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Research Methods in Anthropology

We have numerous resources for learning Anthropological methods. One of the best is the SAGE Research Methods Database: 

• Research methods in anthropology : qualitative and quantitative approaches by H. Russell Bernard Publication Date: 2017 Research Methods in Anthropology is the standard textbook for methods classes in anthropology. Whether you are coming from a scientific, interpretive, or applied anthropological tradition, you will learn field methods from the best guide in both qualitative and quantitative methods.
• Handbook of methods in cultural anthropology by H. Russell Bernard Publication Date: 2015 The Handbook of Methods in Cultural Anthropology, now in its second edition, maintains a strong benchmark for understanding the scope of contemporary anthropological field methods. Avoiding divisive debates over science and humanism, the contributors draw upon both traditions to explore fieldwork in practice.

Digital Data Management for a New Generation The American Anthropological Association has designed an online tool to help instructors in teaching about data management as an integral component of research design and data collection. These materials are geared toward early training in best practices. Such practices ultimately support long-term management—including upload into digital data archives and institutional repositories—and facilitate data sharing where appropriate.  

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Article contents

Anthropology and research methodology.

• Graciela Batallán Graciela Batallán Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA)
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.354
• Published online: 30 September 2019

This article provides a reflection on “qualitative” research methodology and their study within the university and other educational levels and invites dialogue between paradigms and currents of thought that are identified with teaching and the methods of producing empirical information. From a critical perspective, together with the positivism of the social sciences, it argues that the node of this teaching is the process of constructing the object of study, a process that confirms the centrality of the researcher.

In accordance with a theoretical-methodological focus that distinguishes the specificity of the object of the social sciences in its linguistic construction, and considering the capacity for agency of the temporarily situated actors, the researcher (also a social agent), in addition to taking on the scope and historicity of the concepts used to problematize the relationships being investigated, needs to analyze the reflexivity of his/her language, which is inscribed in the assumptions that guide his/her inquiry. In this way, research training embodies a pedagogical problematic, whereby addressing the aforementioned centrality of the construction of the object goes hand in hand with the pedagogical problematization of everyday speech.

Research-in-action training constitutes the future researcher as a critical intellectual, in search of a reliable (or true) knowledge that will incorporate him/her into the scientific framework.

• qualitative methods
• ethnographic historical focus
• the centrality of the researcher/objectivity
• critical pedagogy

A version of this article is available in its original language.

The methodological debate, circumscribed to the question of methods within the social sciences, has put the focus on the confrontation between quantitative and qualitative methods. Between this contrasting pair, the first naturally monopolize almost all of the established scientific criteria, such as generalization and objectivity, derived from the positivist paradigm. The second, qualitative methods, while also tacitly adhering to the same paradigm, are pushed to the back and considered to be exploratory or heuristic stages within research processes, and they are granted less legitimacy within institutionalized instances of university training and other educational contexts. In fact, the positivist paradigm, still widely used, grants scientific legitimacy to the statistical samples associated with quantitative methodological approaches, despite the fact that the positivist paradigm and the hypothetical-deductive research framework that facilitates quantitative research have been widely debunked within theoretical-epistemological debates.

Meanwhile, the enunciation of qualitative methods generally identifies the methodological approach with techniques of “gathering” information used in fieldwork, without referencing its epistemological foundations. In this sense we can say that the dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative methods does not generate a robust discussion, and in fact results in minimal recognition of, even devalues, the intellectual production generated by qualitative methods.

With the goal of consolidating reflections on the field of knowledge production within social sciences and social science education, this article works to relocate the axis of analysis from methods or technical-methodological approaches to the construction of the research object by explaining the ways in which the different elements that constitute the research object are linked. In this way, this article accounts for the internal articulations between the (ontological, conceptual, and epistemological) dimensions that intervene in methodological research approaches.

The body of the article is divided into two parts: the first addresses the general ways in which qualitative methods are framed, bearing in mind that teaching qualitative research grew out of documentarian training, that is to say, producers of primary sources, social agents who give meaning to social action, based on the first theoretical/conceptual tradition of anthropology, particularly participant observation (PO) as its characteristic approach. This section also addresses central points of debate and rupture within anthropology as a discipline and other social sciences.

In the second part, I organize the characteristics of the historical-ethnographic approach for empirical research and teaching, with the goal of generating an alternative to the traditional position. Additionally, I broaden the theoretical-epistemological references with the contributions of more contemporary social science research, with particular emphasis on Latin American contributions to this field of specialization.

Qualitative Research Methods and Scientific Criteria

As a first step, it is necessary to explain that research methodology is a specialist area within social sciences, tied to the production of knowledge. In general terms, the research creates and/or disputes the theory, generating—together with its growth and revision—a contribution to the social debate in question. It is a critical activity as it unmasks the static appearance of the given by providing elements for the analysis and explanation of relevant social problems.

As is the case for all specializations, research methodology is imbricated in the power dynamics of a field within the scientific community, which operates in the present, with institutionally manufactured knowledge. In this way, “the community” is cultivated through pressures and resistances that foster controversy through the hegemony of different approaches. The scientific criteria of the research, which are at the center of the debate, demonstrate, explicitly or implicitly, the ways in which new knowledges must account for its arguments and if these new knowledges are legitimated within a specific disciplinary tradition or if they are at odds with it.

In this sense, science as an institution demands that its members make explicit the scientific criteria (the scientific ideal) that they employ in their research, that they express this within the knowledge they accumulate and that they present it in their theoretical positioning, as well as in their justification for their chosen methodologies on which their empirical research weaves its arguments.

Within these criteria, research must answer to the axiom of objectivity, which—even when called into question—takes for granted that new knowledge production is “real,” “truthful,” or “trustworthy,” in contrast to manifestos of denunciation or fictional essays or literature.

The definition of qualitative methods is consubstantial with the centrality of the researcher in the production of information (the data); thus, the scientific criteria cannot be grounded in approaches or methods (which are necessarily influenced by this centrality), but, rather, should correspond to the analysis of the phenomena being studied. In the common sense of science, this displacement grants qualitative methods a sort of “little brother” status in the field of empirical research within the social sciences. The faith invested in the standardized instruments of quantitative approaches (which enable the illusion of statistical generalizations on a macro-social level) is detached from the qualitative approaches, which are stigmatized for lacking objectivity and whose neutrality is compromised as a result of the inevitable subjectivity of the researcher.

This unresolvable question is transferred to the teaching of social science research methodologies, and the relevant materials are divided between subjects that teach quantitative methods (generally Methodology A) and subjects that teach qualitative methods (generally Methodology B). However, teaching qualitative methods (because they are directly anchored in the world of experience) require that students be trained as field researchers, which is to say, as producers of primary sources or first-hand documents. Through this process (documenting the meaning given to the action of the research subjects), this teaching is necessarily concerned with the reliable production of information and the rigor with which principles and rules in relation to ethics are adopted. Examples of the latter include respect for the textuality and the expressions and voices documented, and a lack of coercion or affective, emotional manipulation of interview subjects.

This demonstrates that within its formative goal—beyond the ethical/moral dimension of the documentarian’s role—a safeguard for objectivity is present within the documentation, that is to say, processes that ensure the document is authentic and impartial with respect to the perspective, judgement, or emotion of the researcher are in place. This precaution corresponds to the field of scientific production, in its work to produce documents that are considered scientific. Even within currents of methodological anarchy (Feyerabend, 1974 ) or postmodern skepticism regarding the existence of criteria to determine truth, this issue remains relevant within the scientific community, within which—eventually—it is debated.

These findings reinforce the outlined perspective: scientific criteria are (or should be) determined in accordance with their object of knowledge that, of course, will be different between the social sciences and the physical-natural sciences, adopted as the parameters that determine “science.” Nevertheless, the positivist canon of unified science naturally invites arguments about the scientific nature of qualitative research, especially in the culturalist tradition of anthropology.

PO in the Origin of Qualitative Methods

PO within anthropology is, without a doubt, the principal antecedent to qualitative research methodologies. Its development and consolidation established ethnography as a method associated with fieldwork carried out in order to study communities without a written language (outside of civilization), which were an object of scientific interest during the colonial expansion of the countries of Central Europe at the beginning of the 20th century . The term itself, ethnography, also refers to the descriptive literary genre that was the hallmark of the first disciplinary tradition.

It’s important to point out that the study of “other cultures” and the methods associated with this endeavor arose amid the clamor of the debate between the development of functionalist theory and hegemonic evolutionism, a strong force within the science field (Stocking, 1993 ). Although other precedents already existed, Bronislaw Malinowski ( 1884–1942 ) is credited with the systematization of fieldwork as a method for his research on the preliterate communities that used simple technologies in Melanesia (Malinowski, 1986 ).

His meticulous description of their ways of life worked to refute arguments about the inferiority attributed to these peoples. The work of ethnographic documentation of the period was concerned with demonstrating the logic (rationality) of these peoples, or other ways of life with similar diverse worldviews, such as that within countries whose economic and political organization were referred to as currently primitive .

The methodological approach of fieldwork and an assumption of otherness in its research subjects defined anthropology’s identity as a discipline within the social sciences, at the same time that the field’s arguments, based in empirical research, contributed to the breakdown in the belief in normalcy, represented by Western civilization as the highest stage for the development of humanity.

The complexity of the organization of primitive cultures documented in primary sources, and the documented evidence of their particular rationality, legitimated the existence of human diversity (cultural relativism), which centers the moral-ethical dimension of the debate and anti-racist positions. The strength of these arguments, documented by empirical, anthropological research, led to their adoption within the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The specificity of the object of ethnographic research in the classical period, the ethos (the valued traditions) of the preliterate communities, was used in order to document the subject’s language in situ, their routines, the emphasis placed on interaction: “the imponderables of real life” (Malinowski, 1986 , p. 37) and “the vitality of the act” (Malinowski, 1986 , p. 40). In this way, the interpretation and analysis of ways of life adopt the hermeneutic tradition for the study of the social phenomena present in the work of Wilhelm Dilthey ( 1833–1911 ), which argues—in its characterization of the Sciences of the Spirit—that the specificity of the historical-cultural phenomena is the meaning that those that live it, give it (Dilthey, 1949 ). This axiom establishes the foundation of fieldwork as a research method. To understand language is to understand the codes of behavior that inform it (culture). The researcher documents what is said and what is done in context, translating the interpretation of the natives in order to make it understandable to readers, scientists of the Western world. Their labor is that of interpreter and translator for a culture designated as an “other.” From the point of view of functionalist theory that informs the fieldwork canon, the so-called native point of view refers to a shared cultural framework.

The journey of the researcher to exotic worlds, their long-term stay in the place (the field), and the emotional work of making the strange familiar through empathy, lays the foundations of the functionalist methodological canon, in which PO is the favored approach. Even so, as its name suggests, participant observation is simultaneously a convergence and a contradiction between paradigms. The comprehensive approach generated by the participation of the researcher in the social world in which he is immersed works to establish communication free of constraints, built on trust, with the goal of documenting and contextualizing the meaning given to speech and gestures by the peoples studied. In turn, observation of “the fixed and immutable” (which responds to the split between structure and meaning) maintains positivist science’s pretension of objectivity. In this methodological approach, external observation acts as a permanent contrast to the understanding of meaning, obtained through the participation/interlocution of the researcher with the agents (Batallán & García, 1992 ).

PO, as a general framework that encompasses several different techniques (open interviews, genealogies, biographies, etc.), managed, during the first years of the discipline’s development, to be legitimized by the scientific community by incorporating the anthropologist as a scientifically supported witness. In the first ethnologies’ insistence on objectivity, the first-person testimony of the researcher/author functioned as a safeguard for the scientificity of anthropological knowledge. The strong criticism of fieldwork as a myth, initiated within the discipline, paid special attention to ethnographic descriptions and rhetoric. Ironically, Clifford Geertz ( 1989 ) noted that this was more owing to the masterful writing of anthropologists/authors than to the truth of the lives being described. Furthermore, the successful persuasion of readers was possible not only because of the literary effect of ethnography as a genre, but also because the scientific assessment itself produced in the readers a meta-recognition that made the field researcher a legitimate and indisputable authority (Batallán, 1995 ).

