Allen Maxwell likes to tell a story about walking down the muddy central road in a little village in Malaysia. He and a native friend spotted a huge dead tree just a stone's throw from the center of town.
Maxwell's friend made the comment that he wasn't supposed to climb dead trees. Sensing some deep cultural meaning in this taboo, Maxwell immediately asked why his friend wasn't supposed to climb dead trees.
"Because it might fall over on you," replied his friend. Seems people are more similar than different, no matter where you go.
Maxwell's particular field of study is cultural and linguistic anthropology. He's spent many years living with -- and learning about -- the people of Southeast Asia in Borneo, Brunei and Malaysia.
"I was introduced to the area when I was with the Peace Corps in Thailand," says Maxwell. "I loved everything about the area. I loved the food, too, but only discovered it when I was there."
Millie Creighton has been studying aspects of Japanese culture for 17 years. "Initially, there was a very big interest in Japanese culture for me," says Creighton. "I loved it. But I learned that the longer you live somewhere, the more tensions and strains you begin to see -- and you realize it's not like going on a vacation."
She has spent several years of the past two decades living in Japan. She earned her doctorate in cultural anthropology by writing a dissertation on department stores in Japan, which took into account such things as mass communications, consumerism and tourism.
Geoff Bradshaw has received his bachelor's and master's in anthropology. Currently, he teaches undergrads at the University of Wisconsin as a teaching assistant.
"To teach anthropology at a college level, you need to have a PhD," says Bradshaw. "I went to four years of school to get my BA, then came to graduate school in 1992. I studied hard to pass my qualifying exams, which granted me a master's degree and allowed me to continue in the program to get a PhD."
Bradshaw wrote his dissertation -- a book of several hundred pages -- on the topic he has studied for years. He examined "performances and expressions of identity in the United States," he says.
For six years, Bradshaw went to Grateful Dead concerts. "At these festivals, I interview participants, take photographs, talk to people, observe interactions and participate in the fun."
The idea for this project came to Bradshaw the first time he saw a Grateful Dead show. By the late 1980s, attending a Grateful Dead concert meant more than buying a ticket for a musical act.
"Surrounding each Grateful Dead concert was a traveling city of thousands of fans, many selling crafts, food or other items to keep themselves on tour.
"I couldn't help but feel struck by the fact that something extremely important was going on in American culture that was being expressed in that carnival of performance that surrounded the Grateful Dead. As I set out to learn more, I became fascinated with the history of the group and its fans, and in the process, became very much a fan myself," says Bradshaw.
"Folklore and folk music have been studied for a long time. But it's only recently that people have started to pay more attention to 'popular culture.' In my opinion, if we are going to understand a people and their culture, we need to study what they do with their daily lives, and for many people music is a large part of that."
When asked why he became a cultural anthropologist, Bradshaw has a deceptively simple answer. He knew he was interested in people.
"I began in history, and took classes in sociology, psychology and communication. I decided on anthropology because anthropologists study people by living with them, talking to them and doing the things they do, rather than just sending them a questionnaire or some other impersonal way of learning.
"But, as I said, I am really a teacher," he says. "What I do for a living is teach people about the diversity of cultures and lifestyles in the world. Hopefully, they will learn something about themselves and will understand people who are different than them a little bit better."