture.
Ethnographies have as a core assumption the idea that society is never separable from the individuals of which it is composed. The experience and behavior of an individual are shaped from birth by preexisting customs. The interrelationship between behavior patterns and ideas, concepts, and attitudes forces anthropologists to consider psychology as well as culture, and a good ethnographer studies the effect of personality on the total range of institutions within a culture as well as the effect of the culture on the formation of personalities has also been studied.<...