From this critique until the present day, the methodological problem thus described still exists, now that the qualitative (ethnographic) methods cannot respond to the positivist model which demands distance between the researcher and the subjects that constitute the relationships being studied. It is interesting to note that the same thing did not happen with quantitative methods, despite that fact that they did also not fully comply with scientific criteria. While it is assumed that qualitative instruments of measurement (questionnaires, surveys, etc.) avoid the subjectivity of the researcher, authors such as Aaron Cicourel ( 1982 ) demonstrate that these guarantee valid results through the extension of the results, but do not guarantee the reliability of the information, given that—being predetermined questions with mostly closed answers—the answers obtained violate this criteria, which is consubstantial with open communication. Nevertheless, its prevalence overcomes its non-compliance as a criteria for scientificity.

The interest in qualitative methods, the in-depth, intensive knowledge that these methods enable in relation to the specificity of social phenomena, are recognized and recommended for specific case studies, or studies of small, specific worlds. In any case, within present-day industrialized societies, qualitative methods (outside the discipline of anthropology) are used in “exploratory” stages of research, which lend the research a heuristic value that, nevertheless, does not quite manage to re-establish the legitimacy that it originally had, when the objects of study were “ others ,” strange, different in terms of their language, traditions, and way of life from the central societies of European capitalism and expansion.

Empirical Research Methods and the Breakdown of the Concept of Culture

The changes produced in the content and the scope of the concept of culture, according to debates within the scientific community, are particularly important with regard to their connection to reflections on carrying out and teaching qualitative methods, because culture as a concept allows for the inclusion or the exclusion of the action of the subjects and its meaning from the analysis. Despite common-sense assumptions (scientific and social) that take for granted a consensus on culture, indiscriminate use of the term does not always accompany the theoretical changes that connect it to the methodological dimension of the research. Its uncritical use corresponds, in the same sense, to the PO as a privileged methodology, and the territorialized environment of an empirical field.

The idea of culture was identified for the first time between the 15th and 16th centuries as a concept tied to the care and cultivation of the land; it later became synonymous with human development and only in the 19th century did philosophers of the Enlightenment use it as an equivalent for civilization. This rationalist, secular definition of culture was taken up by evolutionary anthropologists of the era—modeled by Herbert Spencer ( 1820–1903 )—in order to support a model of social Darwinism with clear racist implications. At the same time that evolutionism was prominent, the Romantic movement emerged as a reaction that situated “national cultures” and their traditions as a barrier to the idea of universal progress. The “local cultures,” closely tied to the land, asserted their right to be recognized as unique peoples and communities. The German philosopher Johann Herder ( 1744–1803 ) attacked the philosophical concept of progress of the Enlightenment that culminated in a civilized European culture proposing to speak for cultures , despite the evident coexistence of diverse cultures.

The functionalist theory, in its North American initiation represented by Franz Boas ( 1858–1942 ), was rooted in German Romanticism, and expanded the critique of culture as a universal concept. The typification of the ways of life of the original peoples in the North American south are expressed through memorable holistic descriptions, such as those of the Culture and Personality School developed by his students Ruth Benedict ( 1887–1948 ) and Margaret Mead ( 1901–1978 ).

On the epistemological level, empiricist naturalism was the foundation of culturalism , which maintains that direct documentation of the ways of life documented by fieldwork will, in and of itself, supply the information necessary to justify the analysis. This current, still in force in the teaching of research methodologies, provides the concept of culture with an explanatory scope regarding social interaction.

Despite the fact that with the consolidation of European capitalist expansion, pure cultures (not contaminated by the West) ceased to exist, ethnographic studies maintained, methodologically, the validity of the territorial empirical reference as the base and/or synonym for a people or culture, and difference as an object and definition of anthropological studies in accordance with the earliest iteration of the field. The confrontation between “them” (the preliterate societies as a coherent whole) and “us” (Western society and its conception of a unified science) was sustained by the holistic conceptualization of culture on the theoretical plane.

Gradually, the research object shifted both toward populations, communities, or groups situated at the margins of the urban centers of power, and toward the study of sectors of society that do not respond to prevailing parameters of established normalcy. Little by little, the movement toward decolonization impacted North American anthropology, which worked to rid itself of the colonialist halo that was associated with the discipline until the mid- 20th century . Despite these changes, the pattern shaped by the culture-observation participant-field trilogy only recently began to break down owing to the effects that the so-called linguistic turn , reactivated by philosophy, produced more generally within the social sciences (Austin, 1982 ; Gadamer, 1988 ; Ricoeur, 1984 ; Winch, 1971 ; Wittgestein, 1988 ). A key text that illustrates this reconfiguration is Thick Description by Clifford Geertz ( 1987 ), in which the author establishes, for the first time, a critical relationship between revisions to the concept of culture and the methodology of fieldwork.

His argument points out that culture is not a coherent pattern, nor is it overdetermined by behaviors. Rather, he presents culture as a public code (an active document), which can only be understood and analyzed through social interaction, in which “the flow of behaviors find meaning” (Geertz, 1987 , p. 32). This perspective limits observation as a method for studying symbolic phenomena, as it is only possible to understand (interpret) the meaning of symbolic phenomena through dialogue and conversation. In this way, he laid the groundwork for future critiques of the canon, that his students would develop throughout the 1980s. Geertz would say—with respect to the connection between this idea and territoriality—that “there are no typical villages” and that “the object of study, is not the place of story,” and “we don’t study villages, rather, we study in villages” (Geertz, 1987 , p. 33). Taking up Gilbert Ryle’s term, thick description , he characterizes ethnography, employing the same example of the wink that Ryle employs, by demonstrating that we can only know what a gesture means if we are in dialogue with those who share its meaning. Drawing from semiotics, he outlines a critique of knowledge, with a nod to the culturalist tradition, in order to argue that “we do not try to become natives ourselves” (Geertz, 1987 , p. 27) but rather to communicate with them . Methodologically speaking, he emphasizes the role of the researcher as the interpreter of social interactions, recognizing through Hans-Georg Gadamer ( 1988 ), that we bring to the research object our own preconceptions and pre-understanding, and that we undergo the process of understanding through “inferences and implications” (Geertz, 1987 , p. 22).

The argument that Geertz used regarding culture as a concept is close to Weber’s theory of action, in that it presents culture as being formed by significant overlapping structures that respond to the informal logics of real life: “man lives within networks that he himself has woven” (Geertz, 1987 , p. 20). The methodological derivative of this idea works to document these actions in social settings, which are the specific contexts of the research processes.

Despite the breakdown in the definition of culture that this reflection produced—owing to Durkheimian thinking—, culture being formerly understood as an unalterable entity, it was not enough to argue for the capacity for agency in research subjects, given that the perspective of the actor was subordinated within the cultural framework. This persistence is derived from the functionalist rationality that reasons that while the actors are interpreters, they act as such within their culture, which they acquired through processes of socialization (enculturation), together with the language in which that culture is already expressed (Batallán & García, 1992 ).

While essentialist theories of culture have receded within the academic environment together with the systemic perspective of functionalism, the limitations of this theory reappear in the ethnographic writings of the same author Geertz and also in some Marxist critiques of the field. The weight of the explanatory theory of culture and its holistic, integral effect on social groups, endures, for example, in its routine use within educational research when scholars talk about school cultures, youth culture, or even the greater or lesser cultural capital of students as determining factors of their habitus, as suggested by the works of Pierre Bourdieu (Batallán, 2007 ). This explanatory scope attributed to the theory of culture—while contradicting the general theoretical bodies in which it is employed—is reinforced by the tautological reasoning of its content, which masks social action and its heterogeneity, thus enabling an analysis of social conflict limited to “culture clash.”

As we will see in the section “ The Historical-Ethnographic Focus of Research and Teaching ,” the recognition of the turning point produced by critiques of traditional theories of culture and the subsequent contributions these made to the idea of the field and other rules of fieldwork some of the representatives of the movement referred to as postmodernism in the United States (Clifford, 1991 , 1995 ; Marcus & Fisher, 2000 ; Rosaldo, 1991 ), enabled the development of a new research focus, based on reflections first carried out by the anthropologist Elsie Rockwell ( 1980 ) in a study of educational processes in Mexico. This approach, which synthesized aspects of Gramscian Marxism and structuralist revision in the same theoretical body (Heller, 1976 ; Samuels, 1984 ; Thompson, 1981 ; Williams, 1981 ; Willis, 1985 , 1988 ), recovered fruitful aspects of traditional fieldwork and Geertzian contributions, in an effort to displace functionalist hegemony in Latin American anthropological research, especially in the educational field.

The Historical-Ethnographic Focus of Research and Teaching

Returning to the goals outlined in at the beginning of this article—the work of shifting the focus from a debate over methods (approaches) to an analysis of the construction of the research object—the historical-ethnographic approach departs from functionalism and other iterations of positivism, joining current schools of thought that are developing a social science that is relational, reflective, critical, and emancipatory (Corcuff, 1998 ; Giddens, 1987 ; Rancière, 2012 ).

Since the late 1980s, this focus has grown in precision and complexity, having been debated and corroborated within working groups, congress symposiums, conferences, and academic meetings, all oriented toward methodological issues within social sciences and education, both in university environments and in teacher-training institutions in Argentina and in other Latin American countries (Batallán, 1998 ). 1 From its beginning to the present day, with more or less emphasis, the historical expansion and nuancing of the sociopolitical processes at work within educational contexts have been incorporated as the explanatory dimensions of these processes.

The introduction of ethnography into educational research was a response to ignorance regarding the everyday routines and conditions within schools, beyond what had traditionally been researched by the educational sciences, which focused primarily on teaching and learning. Ethnographic research in this area specialized in documenting the “undocumented” through: (a) intensive fieldwork with prolonged residence within the community being studied; (b) a critique of empiricism based on the theoretical construction of the research within the field; and (c) the importance, on a methodological level, of the centrality of the researcher in the production of knowledge (Rockwell, 1986 ). The theory of everyday life, which guides the focus and understands everyday life as a moment of general social reproduction, changed the functionalist perspective that conceived of it as made up of routine, non-incidental practices, set apart by their genericity (Heller, 1976 ). This theoretical-conceptual synthesis is added to critiques of theories of culture, which the Mexican anthropologist narrows and to which she adds nuances. According to Rockwell, culture as a concept is not explanatory; for her, educational ethnographic research describes “the everyday manifestations of processes of production and social reproduction, and the everyday reflection of social subjects about their world” (Rockwell, 1980 , p. 8). She adds that subjects construct their activities through consideration of their socio-temporal contexts and their lived experiences (local knowledge).

As a result of the reflections and research produced by an interdisciplinary team of researchers and educators, formed in the mid-1980s in Argentina, the approach has acquired epistemological and theoretical consistency as well as empirical research knowledge. The academic production of this team was combined with the proposal as originally outlined, while also integrating pedagogical developments used to train teachers during the previous decade in Argentina and Chile (Batallán, 1983 , 1989 , 2007 ; Vera, 1988 ; Vera & Argumedo, 1978 ). 2

The epistemological foundation of this approach was significantly influenced by the development of Anthony Giddens’s Theory of Structuration ( 1995 ). Its argumentation of structuration theory provides an adequate synthesis to sustain, along with the specificity of the social sciences, the overlap between structure and action in the analysis of social phenomena, thereby avoiding the dichotomy between explanation and understanding , which is implicit in the debate over methods and their legitimacy (García, 1994 ).

