Biocultural anthropology is an approach to human behavior that seeks to understand how biological and cultural factors interact to shape human behavior. The term “biocultural” refers to the fact that all humans are biologically unique, but also share many similarities across cultures due to shared evolutionary histories. Biocultural anthropologists study both biological and cultural factors in a holistic way, recognizing the importance of both when trying to understand why people behave as they do.
In contrast, cultural anthropology focuses on the study of culture as a social phenomenon. Cultural anthropologists are interested in understanding how people come together to form groups or societies, how those groups shape their members’ beliefs and behaviors, and how groups interact with one another over time.
Culture refers to learned behaviors shared by a group of people, such as religious beliefs or language use. Culture also includes nonmaterial elements such as social structures (e.g., kinship systems) and ideologies (e.g., religious beliefs). Biological factors include genetic inheritances (e.g., eye color), physiology (e.g., body size), health status (e.g., response to disease), cognitive abilities (e.g., language acquisition) and sensory abilities (e.g., sight).
Biocultural anthropologists are concerned with both the micro-level processes of human behavior and the macro-level patterns that emerge from those processes. By studying both individual behavior and population-level patterns, biocultural anthropologists hope to shed light on why certain traits become more common within a population over time.
