Culture may be understood as the collective system of beliefs, values, and behaviors that characterize and distinguish a social group. It encompasses the traditions, customs, artistic expressions, and social practices that shape the life of a society. Research into these topics begins with defining your scope.
Are you interested in a community, an organization, or a nation? Are you more focused on a particular aspect of culture, such as beliefs, rituals, language, or art? Below is a useful starting point for exploring any of these topics.
Below is a list of African art collections that can be explored online.
“AFRICA. 225." n.d. Ross Archive of African Images, Yale University Art Gallery. Yale University Open Community Collections. https://jstor.org/stable/community.36717931. Is lincensed under CC BY 4.0
Below is a list of starting places to research specifically for Culture topics.
19th century - present.Indexes articles from over 2500 scholarly journals. Also indexes book chapters, reports, commentaries, edited works, and obituaries in the fields of social, cultural, physical, biological, and linguistic anthropology, ethnology, archaeology, folklore, material culture, and interdisciplinary studies.
Brings together cultural, linguistic, environmental and geographic information on over 1,400 human societies, facilitating comparison and contrast of cultural practices and exploration of factors that may underlie cultural similarities and differences.
A cross-cultural database that includes information on all aspects of cultural and social life. Information is organized by cultures and ethnic groups and the full-text sources are subject-indexed at the paragraph level.
Covers every region of the world and features the work of many of the most influential documentary filmmakers of the 20th century, including interviews, previously unreleased raw footage, field notes, study guides, and more. If you have access issues, follow this link to troubleshoot.
1970 - present. Provides comprehensive coverage of research, policy, and practice literature in the fields of Family Science, Human Ecology, Human Development, and Social Welfare. Includes publications from professional journals, conference papers, books, book chapters, government reports, discussion and working papers.
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