Giddens adds pragmatism, philosophy of language, symbolic interactionism, and ethnomethodology to the foundations of Marxist theory (Gadamer, 1988 ; Garfinkel, 2006 ; Schütz, 1974 ; Winch, 1971 ). His primary original contribution was a contribution to the theory of the subject in the social sciences, theorizing individual agency, or rather, considering the ability of subjects “to act differently,” and avoiding overdetermined structural analysis of social processes (Althusser, 1974 ; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1982 ). The notion of agency as an individual capability thus implies freedom and a recognition of the mediation between structure and action.

Regarding this theoretical facet, there is no division between objectivity and subjectivity (according to the prior distinction between structure or individual action), as agents “make things happen” through interaction, in a dialectic in which the structure is present within the conditions given by the action, although it is permanently changed by the undesired effects of the action.

At the methodological level, and given the linguistic construction of social life, analysis of empirical research accounts for the fact that social phenomena are symbolically pre-structured. For this reason, the path to their understanding must consider the tension that exists between analytical categories of science (derived from the theories, concepts, and the debates they generate) that the researcher brings to the process, as well as the categories of interpretation that the agents bring to these phenomena. To this logic, which Giddens referred to as double hermeneutics , is added the reflection that, although the agents are interpreters of their own world, they are still subjective interpreters of action (Batallán & García, 1988 ). In this way, such an approach corroborates the heterogeneity of social life, as opposed to the integrative perspective derived from a holistic theorization of culture.

The Centrality of the Researcher and the Performativity of Language

The epistemological foundation, regarding the performativity of language in social life, makes it possible to revise the axiom concerned with the centrality of the researcher emphasized within the earliest traditions of fieldwork. Within the new framework, it acquires a dimension that transcends the physical presence of the researcher in the place (the field). From this perspective, the aforementioned connection between the dimensions that constitute the approach is evident, because the centrality of the researcher ceases to refer to his or her psychological condition (testimonial) and is instead understood as part of the problem under study.

Theories addressing the recursive nature of language generate reflection during the pedagogical process of teaching research methodologies, therein allowing us to analyze the social roots of common speech as expressed through the prejudices (productive or unproductive) that are necessarily activated in the cognitive activity of confronting that which we desire to know. The student, at the same time, inherits interpretations and evaluations of long-established practices from institutions. For this reason, he/she must—as a future social scientist—recognize the reflexive effect of his/her language. This goes hand in hand with learning to utilize conceptual tools in order to acquire specific knowledge about the relationships being studied, with the goal of producing knowledge that aspires to be true, or at least reliable and verified.

Pedagogical accompaniment is a specific technique for teaching this methodological-theoretical approach. The advantage of this approach is that it gives the researcher’s trainee the opportunity to change his/her initial perspective by recognizing the tensions and the contrast between the interpretations of the subjects that embody the relationships under study.

The reflexivity of the researchers’ language (or its performative effect) (Austin, 1982 ; Garfinkel, 2006 ), by way of the description that he himself makes, becomes the starting point for the permanent modification of his assumptions (or hypothesis), with respect to the relationships being studied (Gouldner, 1979 ).

The research process begins by formulating a research question. In order to formulate a research question the researcher must recognize what he does not know (Gadamer, 1988 ) and acknowledge the need to corroborate this ignorance with the outside world. As anticipated, the researcher’s assumptions guide the research questions and direct the inquiry, in a process of perpetual revision. For the researcher trainee, this task is one of problematizing epistemophilic obstacle (Pichon-Rivière, 1989 ) which is unlocked by the pedagogical modality employed, in the same formative trajectory.

The teacher-coordinators in workshop spaces (“practice” in traditional pedagogy) assist with the formulation and reworking of the questions freely generated by the students. The study of common speech and its roots is also carried out with respect to the concepts that contain the articulation of the research question/problems: the analytic categories that the researcher works with, and thus, need to be questioned (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1995 ). It is through these different exercises that the desire for knowledge is awakened within the student. The concepts, and their historicity and scope, are central to this process, as has been demonstrated through the concept of culture that we discussed in the section “ Empirical Research Methods and the Breakdown of the Concept of Culture ” and that has continued to incorporate new critiques and contributions (Benhabib, 2006 ; Crehan, 2004 ; Ortner, 1984 ; Rockwell, 2009 ).

Given that, for the historical ethnographic focus, knowing is to understand the implicit logic within social action, beyond singular behaviors and their evaluation or assessment on the part of the observer, this logic also, in order to find its explanation, needs to develop historically, taking into consideration the heterogeneity (plural perspective) and the conflict inherent in social processes. In this sense, students are able to understand that professional research is a long-term activity that does not end with the construction of the object, nor with fieldwork.

Professional development, in this way, serves a dual role: on one hand, documenting the interpretations of the agents about their social work through the understanding of keys and codes of their daily speech, translated by the researcher according to the contexts in which they were enunciated. On the other hand, it allows the researcher to broaden his perspective, to confront his prejudices and analytic categories with the informal logic of real life, which is expressed by the interpretations and knowledge of his subjects.

The specificity of knowledge of social life reveals a positivist fallacy about the division between the subject that investigates and the object (the relationships under study), thus introducing students to the complexity inherent in the search for objectivity within the social sciences. As I have already stated, the pursuit of objectivity is the tacit dividing line between the activity of the sciences (also the social sciences) and literature or fiction, and affirms the need and the importance for rigorous training for researchers within the field (ethnographers). In order to understand the scope of this search, which might seem contradictory and has generated various criticisms, it is necessary to think through the legitimacy of dialogical and co-participatory research approaches (Batallán, Dente, & Ritta, 2017 ; Mannheim & Tedlock, 1995 ).

In pedagogical monitoring, the theme of objectivity in empirical social research becomes nodal because within this process it is possible to trace, in everyday language, the influence of the idea that the necessary information (the facts) are there and can be recognized. In contrast, this strong prejudice is revised, as nothing is ever “given” (as the etymology of the term data suggests), rather, information is produced in the tension between the analytical categories of the researcher and the categories the agents see as significant.

This production of information has its correlation in the feedback from teachers regarding the ways of speaking, presenting themselves, being, and asking in the empirical field. Once again, during the review of an interview, for example, the play of the assumptions of the researcher or the distrust of the interaction makes evident in situ the understanding of the abstract concept of objectivity, guiding the students toward the construction of a fluid dialogue. Dialogical communication is not associated with the technique of the guided interview, but rather with Gadamer’s model of the conversation , in which the exchange fosters the development of meaning. As of now, pre-written questionnaires are excluded in this training.

During the course of the workshops, through the different projects and exercises, the illusion of neutral observation is unmasked in order to demonstrate that this process is never direct but in fact is always mediated by the assumptions and understandings of the observer. In group analysis about these exercises the performative force of language regarding the concept of objectivity is exposed, in the sense that it is translated into a neutral language within the description, in order to approximate a scientific observation. Of course, the persistence of this idea does not invalidate the need for rigorous training in the technique of observational documentation with descriptive goals.

In short, teaching research methodology is a constant process in which the researcher’s questions necessitate analysis of the reflexivity of his or her language, both in terms of theoretical concepts and of the everyday speech he/she shares with others. It is also teaching a craft, in that the student is a documentarian in training, a producer of primary sources of information. The gradual construction of the research object is the result of systematic inquiry tied to a theoretical-epistemological pattern, that in the case of a historical-ethnographic focus is grounded in criticisms of culture as a concept and the revision of the idea of the field as a physical place, and proposes to incorporate the theory of everyday life as knowledge of the uses and activities that mediate between the particular and specific and social relations in general.

To Conclude

- Every researcher is a potential agent of social transformation, in that the production of knowledge through research is a critical activity.

-Teaching research methodology is not simply practical instruction in fieldwork techniques, although neither is it purely abstract reflection on a philosophical level.

-Pursuing objectivity in empirical research and in the social sciences is a necessary objective, but its criteria must correspond to the ontological specificity of its object. Within this specificity, a central criterion (which is also ethical in nature) is to integrate and problematize the language of the researcher—who is also a socially and historically anchored agent—before initiating his/her work.

-The dialogical approaches and participants are points of contrast between the assumptions of the researcher and the collaborative production of knowledge; nevertheless, the researcher is always an author responsible for what he/she produces as an intellectual worker.

- The material produced in the field, when the analytical categories inscribed in the research problem and the research subjects’ categories of interpretation are compared with one another, is the basis of a pattern of interpretation and analysis that should be accompanied by studying theoretically framed, coherent, secondary documentation.

-When training students to be researchers, the purpose of critical pedagogy is that, both at the level of theoretical learning and when learning in the field, students should take ownership of the social responsibility for their intellectual authorship, as well as the indirect, but effective, impact of the results of their work within border social debate.

-The false problem inscribed in the qualitative-quantitative dichotomy, associated with the legitimacy of the knowledge produced by each approach, can only be disarticulated by shifting the axis of the debate toward the construction of the research object in the social sciences, which requires, together with permanent conceptual and linguistic reflection, dialogical criteria and participants for its support.

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1. The creation of the Latin American Network for Qualitative Research of Real Education is noteworthy. It was formed with the support of the Canadian parliament in 1980 and with the participation of researchers from Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, Venezuela, Colombia, and Uruguay, who, while living under dictatorships, or directly after recent dictatorships in their respective countries had been overthrown, participated in a first seminar in Mexico and developed further academic meetings after the initial gathering. The activity of the Network and its publication RINCUARE lasted three years, fostering the formation and development of the approach in national universities and non governmental organizations (NGOs) within the aforementioned countries.

2. The focus was a lectureship focused on “Methodology and Techniques of Field Research” in the Anthropological Science Department of the College of Philosophy and Literature at the University of Buenos Aires (1987–2013), as well as subjects/classes and seminars geared toward master’s and doctorate students at the University of Buenos Aires and elsewhere. It is also present in the research projects developed since 1994 to the present day, by the Secretariat of Scientific Research of the University of Buenos Aires (UBACyT) under my direction and the co-direction of Silvana Campanini.

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ANTHRO 3628 - Anthropological Research Methods

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This course offers a conceptual overview of research methods used by anthropologists. We will hear from faculty members their experience of doing fieldwork—from formulating a research question, choosing a site, entering the field to ethical issues they face in the field. Students will not only learn about but also practice these various methods and reflect on their projects in lights of the discussion about methods. To that end, students will complete several exercises and craft a method paper for their own project.

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Cultural Anthropology/Anthropological Methods

Human cultural variation.

Cultural interactions result in both progressive and aggressive interactions due to the evolution of those cultures being uninfluenced by one another. What may be considered good etiquette in one culture may be considered an offensive gesture in another. As this occurs constantly, cultures push each other to change.The biological variations between humans are summarized in the ideas of natural selection and evolution . Human variation is based on the principle that there is variation in traits that result for recombination of genes from sexual reproduction. These traits are variable and can be passed down generation to generation. It also relies on differential reproduction, the idea that the environment can't support unlimited population growth because not all individuals get to reproduce to their full potential.

An example of human variation can be found with a cline. A cline is a genetic variation between populations of species that are isolated in their reproduction (such as skin color variation in humans). Human skin color variation is a selective adaptation that relates to the populations' proximity to the equator. Because of pigmentation characteristics within the human population, a system and term emerged to categorize the differing variations. This category is recognized as race . Populations of humans in equatorial regions have selective advantages as a result of their darker skin pigmentation, whereas populations in more northern environments have less selective pressure to evolve darker pigmentation and have lighter skin. Other clines include differences in stature and hair type.

Origins of Ethnography

Ethnography is a core modern research method used in Anthropology as well as in other modern social sciences. Ethnography is the case study of one culture, subculture, or micro-culture made a the researcher immersing themself in said culture.

Before ethnography, immersive research, the prevailing method was unilineal. This led to colonizers feeling able to set the rules for what is a "modern" or "primitive" culture and used these self-made justifications in order to rule over new colonies in the name of advancement for their people. This view came into question with Anthropologists like Franz Boas, offering the multilinear model for cultural evolution we have today. This model closer, reflects the realities of different cultures across the world advancing in separate ways and highlights the impossibility to call one culture "primitive" in relation to another. These cultures do not evolve from one another but evolved separately from each other into other cultures.

