Social and cultural anthropologists investigate the specific and universal aspects of societies and cultures of people living around the world.
Culture is what makes each group of people different from other groups.
Social anthropologists want to know what these cultural differences are, why they occur and what they mean. Today, anthropologists still work with these people, although the focus of their research has expanded to included the relationship between people from indigenous cultures and global economic and political systems. Furthermore, anthropologists now study large-scale, pluralistic societies including those of North America and Europe. Social and cultural anthropologists seek a rich and intimate understanding of specific cultures through ethnographic research, that is, by living with and sharing the lives of the people they study. Whether we are researching street people in Canada's large cities, or rice farmers in a village in Bangladesh, we get to know real people and let them tell us and show us what their lives are like and how they see the world.