CBM Elements III

Abstract

This chapter continues with CBM Elements and the design factors related to the anthropology of culture. Cultural demographics and Cultural environment are covered in their entirety. Cultural demographics provide the characteristics of a population for a geographic area. Geographic areas are identified by levels such as nation, state, city, county, tracks, blocks, province, and so forth (U.S. Census Bureau [USCB], 2005). This information is usually statistical. Demographic data provide mostly a quantitative picture of a population and aid in predicting economic or market trends. Through the use of demographic data, predictions about populations can be made in reference to increases in the demand for food, clothing, educational achievement, entertainment, housing, insurance, investments, health services, and so forth. Examples of Westernized demographic trends include: baby boom years, single parent families, two income families, and nuclear families. Demographic data are also culture-specific and can not be generalized to other populations. A culture-specific example is data from Japan’s 2000 census that calculated the total population of males at 62,110,764 males to 64,815,079 females. The number of females outnumbers males by 2,704,315 (Statistics Bureau of Japan, 2000). The collection of demographic data is unique to each society or culture. What works for one culture may not work for another. Or the collection of such data may not be operational due to other social, political, or economic factors. The characteristics of a population might include data based on the following: age, assets, birth, death, density, disease, educational achievement, ethnicity, family, growth, housing, incarceration, income, language, marital status, migration, mobility, occupation, race, sex, and size (USCB, 2005). All of these characteristics are described in this chapter. The collection of demographic data could begin with an examination of characteristics in a population such as “age” and multiple characteristics of a population, such as sex, income, household, geographic areas, disease, marriage, and so forth. Therefore, the data collection might look at age and its relation to sex, or age and income, or age and household. The guiding questions, in this section, focus on human beings; however they can be adapted to other species and entities.