A large part of the issue with early Anthropology was a reliance on second-party information while lacking any first-hand research of cultures. "Armchair Anthropologists" would gather information from military deployments, merchants, and missionaries rather than making the first-hand contact. Armchair Anthropologists usually refers to late 19th century and early 20th century scholars coming to conclusions without going through the usual anthropology motions—fieldwork or lab work. They would then create wild theories based on these accounts. This led to a high degree of bias against these cultures, more so than firsthand research, and were not scientific in the way Anthropology is today. These biases turned into stereotypes which are still prevalent today. This form of research drove much of the colonial primitive culture narrative and necessitated the adaptation of Ethnography.

Ethnography, or the immersive method of case study research, has to lead to the dispelling of rumor and a much deeper understanding of cultures through great effort. This is seen very clearly in Bright Dale's research on a Tobagonian Village, [ 1 ] titled Lives in-between Encountering Men in a Tobagonian Village. To begin, he clearly states his bias, being a male researcher and dealing primarily with the males of that society due to a highly gendered culture found there. He explains with great care that he is not searching for what men "do" but what they "say and do to be men." His goal with the research project was to show the value of an ethnographic research project, along with his experiences within this culture and the limitations he faced in that research. He had limitations both being an outsider and being male, only being able to see how one-half of these people portrayed their culture and even then through the lens of an outsider with his own biases, stated as clearly as possible within the paper. This is the value of Ethnography, it allows researchers to further understand their research while remaining as unbiased as possible, highlighting weaknesses and need for further research from people of different genders and backgrounds.

An Ethnographic Analogy is a method for inferring the use or meaning of an ancient site or artifact based on observations and accounts of its use by living people.

We can infer the use of an ancient tool by seeing how similar-looking tools are used in existing or recent societies. By analogy we can hypothesize the same use for the old tool.

Fieldwork Methods

In anthropology there are several types of fieldwork methods that are used while conducting research. Below we will go more into depth with several fieldwork methods that are used.

Observational Methods

The observational method is viewed as the least invasive method where the anthropologist minimally integrates themselves into the society they are studying and gathers data through verbal communication while attempting to remain non-intrusive of the culture.

This group of methods focuses on community interaction through language. It usually entails many open ended interviews with participants who are members of a group being studied. The researcher strives to learn as much as they can about the history of the community as well as the individuals within it in order to gain a full understanding of how their culture functions. Interviews can take place individually or with focus groups within the community based on age, status, gender, and other factors that contribute to differences within the community.

This type of research often strives to create an open dialogue, called a dialectic, in which information flows back and forth between researcher and subject. Think of this situation as a conversation between two people about homework or an upcoming exam. This dialectic poses a challenge to the objectivity of socially produced data. The challenge is dealt with through reflection on the inter-subjective creation of meaning. This leads anthropologists to value reflexive abilities in their ethnographic writing. Because many anthropologists also hope to help the communities they work with to make change on their own terms within the confines of their own culture, in some cases objectivity is abandoned in favor of community based activism and social change.

Participant Observation

Participant observation is a method for anthropological Fieldwork, used to collect data such that the anthropologist must create an intimate relationship between themselves and the culture studied. This method requires that an anthropologist participate in a social event that is part of a specific culture. This includes, but is not limited to, observing members of a culture by taking notes, eating the food that is provided, and participating in festivities. The goal of participant observation is to be involved in the culture like a member of that society, all while observing and studying the culture. An example of participation observation would be if an anthropologist went to a Native American Tribal gathering and took notes on the energy and traditions they were being shown. This anthropologist could participate in things like face painting or songs, and eat the food that the Natives eat. The information gathered in this observation is then recorded and reflected upon to gain further insight into the culture being studied. This observation method helps the anthropologist develop a deeper rapport with the people of the culture and can help others understand their culture further. This experience may result in the individuals opening up more to the anthropologist which allows them to understand more than an etic point of view of the culture.

Non-Participant Observation

In contrast to participant observation, non-participant observation is the anthropological method of collecting data by entering within a community but with limited interaction with the people within the culture. This anthropologist can be thought of as a fly on the wall. An etic approach that researchers often use to examine the details of how the subjects interact with one another and the environment around them. Detailed research such as body behavior (e.g. eye gaze, facial expression), speech styles (e.g. pitch) can be recorded through the nonparticipant method, but usually the emic approach is preferred when observing social context. An example of data collected through non-participant research would be the an estimation of how often women in a household wear high heels due to how worn out the carpet is.

The non-participant observation, although effective in providing some research, has limitations. One being, the observer affect. This is caused by the presence of the researcher having an influence over the participants' actions. The researcher may use systematic approaches of field notes, sampling and data to ensure and increase comfortable interactions. While using the non-participant observation method, the researcher's opinions may oppose that of the participant's on a certain issue. The only solution to this problem and to have a fuller and unbiased take on the research is to use both non-participant and participant method.

Ethnographic Method

Cultural data assumes the form of directly observable material items, individual behaviors, performances, ideas and arrangements that exist only in people's heads. From the perspective of the culture concept, anthropologists must first treat all these elements as symbols within a coherent system and must record observations with attention to the cultural context and the meanings assigned by the culture's practitioners. These demands are met through two major research techniques: participant observation and key informant interviewing.

After the initial orientation or entry period, which may take 3 months or longer, the researcher follows a more systematic program of formal interviews involving questions related to research hypotheses and specialized topics. Several different methods of selecting informants are possible. Usually, a few key informants are selected for in-depth sessions, since the investigation of cultural patterns usually calls for lengthy and repeated open-ended interviews. Selection of such a small number does not allow for strict assurance of a representative sample, so the anthropologist must be careful to choose subjects who are well informed and reliable. Ethnographic researchers will also train informants to systematically report cultural data and recognize significant cultural elements and interconnections as the interview sequences unfold.

Key informant selection is known as judgment sampling and is particularly important for the kind of qualitative research that characterizes ethnography. Anthropologists will very frequently also need to carry out quantitative research from which statistically validated inferences can be drawn. Accordingly, they must construct an either larger random sample or a total population census for more narrowly focused interviewing according to a closed questionnaire design. Other important quantitative data might include direct measurement of such items as farm size, crop yield, daily caloric intake, or even blood pressure, depending on the anthropologist's research focus. Aside from written observation and records, researchers will often provide ethnographic representations in other forms, such as collected artifacts, photographs, tape recordings, films, and videos. it compares and analyses the characteristic of different people and relationship between them ( compare culture, social, behaviors)

Comparative Method

Since the beginning of anthropological studies, the Comparative Method has been a way to allow a systematic comparison of information and data from multiple sources. It is a common approach for testing multiple hypotheses on subjects including co-evolution of cultures, the adaptation of cultural practices to the environment, and kinship terms in local languages from around the world. The comparative method, may seem like an outdated form of fieldwork information gathering, however this method is still quite prevalent in modern day anthropological research. The use of this form of information gathering is intended to compare globalization, which uses a version of this method called multi-sited Ethnography by participant observation gathered from many different social settings. Another form of the comparative research method is shown through the Human Relations Area Files , which collects and organizes ethnographic texts from hundreds of societies all over the world. These files cover topics ranging from types of kinship systems, to trading practices found in all of human culture.

Anthropologists Ruth Mace--an anthropologist who specializes in evolutionary ecology--and Mark Pagel explore the comparative method of anthropological research in their article The Comparative Method in Anthropology . They explain how in the past decade there have been many expansions in other branches of anthropology, including cultural diversity as a scientific endeavor. This is when the comparative method is used by those interested in cultural evolution and by those who study other human sciences. However, "cultures cannot be treated as independent for purposes of investigating cross culture trends," therefore they must instead be studied in relation to one another: How two or more cultures grow together, or how they are researched together has the ability to outline the entire premise of the comparative method. Having been used for hundreds of years, this method is still one of the main forms of research for anthropologists all over the world.

Reflexivity

Reflexivity is the awareness of the researcher of the effect they may be having on the research. It involves a constant awareness and assessment of the researcher's own contribution to and influence on the researcher's subjects and their findings. This principle was perhaps first thought of by William Thomas, as the "Thomas Theorem". Fieldwork in cultural anthropology is a reflexive experience. Anthropologists must constantly be aware that the information they are gathering may be skewed by their ethical opinions, or political standings. Even an anthropologists' presence in that culture can affect the results they receive. Reflexive fieldwork must retain a respect for detailed, accurate information gathering while also paying precise attention to the ethical and political context of research, the background of the researchers, and the full cooperation of informants. In our everyday lives reflexivity is used to better understand ourselves by comparing our culture to others. For example, when someone talks about their religion, you may immediately disagree with specific aspects of their religion because you have not grown up believing it as they have. By being reflexive, one would be able to recognize their bias. Some anthropologists have taken this method to the extreme, Margaret Wilson, for example, wrote her book 'Dance Lest We all Fall Down' in a reflexive biographical manner; this accounted for her inability to fully integrate into Brazilian society. [ 2 ]

Intersubjectivity

Intersubjectivity is the realization that knowledge about other people emerges from people's relationships with and perceptions of each other. The concept was first introduced by the principal founder of phenomenology, Edmund Husserl, and creates a "theoretical frame for thinking about the ways in which humans interpret, organize, and reproduce particular forms of social life and social cognition". Intersubjectivity is defined by five key principles. The first is that intersubjectivity is not limited to the concept of matching one's mental state with another’s mental state. Instead of a one-way transaction, intersubjectivity should be seen more as a type of mutual understanding. The second claim of Husserl's dissertation is that intersubjectivity is founded on the principle that we all share the same world, so that if two individuals were to "trade places", it would be present itself in the same way. Through empathetic insight, human beings achieve Platzwechsel , which is a term used in chess to mean "place exchange". The third claim is that intersubjectivity creates a synthesis of worldviews through the usage of empathy. Although there may be different perspectives in the relationship presented, the collective world is assumed to be the same through the bilateral insight of shared knowledge. The fourth claim is that intersubjectivity must precede meaningful interaction, as well as " The possibility of reflection on the self, discovery of the ego, capacity for performing any epoché, and the possibility of all communication and of establishing a communicative surrounding world as well". In other words, intersubjectivity is not the result of communication, instead it is the condition required for it to occur. Finally, the fifth claim is that intersubjectivity is the principle by which anthropologists must view their work. In order to properly create an account of a group of people, one must develop relationships with others and deduce perceptions through experience.

Participatory Action Research

This specific method requires a community commitment to change. It occurs in five steps:

• Education on the Process or Creating a Dialogue
• Collective Investigation
• Collective Interpretation
• Collective Action
• Transformation: Self-Determination and Empowerment

Because of the intrinsic qualities of this type of research (ideally being conducted by people with close ties or membership of a community), it is usually very applicable to situations in the community. The research is an analysis of the community's behavior by the community's members. Not only are they by necessity, motivated to work on the problem, but they will already have significant rapport with other community members which allows them to better address and analyze it. The dynamic attributes of the process allow constant reevaluation and change. This cyclic or regularly repeated tendencies can develop into healthy adaptation patterns in the community without outside contributions or aid.

Triangulation Method

The triangulation method is the "combination of methodologies in the study of the same phenomenon". [ 3 ] It is used to investigate a single topic through individual perspectives or multiple methodologies. It is usually the preferred way to research because it can combine all methods of researching to get the best results. It uses qualitative and quantitative practices together. The qualitative practice gives the triangulation method its inquiry results. The quantitative practice gives it the validation results. It combines a scientific approach with an observational approach. According to the Administrative Science Quarterly, it is a "vehicle for cross-validation when two or more distinct methods are found to be congruent and yield comparable data". [ 4 ] The foundation of triangulation relies on one form of research being weak and the other form stepping up to make up for it. Relying on one form of research can create a bias. The general problem with measurement data, is the individual or group being researched tends to tell you what you want to hear instead of the full truth. Triangulation helps prevent bias by giving the researcher the opportunity to participate in individual, self-reported and observational methods with those being researched. Sampling bias generally means that the researcher doesn't have time to cover the entire group they are focusing on. Or they focus on what they think the important parts of a society are and don't study the less important aspects. Triangulation can combine phone research, face-to-face interviews, and online surveys to ensure that the researcher is getting the most accurate results. In all, the triangulation method for fieldwork can combine all aspects of research to create the most accurate and detailed results, taking different perspectives and various sources to culminate into the most accurate model or a culture.

Types of Analysis

Qualitative vs. quantitative analysis.

Quantitative research can be represented numerically, whereas Qualitative data cannot.

Quantitative research is more interested in hard data procured through things like surveys, polls, and censuses. This type of research is interested in things like the percentage of people interviewed that agree with one statement versus another, the number of people in a culture that belong to a certain organization, or how many people in a country speak the native language versus how many are bilingual or only speak a foreign language. This method of research usually requires a large random sample group. It is totally concerned with the hard evidence(quantity)through statistics and recorded happenings, participants, and locations.

Qualitative research is typically descriptive, or anecdotal, and does not lend itself to the analysis of quantitative data. Qualitative research is in-depth research that seeks to understand why something happens the way it does. In anthropology, qualitative research includes participating as well as observing. It often crosses disciplinary boundaries and strays from a single subject, or variable being studied. Due to the specific rapport required to obtain qualitative data, it generally requires a smaller sample size.

Positivist Approach

Made popular during the late 18th century, this was the primary anthropological method used until the 1970s. It is based around the central idea of positivism, a theory saying that theology and metaphysics are earlier imperfect modes of knowledge and that positive knowledge is based on natural phenomena with their properties and relations as verified by the scientific method. [1] The main goal of a positivist approach is to produce objective knowledge, which is knowledge about humanity that is true for all people in all times and places. The ideal positivist approach would occur with a physical scientist in a lab, producing concrete results. Anthropologists adapted this method to their own use by testing hypotheses in different cultures under similar conditions. This method was very successful in recording previously unknown data about different peoples, but it was often objective facts about a way of life in which the people of the culture at question were regarded more as lab subjects than actual human beings. Eventually this method was adapted into the reflexive method, to better demonstrate the relationships that exist within communities and the anthropologists own interactions with the informants.

The positivist approach requires the use of the scientific method. A researcher makes an observation about a social behavior or condition, constructs a hypothesis as to the reason or outcome of the observation, tests the hypothesis and then analyzes the results. [2]

Ethnographic Analysis

Spradley describes ethnography as different from deductive types of social research in that the five steps of ethnographic research: selecting a problem, collecting data, analyzing data, formulating hypotheses, and writing. All five steps happen simultaneously (p. 93-94).

In his book, Spradley describes four types of ethnographic analysis that basically build on each other. The first type of analysis is domain analysis, which is “a search for the larger units of cultural knowledge” (p. 94). The other kinds of analysis are taxonomic analysis, componential analysis, and theme analysis.

All of Spradley’s theories about ethnographic analysis hinge on his belief that researchers should be searching for the meaning that participants make of their lives. These meanings are expressed through symbols, which can be words, but can also be nonverbal cues. However, because this book is about analyzing interviews, Spradley focuses on analyzing the spoken words of the participants. He explains that words are symbols that represent some kind of meaning for an individual, and each symbol has three parts: the symbol itself, what the symbol refers to, and the relationship between the symbol and the referent. Thus, the word computer can be a symbol. It refers to many things, including an individual's own personal computer. Thus, a computer is a kind of computer in the mind, or the idea of a computer, and this shows the relationship between the symbol (computer) and the referent (an actual physical computer).

Domain analysis

A domain is a “symbolic category that includes other categories”. The category of computers is a domain that includes not only a laptop, but all the Dells, Toshibas, iMacs, and IBMs in the world. These all share the same relationship because they are all kinds of computers. There are three elements to a domain. First, the cover term, which in this example is the word “computer”. Second, there are included terms, which are all the types of computers just listed. Finally, there is the single, unifying semantic relationship, which is the idea that “X, Y, and Z are all kinds of A”.

When anthropologists complete a domain analysis, they are gaining an understanding of how people place objects within different domains. In other words how does a person, family, or culture categorize the world around them. This information can be gathered is several ways. Strict inclusion ("what is a Macbook, a computer), Domain analysis, and questioning the categorization are methods of domain analysis. To revert to the previous example, if you agree that Macs are kinds of computers, you could test this hypothesis by making a question out of this semantic statement; “Are there different kinds of computers?” You could ask a participant, and based on their answer, you would know if the cover term, included terms, and semantic relationship that you identified were correct. You could then probe with more questions like, “Why are Macs a kind of computer?” or “In what way are Macs a kind of computer?”

Taxonomic Analysis

Taxonomic Analysis is a search for the way that cultural domains are organised. Building upon the first type of analysis, this form of research is best defined as the classification of data in form x is a kind of y (D'Andrade, 92). Used largely for the organization and grouping of plant and animal species, the taxonomic analysis is not focused on the features of an organism but rather the variable genetic differences that define them. Taxonomic Analysis usually involves drawing a graphical interpretation of the ways in which the individual participants move, form groups, and pattern the structure of a conversation. For example, scientists can refer to the common chimpanzee using the taxonomy pan troglodyte ( which is the ITIS report that has qualifications of all known mammals) and make specific references to that species without fear of error in their classification and use of data.

Chapter Glossary of Key Terms

Ruth Mace: An anthropologist who studies evolutionary ecology of human demography.

Intersubjectivity: The realization that knowledge about other people emerges out of people's relationships with and perceptions of each other.

Cline: The changing of species over time. Focus Group: A demographically diverse group of people assembled to participate in a guided discussion about a particular thing before it is released. Cyclic: Regularly repeated.

• ↑ Dale, Bright. "Lives In-between Encountering Men in a Tobagonian Village." Anthrobase. Bright Dale, 2004. Web. 26 Nov. 2016. < http://www.anthrobase.com/Txt/D/Dale-B_01.htm >.
• ↑ 'Dance Lest We All Fall Down' Margaret Wilson
• ↑ Administrative Science Quarterly, First Edition, Vol. 24, No. 4, Qualitative Methodology (Dec. 1979).

^ "Positivism." Def. 1. Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 11th ed. 2003.

^ Bourgois, Philip, In Search of Respect: Selling Crack in El Barrio Cambridge University Press, 1995.

^"Emic and Etic." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, n.d. Web. 29 Nov. 2016.

^Liu, F., & Maitlis, S. (2010). Nonparticipant Observation. In Albert J. Mills, G. Durepos, & E. Wiebe (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Case Study Research. (pp. 610–612). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

^ D'Andrade, Roy. "The Development of Cognitive Anthropology." 1995 92. 10 Mar 2009 http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=2QCWe2r-pvwC&oi=fnd&pg=PR12&dq=taxonomic+analysis+anthropology&ots=Vwe01uBe3l&sig=2EfRTfVyeZZyfOoIRHQwxase2K0#PPP1,M1

← History of Anthropological Theory  ·  Communication and Language →

^ Alessandro Duranti, Husserl, inter-subjectivity and anthropology University of California, Los Angeles, USA, 2015. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1463499610370517

• Book:Cultural Anthropology

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Anthropology resource guide.

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Ethnographic Research

Research methods.

• Internet Links

• Ethnography: Topic Page The word ‘ethnography’ has a double meaning in anthropology: ethnography as product (ethnographic writings – the articles and books written by anthropologists), and ethnography as process (participant observation or fieldwork).
• Case Study From Key Concepts in Ethnography A case study investigates a few cases, or often just one case, in considerable depth. In ethnography, case studies are used in various ways to illuminate themes or draw inferences.
• Coding From Key Concepts in Ethnography Coding is a euphemism for the sorting and labelling which is part of the process of analysis.
• Reflexivity From The A-Z of Social Research The ‘problem’ is that ethnographers are part of the social world they study and do not collect uncontaminated data, the ‘solution’ is that they should situate the data by reflecting on how their presence and other contingencies helped to create the data.

• Fieldwork From Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology There is a troubled relationship between the representation of anthropological fieldwork and the actuality of any particular fieldwork. In sober fact, fieldwork can take as many forms as there are anthropologists, projects, and circumstances.
• Content Analysis From The A-Z of Social Research Content analysis involves the description and analysis of text in order to represent its content. This takes the form of enumeration, such as counting the frequency of words and the number of column inches, and more qualitative assessment of the words and terms used, as undertaken in certain forms of discourse analysis.
• Fieldnotes From Key Concepts in Ethnography Fieldnotes are the written record of the observations, jottings, full notes, intellectual ideas, and emotional reflections that are created during the fieldwork process.
• Genealogical Method From Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology The method required extensive interviewing of named individuals in order to: (1) collect vital statistics among a non-literate population, and (2) record their pedigrees, which reflected rights and responsibilities relating primarily to descent, succession, and inheritance.
• Interviews From The A-Z of Social Research Interviews are one of the most widely used and abused research methods. They provide a way of generating data by asking people to talk about their everyday lives. Their main function is to provide a framework in which respondents can express their own thoughts in their own words.
• Participant Observation From Key Concepts in Ethnography Participant observation is the main method of ethnography and involves taking part as a member of a community while making mental and then written, theoretically informed observations.
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Human Relations Area Files

Cultural information for education and research, an introduction to fieldwork and ethnography.

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Francine barone, human relations area files at yale university, ethnographic fieldwork.

Ethnographic fieldwork is how anthropologists gather data. Fieldwork is the process of immersing oneself in as many aspects of the daily cultural lives of people as possible in order to study their behaviors and interactions. Nearly any setting or location can become “the field”: a village along the Amazon river, a large corporate office in Tokyo, a small neighborhood café in Seattle, or even a social networking site like Facebook.

Fieldwork takes time. Anthropologists enter the field location much like a newborn child. They may have trouble communicating until they have learned the local language. They will likely make mistakes, and locals will find them funny or strange. It can take months or years to begin to accustom themselves to the society or community within which they will live and learn. In the fieldwork process, anthropologists eventually piece together ideas about kinship, language, religion, politics, and economic systems, which allows them to build a picture of the society.

Ethnography

Ethnography can mean two things in anthropology:

a) the qualitative research methods employed during fieldwork b) the written descriptive and interpretive results of that research

Doing ethnography

The hallmark method of ethnographic field research in anthropology is known as participant-observation . This type of data-gathering is when the anthropologist records their experiences and observations while taking part in activities alongside local participants or informants in the field site. Anthropologists also engage in informal conversations, more formal interviews, surveys, or questionnaires, and create photos, sound or video recordings, as well as conduct historical or archival research into correspondence, public records, or reports, depending on their research area. Some anthropologists use quantitative methods when analyzing their research, such as producing statistics based on their findings.

Writing ethnography

Ethnographic writing differs from other types of academic, historical, journalistic, or travel writing about peoples and places. While ethnographers may also keep a fieldwork diary containing personal notes, ethnography is much more than a recounting of daily events. Ethnography engages with the theoretical foundations of anthropology and is written with cultural contextualization in mind, speaking to anthropology as a discipline as well as furnishing greater understanding of the cultural world that has been explored. The aim of ethnographic writing is to produce work that contributes to, and advances, the comparative interpretation of human cultures and societies.

An insider’s view

Ethnography is a collaborative effort between the ethnographer and their research participants. Anthropologists have ethical codes that guide their behavior in the field as they rely on relationships with others in order to conduct their research. In the ethnographic process, informants or key participants can help to induct the ethnographer into the society and explain its customs and ways.

Traditionally, anthropologists have attempted to arrive at an emic perspective or “insider’s point of view”. In other words, ethnographers wish to understand the structures, categories, and patterns of behavior as conceptualized by members of the culture they are studying. This is contrasted with etic models, which are analyses of cultural meaning as seen from the “outside” by an objective observer. This uneasy simplification of emic vs. etic gets at the heart of the paradox of doing ethnography: what people say they do, what they say they should do, and what they actually do, rarely – if ever – coincide.

Anthropologists today are increasingly aware of their own views and biases that they carry with them into the field from their home cultures, acknowledging wherever possible how this affects their methods and findings. Despite all of the best intentions, any practicing fieldworker can tell you that fieldwork is, at best, unpredictable. A reflexive approach to ethnography acknowledges that no researcher can be 100% objective, and that fieldwork constitutes an ongoing dialogue of consent and mutual respect between participants and the ethnographer.

Workbook Activity 1: The Fieldwork Experience

Read the following passages in eHRAF World Cultures that describe different aspects of fieldwork and conducting ethnography. Then, answer the questions.

Malinowski (1922) – Argonauts of the Western Pacific , Chapter 1, Section VII, pages 17-21 on participant-observation  

• What is “the imponderabilia of actual life”?
• How does Malinowski suggest that ethnographers should observe and record this imponderabilia during fieldwork?
• According to Malinowski, why is it good for the ethnographer to sometimes put aside their notebook and camera?

Stross (1971) – Aspects of Language Acquisition by Tzeltal Children , “Appendix B: The Fieldwork”, pages 201-202 on data collection in the field  

• List the kinds of research methods that the ethnographer used during fieldwork.
• How did he familiarize himself with the field location?
• Describe the relationship(s) that the ethnographer had with informants.
• What unexpected problems did the ethnographer run into? How were they resolved?

  Textor (1973) – Roster of the Gods , Appendix One, pages 855-858 on working with key informants

• Describe the relationship between the ethnographer and his informants.
• How critical were the informants to completing the ethnographic research?
• Do you think that learning the local language is essential for doing fieldwork?

Landsman (1988) – Sovereignty and Symbol , pages 7-8 on taking notes with informants

• How did the emotions of informants/research participants impact the ethnographer’s fieldnotes?
• How were historical, archival, print, and photographic materials utilized in their study? How did informants assist with this?
• How critical do you think informants are to conducting ethnographic research?

  Hill (1972) – Rural Hausa: A Village and Setting , page 148 on the anatomy of poverty

• What do you think the author means by “the poor are usually unobserved”?
• Are there some types of insights that are difficult or impossible to ascertain through participant-observation? Why might this be the case?
• How do you think anthropologists should deal with sensitive information or vulnerable members of a culture?

Workbook Activity 2: Thinking Ethnographically

How would you observe the following cultural practices ethnographically?

• Shopping in a bookstore
• Traveling by public transportation
• Ordering takeout from your favorite restaurant
• Having coffee with friends at Starbucks

Choose one of these or select your own scenario. Write a brief ethnographic account of everyday events. Consider methods such as participant-observation, interviews, surveys, and engaging with informants. If you are unable to participate in these activities face-to-face, simply try and imagine how you would describe them to an outsider not familiar with your culture.

Begin by recording your “field notes”, keeping track of everything that you see and do, and what you observe others saying and doing.

Then, describe what’s happening from both emic and etic perspectives.

For the emic perspective , consider the activity you are engaged in and how it is viewed in your own culture. What are the established “rules” or patterns of each interaction that make up the scene you have chosen?

• For example, at a café, you might find that one of your friends buys coffee for the entire group, which is fairly typical among friends. If asked why they have done so, the buyer may simply reply that “it’s a nice thing to do”, and indicate that someone else would pay next time.

For the etic perspective , look beyond your notes and step outside your own cultural expectations. What over-arching structures, symbols, or meaning are at play in this setting?

• For example, why do you think people really take turns buying rounds of drinks? What happens if one person never pays for the coffee? Due to the fact that such a person would not be considered a good friend, an etic analysis might find that coffee exchange is meaningful for building and sustaining friendship rather than being about money.

Hill, Polly. 1972. Rural Hausa: A Village and Setting. Cambridge, England: University Press. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=ms12-018 .

Landsman, Gail H. 1988. Sovereignty and Symbol: Indian-White Conflict at Ganienkeh. Albuquerque, N.Mex.: University of New Mexico Press. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=nm09-058

Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. London: George Routledge & Sons, Ltd. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=ol06-001 .

Stross, Brian. 1971. Aspects of Language Acquisition by Tzeltal Children. Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=nv09-010 .

Textor, Robert B. 1973. “Roster of the Gods: An Ethnography of the Supernatural in a Thai Village.” In Ethnography Series, 3, 44, 911 leaves. New Haven, Conn.: Human Relations Area Files. https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/document?id=ao07-011 .

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2 What Is Anthropological Research?

What do anthropologists research.

The short answer is pretty much anything related to being human. We can be more specific by looking at each of the four major fields of anthropology:

Cultural anthropology: this is the cornerstone of anthropology. Cultural, or sociocultural, anthropologists study living peoples. They ask questions about how people behave and why they behave that way.

Biological or physical anthropologists also study living peoples but ask different types of questions that are related to the interaction of biology and culture. Disease, death, evolution, primates are all topic within biological anthropology.

Linguistic anthropologists study how people communicate, both verbally and non-verbally. They look at the structure and evolution of language. They also examine what cultural values are reflected in language.

Archaeologists ask the same types of questions that cultural anthropologists ask, but their dataset is different; they look at the material remains of people in the past.

How do anthropologists decide what to research?

This is a good question, and it has a surprisingly simple answer–they research what they find interesting. It is important that you do the same thing when you are assigned a research project for your classes. Even if your professor assigns a topic, you should be able to come up with an angle to that topic that you find interesting. When choosing a topic, start broadly then through the process of research, begin to narrow the focus. The best way to start is to do some general research to learn about the topic. Wikipedia can be a good source for this first step. The articles on Wikipedia can provide you with keywords to help you focus your research. Once you’ve identified keywords, then you can find academic sources to complete your assignment. Royal Road University has more advice on how to develop a research question. Grand Canyon University also has some advice on this.

Science and Anthropology

There has been a long running debate about the scientific nature of anthropology. Science is a way to gain knowledge about natural phenomena using empirical observation and testing, i.e., experiments (Jurmain, et al 2013). While there are different protocols used in science, it is performed using a set of rules called The Scientific Method (Fancher 2000). The method stresses the need to develop a testable hypothesis, the use of objectivity and rationality, and the circularity of scientific research. This does not mean that science is infallible, but in using the scientific method, particularly with the necessity to have testable hypotheses and tests that are replicable by other researchers, rigorous conclusions are reached.

Within the academy, anthropology is designated as a social science. Social sciences are identified as humanistic, ergo, thought of as “soft sciences” because they focus on

…intangibles and relate to the study of human and animal behaviors, interactions, thoughts, and feelings. Soft sciences apply the scientific method to such intangibles, but because of the nature of living beings, it is almost impossible to recreate a soft science experiment with exactitude…the distinction between the two types of science is a matter of how rigorously a hypothesis can be stated, tested, and then accepted or rejected (Helmenstine 2019).

Helmenstine (2019) further states that the designation is outdated as the “degree of difficulty is less related to the discipline than it is to the specific question at hand.” Difficulty may be not in the performance of experiments but in devising an experiment, which may be harder in the so-called soft sciences.

Peregrine, et al. (2014) claim that the differentiation between science (hard sciences) and the humanities (soft sciences) is a false dichotomy. Within anthropology, both hard science and soft science provide important frameworks for understanding the human experience. Hard science helps us make sense of observable phenomena and soft science provides cultural context for those phenomena. As a holistic discipline it is important for anthropologists to use various methodologies and engage with differing perspectives to understand the human experience.

Anthropology cannot succeed without tolerance for this diversity of approaches…our task…is not to seek definitions of scientific or humanistic approaches but, rather, to implement whatever approach satisfies our interests and helps us to answer our questions (Peregrine et.al. 2012, 597).

Misconceptions About Science

There are some common misconceptions about science that may impede one’s ability to fully understand scientific concepts:

• Science proves things. Proofs are final and binary, which occurs in mathematics and logic. Science uses evidence gathered over time to develop theories, which are explanations widely accepted based on the current available data. Good scientists accept that theories may change based on new data (Kanazawa 2008).
• The scientific method is the only way to do science and it must be done in a lab. While the scientific method is an important tool, it is not the only tool in the researcher’s toolbox. Part of the scientific method as is generally taught in science classrooms is experimentation. It is important to remember that experimentation is only one way to collect data. There are many other ways to collect data, which does not negate utilizing other steps of the scientific method.
• Science is boring . Maybe it is sometimes, but science can be fun and creative. Science employs the imagination and since it explores all observable phenomena, there is usually something that garners one’s interest. Sometimes it is simply a matter of finding that something.
• Science is hard. Perhaps. The language of science, including mathematics, can be intimidating; however, learning about how to do science is the same as learning how to do anything—it’s a process that we learn over time. Patience is key here—sometimes we need to look at multiple sources to gain an understanding.
• Hypotheses and theories are the same thing. Not so. Hypotheses are tentative explanations for a phenomenon. Theories are an accepted explanation based on the testing of hypotheses and well-supported by facts. It can take a long time for a hypothesis to be elevated to the level of scientific theory.
• Scientific knowledge is immutable. Again, not so. Scientific knowledge can and does change as new data are collected and analyzed. If scientific knowledge was immutable or unchanging, then there would never be medical or technological advancements. New or changing knowledge is not bad; the success of humans is reliant on our ability to question and be open to new things. We would not be living in the structures we do today or eat the wide range of foods that we do if not for our ancestors’ openness to new knowledge and change.
• There is always a right answer. Since scientific knowledge can change, answers may change, or we may not be able to determine the ‘right’ answer. This can be especially hard for some people to understand. This may be because the data suggest multiple answers or we simply do not have the ability to collect the data needed to approach a definitive answer. The trajectory of human evolution is a good example of this. Based on current data and data collection methods, paleoanthropologists have developed several hypotheses about how humans evolved. Because we cannot say which hypothesis is right some people claim that human evolution is false. This is a misunderstanding as to the nature of science. The ‘gray’ area, the area of uncertainty, is not inherently bad. It drives further research, and we need to be open to the fact that sometimes ‘this is what we know right now’ is okay.
• Science is anti-religion. While it is true that many scientists are atheists, it is also true that many scientists follow religious belief systems. Scientists prefer to leave religion outside of the science classroom because the subject matter is out of the purview of what they can research because “supernatural explanations are less likely to generate testable claims” (Brickmore et.al. 2009).

Science and Culture

Science does not operate within a vacuum. It operates within cultural systems, which, unsurprisingly, influences the way science is done. Science, as is taught in most schools in industrial nations, started in Renaissance Europe, which itself was heavily influence by knowledge gained from Islamic societies. However, this empirical approach is not the only way to study nature or observable phenomena.

Cultures from all regions of the world have developed a complex view of nature, rooted in their philosophy, which has led to their understanding and explanation of the natural world. The traditional knowledge of non-European cultures is the expression of specific ways of living in the world, of a specific relationship between society and culture, and of a specific approach to the acquisition and construction of knowledge (Iaccarino 2003, 223).

It is beyond the scope of this class to explore all the various ways cultures understand the interaction of culture and environment or to investigate the myriad of ways knowledge is constructed. Because anthropology is embedded within the Western practice of science, that approach is the focus of this chapter.

Society’s Influence on Science

As cultures and societies change to meet new needs, so does science. For instance, national interests influence the trajectory of science. World War II influenced research into atoms, leading to the development of nuclear weapons and nuclear medicine. More recently, the COVID-19 pandemic led researchers to investigate not only a vaccine for the virus, but its origins and epidemiology.

Funding to practice science, e.g., laboratory equipment, salaries, etc., most often comes from social organizations. Both government and private organizations support scientific research. In the United States, the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control are a few governmental organizations that provide grants for scientific research. The Wenner-Gren Foundation, Tinker Foundation, and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation are examples of private organizations that provide science research grants. Sometimes the organizations direct the focus of research by providing grants for specific types or areas of research, such as The Whitehall Foundation, which provides grants for research in the life sciences, or The Leakey Foundation, which awards grants for research about human origins. While funding agencies can influence what scientists research, it cannot determine the conclusions of the research.

Scientists are people raised within cultures that “…shape our expectations, values, beliefs, and goals” (“Shaping Scientists” 2022). For example, a scientist with a family member who died from cancer may focus on cancer research. On the flip side, beliefs or ethical concerns may turn scientists away from certain avenues of research, as in the case of Joseph Rotblat, a Polish-born scientist who stepped away from the Manhattan Project because he was concerned about the cost to human life (“Shaping Scientists” 2022).

Clearly, these influences could cause bias within scientific research; however, science has a self-checking system that helps to mitigate bias. This system is called the scientific method.

The Scientific Method

Why do students of anthropology need to understand the scientific method? Because it is a key methodology in biological anthropology. It is one of the tools used to help researchers find answers to questions about the human experience.

Steps of the Scientific Meth od

1. Define the problem

This is based on observation — either something you’ve observed from nature or from something that’s already been written. How many times have you seen something or read about something and thought up a question about it? If you have, then you’ve done the first step of the Scientific Method!

2. Develop Hypothesis

Propose an explanation for the observed phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a good hypothesis, it must be testable. In other words, anyone must be able to test it to see if it’s supported or unsupported. Even if a hypothesis is unsupported, it is still ‘good’ if it is testable. There are lots of questions out there that are not testable, such as, “Somewhere on the planet, a pink elephant is dancing the can-can in a tutu.” Because it’s impossible to explore every inch of the world looking for our dancing elephant, this would not be feasibly testable. Along the same lines, a testable hypothesis would be, “Student group A, who have read the material on The Scientific Method, will have a higher average score on their quiz than will Student group B, who have not read the material on The Scientific Method.”

3. Collect Data

The experiment should be specifically designed to test the hypothesis. The experiment will provide data as to whether the hypothesis is supported or not. Experiments must be replicable by other researchers. For our example above with ever-so-fortunate quiz-takers, you’d have Group A read the material (Group B would not) and both groups would take the quiz. This experimental design is replicable by other researchers because they too could find two groups of students and follow the same protocol (students are randomly assigned to a group; one group reads the material, one not, and both take the quiz).

4. Organize/analyze data:

Once the experiment is completed, you must organize the data and analyze the results. For our example, you would grade the quizzes, calculate the average score per group, and analyze the results.

5. Conclusion

You develop a statement that sums up what the data (collected during the experimental phase) says about the hypothesis. For our example, our concluding statement would be something like, “Group A, who read material on The Scientific Method, performed better on a Scientific Method quiz than did Group B, who did not read the material.” If your hypothesis is supported, then you would move on to the next step in the process. If your hypothesis was unsupported, you would rework your hypothesis and start the process over.

6. Share the knowledge

It is important to share the results of your work even (and maybe even especially ) if your hypothesis was not supported. Remember — information is only good if it is communicated to others!

Things to keep in mind:

Science does not “prove” anything. Hypotheses are falsified/unsupported or not falsified/supported. For a hypothesis to be accepted as a theory, it undergoes rigorous testing (Larsen 2008: 16). It can take decades for a hypothesis to become a theory. For this reason, it is important to differentiate between theory within the sciences and theory in colloquial use. In the latter, theories are equated to guesses that may or may not be based on any data and are often said to be ‘just a theory.’ It is inaccurate (and we might even say it is insulting) to think a theory in science is “just a theory.” That manner of thought trivializes all the research that went into the development of the scientific theory.

Unfortunately, there is a practice both within and outside the academy, to use the term theory interchangeably with hypothesis. It is up to you to determine if the “theory” referred to is in fact a scientific theory or a hypothesis. While we discuss various topics in anthropology it is important to keep these distinctions in mind. We will encounter situations where there are multiple hypotheses or theories proposed to explain a phenomenon. Contradictory supported hypotheses are possible; some refer to this as equifinality . This is not necessarily a bad thing. It simply means that the data collected supports two (or more) hypotheses — in most cases, there is not sufficient data available to support one more than the other (especially when we get to the information within human evolution). Some who do not fully understand the scientific process, think this is a bad thing, but equifinality drives further research. So, for the moment we must open our minds to accept two or more potential conclusions.

The Scientific Method in Action!!! Watch the following clip and identify the steps of The Scientific Method. Was their hypothesis testable? Was their experiment replicable? What was the conclusion of their “scientific endeavor”? Clip: The Scientific Method in Action .

Data Collection Methods

Like other scientists, anthropologists are looking for patterns, associations, and repetitions (Park 2014, 32). There are five basic categories of data collection methods that anthropologists employ: 1) material observation, 2) biological observation, 3) behavioral observation, 4) direct communication, and 5) participant observation. Which method is used varies depending on the anthropological field and to some extent the research question asked.

From the previous discussion, it should be clear that experimentation is one data collection method employed by anthropologists, which can fall within several of the basic categories mentioned above, including material observation. Data collection through material observation means that the researcher is collecting data about objects and settings. This method is used across all the fields of anthropology. Cultural anthropologists, archaeologists, and primatologists might look at the tools used by the subjects. Biological anthropologists might observe the local environment. Written records could be observed by linguistic anthropologists, cultural anthropologists, and archaeologists (Park 2014).

Biological observation includes observations of human and primate anatomy, including genetics and physiology. Paleoanthropologists and primatologists look at fossils. Archaeologists and cultural anthropologists examine the food that people consumed, and along with biological anthropologists may investigate pathogens that impact people (Park 2014).

Collecting data on how people and non-human primates adapt to their cultural and natural environments is the purview of behavioral observation. One might be tempted to say that behavioral observation is the end-all-be-all for anthropologists, but it is important to remember that it is simply one method of data collection. Most anthropologists employ multiple data collection techniques (Park 2014).

Direct communication is a data collection method that is common in the social sciences. Anthropologists in the field prefer to work with informants , people who supply information about the study group. During conversations with informants, anthropologists learn about emic , or insider, perspectives. Data collected in this manner can help the anthropologist to narrow their research and even develop new research questions. Surveys, questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups are other types of direct communication data collection techniques (Park 2014).

The final type of data collection methods is a cornerstone of anthropology— participant observation . Pioneered by Branislaw Malinowski during his research among the Trobriand Islanders in the early to mid-20 th -century, participant observation requires the researcher to live with the research group to not only observe the group but to participate in activities. Through this participation, the goal is to gather data on the emic perspective to better understand why behaviors are practiced. This method does not preclude the use of other types of data collection. Indeed, using multiple data collection techniques can provide a richer interpretation of human behavior. No matter which data collection technique is employed, it is vital to obtain informed consent from the study participants.

Ethics and Anthropological Research

Informed consent is not only an ethical but legal concern when conducting human subject research. Potential participants must:

• be provided with sufficient information to make an informed choice about their participation,
• give consent voluntarily, and
• be competent to make a decision about involvement in the research (Informed Consent 2018, 1146).

This includes ensuring potential subjects understand any risks and benefits that might be involved through their participation. The researcher needs to make it explicit how the data is going to be used and how privacy is going to be maintained. The subjects also need to be informed that they can withdraw from the study at any time. In other words, researchers need to make full disclosure in order to protect the rights and dignity of their research subjects. For anthropologists, this often entails engaging interpreters to help with either verbally conveying the information or transcribing the details into local languages. Anthropologists often record informed consent so that there are no problems later.

What constitutes “good research”?

Clarity and ethics are two things that comprise good research. The purpose and question(s) need to be clearly defined so that the audience understands. The research process also needs to be planned and explained well. Bouchrika on Research.com lays out the “ Top 10 Qualities of Good Academic Research .” It’s worth a look. George Washington University provides a guide for “ 15 Steps to Good Research .” Much of the information on these two sites relates to original research, but the basic ideas apply to research at the undergraduate level even though the research you conduct will be primarily literature research (also called a literature review or lit search). Most, but not all, undergraduate research projects require you to develop a question and then research what answers other people have developed. This is not a bad thing. In fact, all original research starts with a lit search because we want to see if and what other people have done to address the question. This helps to prevent plagiarism. The Purdue Online Writing Lab has a good overview about writing a literature review . WikiHow has advice on how to do a lit search. If you read nothing else, read that.

What does it mean to conduct ethical research?

Nothing can ruin an academic or research career faster than unethical practices. But what does this mean? While there are discipline-specific ethical standards, there are some general qualities to ethical research (Reznick 2017):

Strive for honesty in all scientific communications. Honestly report data, results, methods and procedures, and publication status. Do not fabricate, falsify, or misrepresent data. Do not deceive colleagues, research sponsors, or the public.

Objectivity

Strive to avoid bias in experimental design, data analysis, data interpretation, peer review, personnel decisions, grant writing, expert testimony, and other aspects of research where objectivity is expected or required. Avoid or minimize bias or self-deception. Disclose personal or financial interests that may affect research.

Keep your promises and agreements; act with sincerity; strive for consistency of thought and action.

Carefulness

Avoid careless errors and negligence; carefully and critically examine your own work and the work of your peers. Keep good records of research activities, such as data collection, research design, and correspondence with agencies or journals.

Share data, results, ideas, tools, resources. Be open to criticism and new ideas.

Respect for Intellectual Property

Honor patents, copyrights, and other forms of intellectual property. Do not use unpublished data, methods, or results without permission. Give proper acknowledgement or credit for all contributions to research. Never plagiarize.

Confidentiality

Protect confidential communications, such as papers or grants submitted for publication, personnel records, trade or military secrets, and patient records.

Responsible Publication

Publish in order to advance research and scholarship, not to just advance your own career. Avoid wasteful and duplicative publication.

Responsible Mentoring

Help to educate, mentor, and advise students. Promote their welfare and allow them to make their own decisions.

Respect for colleagues

Respect your colleagues and treat them fairly.

Social Responsibility

Strive to promote social good and prevent or mitigate social harms through research, public education, and advocacy.

Non-Discrimination

Avoid discrimination against colleagues or students on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, or other factors not related to scientific competence and integrity.

Maintain and improve your own professional competence and expertise through lifelong education and learning; take steps to promote competence in science as a whole.

Know and obey relevant laws and institutional and governmental policies.

Animal Care

Show proper respect and care for animals when using them in research. Do not conduct unnecessary or poorly designed animal experiments.

Human Subjects Protection

When conducting research on human subjects, minimize harms and risks and maximize benefits; respect human dignity, privacy, and autonomy; take special precautions with vulnerable populations; and strive to distribute the benefits and burdens of research fairly.

Anthropology has its own ethical charter. You can read the complete statement by the American Anthropological Association, but in sum it states that anthropologists must be cognizant of power differentials among all of the players in research, funding agencies, government officials, academic officials, as well as the researcher and subjects. We must carefully weigh the consequences of our decisions. Specifically, anthropologists must:

• be open and honest about our work
• obtain informed consent and necessary permissions
• consider competing ethical considerations and all affected parties
• make our results accessible
• protect and preserve our records
• be respectful and ethical in all professional relationships.

Brickmore, Barry, Amy Ellwein, Dara Dorsey, and Sharon Browning. 2009. “Addressing Science and Religion.” Accessed March 1, 2022. https://serc.carleton.edu/sp/process_of_science/science_religion.html .

Egger, Anne E. 2009. “Misconceptions and Missing Conceptions About the Process of Science.” Accessed March 1, 2022. https://serc.carleton.edu/sp/process_of_science/misconceptions.html .

Fancher, L. J. 2000. The Great “SM.” Accessed May 7, 2015. http://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/fancher/scimeth.htm .

Helmenstine, Anne Marie. 2019. “What Is the Difference Between Hard and Soft Science?” Accessed March 1, 2022. https://www.thoughtco.com/hard-vs-soft-science-3975989 .

Iaccarino, Maurizio. 2003. “Science and Culture.” EMBO Reports 4(3): 220-223. Accessed March 7, 2022. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1315909/ .

“Informed Consent.” 2018. In The SAGE Encyclopedia of Lifespan Human Development , edited by Marc H. Bornstein, 1145-1148. Vol. 3. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Reference. Gale eBooks Accessed March 2, 2022. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX7423500417/GVRL?u=wash_main&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=4aeb4d91 .

Jurmain, Robert, Lynn Kilgore, and Wenda Trevathan. 2013. Essentials of P hysical A nthropology , 4th edition. Belmont (CA): Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.

Kanazawa, Satoshi. 2008. “Common Misconceptions About Science I: “Scientific Proof.”” Accessed March 1, 2022. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-scientific-fundamentalist/200811/common-misconceptions-about-science-i-scientific-proof .

Kaziek, C. J. and David Pearson. 2014. “Ask a biologist: using the scientific method to solve mysteries.” Accessed May 7, 2015. http://askabiologist.asu.edu/explore/scientific-method .

Larsen, Clark Spencer. 2008. Our O rigins: D iscovering P hysical A nthropology . New York: W.W Norton & Company, Inc.

“Observation, Participant.” 2008. In International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences , 2nd ed., edited by William A. Darity, Jr., 14-17. Vol. 1. Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference USA. Gale eBooks . Accessed March 2, 2022. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/CX3045301796/GVRL?u=wash_main&sid=bookmark-GVRL&xid=96a38b9d .

Park, Michael Alan. 2014. Introducing Anthropology: An Integrated Approach , 6 th edition.

Peregrine, Peter, Yolanda T. Moses, Alan Goodman, Louise Lamphere, and James Lowe Peacock. 2012. “What Is Science in Anthropology?” American Anthropologist 114(4): 593-597. Accessed February 28, 2022. https://www2.lawrence.edu/fast/PEREGRIP/Publications/Science%20in%20Anth.pdf .

Resnik, David B. 2015. “What Is Ethics in Research & Why Is It Important?” National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Accessed November 6, 2017. https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/resources/bioethics/whatis/index.cfm .

Saneda, Tori. 2015. “The Scientific Method.” Accessed March 1, 2022. https://wikieducator.org/Biological_Anthropology/Unit_1:_Evolutionary_Theory/Scientific_Method .

“Shaping Scientists.” 2022. Understanding Science. University of California Museum of Paleontology. Accessed March 7, 2022. https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/%3C?%20echo%20$baseURL;%20?%3E_0_0/scienceandsociety_04 .

Welsch, Robert L., Luis A. Vivanco and Agustin Fuentes. 2017. Anthropology: Asking Questions about Human Origins, Diversity, and Culture . New York: Oxford University Press. New York: McGraw-Hill Education.

Survey of Anthropology Copyright © 2022 by Tori Saneda is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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2.1 Archaeological Research Methods

Learning outcomes.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Describe archaeological techniques for uncovering artifacts.
• Explain the importance of context in making sense of artifacts and describe how researchers record content while working in the field.
• Describe the law of superposition as used in the field of archaeology.
• Describe the different types of relative dating methods used by archaeologists.
• Identify and briefly define four absolute or chronometric dating methods.

Many people have an inherent fascination with the human past. Perhaps this fascination stems from the fact that people recognize themselves in the objects left behind by those who have lived before. Relics of past civilizations, in the form of human-made cultural artifacts , temples, and burial remains, are the means by which we can begin to understand the thoughts and worldviews of ancient peoples. In the quest to understand these ancient societies, human curiosity has sometimes led to fantastical myths about races of giant humans, dragons, and even extraterrestrial beings. In the realm of archaeology, less speculative methods are used to study the human past. Scientific approaches and techniques are the foundation of archaeology today.

Archaeological Techniques

In archaeology, the first step in conducting field research is to do a survey of an area that has the potential to reveal surface artifacts or cultural debris. Surveys can be done by simply walking across a field, or they may involve using various technologies, such as drones or Google Earth, to search for unusual topography and potential structures that would be difficult to see from the ground. Cultural artifacts that are found may become the basis for an archaeological excavation of the site. A random sampling of excavation units or test pits can determine a site’s potential based on the quantity of cultural materials found. GPS coordinates are often collected for each piece of cultural debris, along with notes on specific plants and animal found at the site, which can be indicators of potential natural resources. Features such as trails, roads, and house pits are documented and included in a full set of field notes. Government agencies have different protocols about what constitutes an archaeological site; the standard in many areas is six cultural objects found in close proximity to one another.

When preparing a site for excavation, archaeologists will divide the entire site into square sections using a grid system, which involves roping off measured squares over the surface of the site. This grid system enables archaeologists to document and map all artifacts and features as they are found in situ (in the original location). All objects and features uncovered are assigned catalog or accession numbers, which are written on labels and attached to the artifacts. These labels are especially important if artifacts are removed from the site.

Excavation is a slow process. Archaeologists work with trowels and even toothbrushes to carefully remove earth from around fragile bone and other artifacts. Soil samples may be collected to conduct pollen studies. Ecofacts —objects of natural origins, such as seeds, shells, or animal bones—found at a site may be examined by other specialists, such as zooarchaeologists , who study animal remains, or archaeobotanists , who specialize in the analysis of floral (plant) remains with an interest in the historical relationships between plants and people over time.

Every cultural and natural object and feature is fully documented in the field notes, with its exact placement and coordinates recorded on a map using the grid system as a guide. These coordinates represent an object’s primary context . If uncovered objects are moved before documentation takes place, the archaeologist will lose the archaeological context of that object and its associated data. Archaeological context is the key foundation of archaeological principles and practice. In order to understand the significance and even age of artifacts, features, and ecofacts, one needs to know their context and association with other objects as they were found in situ. Objects that have been removed from their primary context are said to be in a secondary context .

Careful and proper documentation is vitally important. This information becomes part of the archaeological record and guides and contributes to future research and analysis.

Archaeological Dating Methods

Establishing the age of cultural objects is an important element of archaeological research. Determining the age of both a site and the artifacts found within is key to understanding how human cultures developed and changed over time. Other areas of science, such as paleontology and geology, also use dating techniques to understand animal and plant species in the ancient past and how the earth and animal species evolved over time.

Relative Dating

The earliest dating methods utilized the principles of relative dating , developed in geology. Observing exposed cliffsides in canyons, geologists noted layers of different types of stone that they called strata ( stratum in the singular). They hypothesized that the strata at the bottom were older than the strata higher up; this became known as the law of superposition . According to the law of superposition, not just geological layers but also the objects found within them can be assigned relative ages based on the assumption that objects in deeper layers are older than objects in layers above. The application of the law of superposition to archaeological fieldwork is sometimes called stratigraphic superposition . This method assumes that any cultural or natural artifact that is found within a stratum, or that cuts across two or more strata in a cross-cutting relationship , is younger than the stratum itself, as each layer would have taken a long time to form and, unless disturbed, would have remained stable for a very long time. Examples of forces that might cause disturbances in strata include natural forces such as volcanos or floods and the intervention of humans, animals, or plants.

The law of superposition was first proposed in 1669 by the Danish scientist Nicolas Steno . Some of the first applications of this law by scholars provided ages for megafauna (large animals, most commonly mammals) and dinosaur bones based on their positions in the earth. It was determined that the mammalian megafauna and the dinosaur bones had been deposited tens of thousands of years apart, with the dinosaur remains being much older. These first indications of the true age of fossil remains suggested a revolutionary new understanding of the scale of geological time.

It was eventually determined that if a specific set and sequence of strata is noted in several sites and over a large enough area, it can be assumed that the ages will be the same for the same strata at different locations in the area. This insight enabled geologists and archaeologists to use the structures of soils and rocks to date phenomena noted throughout a region based on their relative positions. Archaeologists call this method archaeological stratification , and they look for stratified layers of artifacts to determine human cultural contexts. Stratigraphic layers found below cultural layers provide a basis for determining age, with layers above assumed to be more recent than those below.

Another method of dating utilized by archaeologists relies on typological sequences . This method compares created objects to other objects of similar appearance with the goal of determining how they are related. This method is employed by many subdisciplines of archaeology to understand the relationships between common objects. For example, typological sequencing is often conducted on spearpoints created by Indigenous peoples by comparing the types of points found at different locations and analyzing how they changed over time based on their relative positions in an archaeological site.

Another form of typological sequencing involves the process of seriation . Seriation is a relative dating method in which artifacts are placed in chronological order once they are determined to be of the same culture. English Egyptologist, Flinders Petrie introduced seriation in the 19th century. He developed the method to date burials he was uncovering that contained no evidence of their dates and could not be sequenced through stratigraphy . To address the problem, he developed a system of dating layers based on pottery (see Figure 2.4).

Typological sequences of pottery, stone tools, and other objects that survive in archaeological sites are not only used to provide dating estimates. They can also reveal much about changes in culture, social structure, and worldviews over time. For example, there are significant changes in stratigraphy during the agricultural age, or Neolithic period, at around 12,000 BCE. These changes include the appearance of tended soils, pollens that indicate the cultivation of specific plants, evidence of more sedentary living patterns, and the increased use of pottery as the storage of food and grain became increasingly important. Archaeological evidence also shows a growing population and the development of a more complex cultural and economic system, which involved ownership of cattle and land and the beginning of trade. Trade activities can be determined when pottery types associated with one site appear in other nearby or distant locations. Recognizing the connections between objects used in trade can shed light on possible economic and political interrelationships between neighboring communities and settlements.

Chronometric Dating Methods

Chronometric dating methods , also known as absolute dating methods , are methods of dating that rely on chemical or physical analysis of the properties of archaeological objects. Using chronometric methods, archaeologists can date objects to a range that is more precise than can be achieved via relative dating methods. Radiocarbon dating , which uses the radioactive isotope carbon-14 ( 14 C), is the most common method used to date organic materials. Once a living organism dies, the carbon within it begins to decay at a known rate. The amount of the remaining residual carbon can be measured to determine, within a margin of error of 50 years, when the organism died. The method is only valid for samples of organic tissue between 300 and 50,000 years old. To ensure accuracy, objects collected for testing are promptly sealed in nonporous containers so that no atmospheric organic substances, such as dust, pollen, or bacteria, can impact the results.

Dating systems that measure the atomic decay of uranium or the decay of potassium into argon are used to date nonorganic materials such as rocks. The rates of decay of radioactive materials are known and can be measured. The radioactive decay clock begins when the elements are first created, and this decay can be measured to determine when the objects were created and/or used in the past. Volcanic materials are particularly useful for dating sites because volcanoes deposit lava and ash over wide areas, and all the material from an eruption will have a similar chemical signature. Once the ash is dated, cultural materials can also be dated based on their position relative to the ash deposit.

The technique of dendrochronology relies on measuring tree rings to determine the age of ancient structures or dwellings that are made of wood. Tree rings develop annually and vary in width depending on the quantity of nutrients and water available in a specific year. Cross dating is accomplished by matching patterns of wide and narrow rings between core samples taken from similar trees in different locations. This information can then be applied to date archaeological remains that contain wood, such as posts and beams. Dendrochronology has been used at the Pueblo Bonita archaeological site in Chaco Canyon, New Mexico, to help date house structures that were occupied by the Pueblo people between 800 and 1150 CE. The Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, based in Tucson, is the world’s oldest dendrochronology lab. Go on a tree-ring expedition!

The most effective approach for dating archaeological objects is to apply a variety of dating techniques, which allows the archaeologist to triangulate or correlate data. Correlating multiple methods of dating provides strong evidence for the specific time period of an archaeological site.

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Introdution to Anthropology

Anthropological Research Methods and Techniques

What is research.

Research is to see what everybody else has seen, and to think what nobody else has thought. By Albert Szent-Gyorgyi

These structural procedures and rules are known as methodology. It is the methodology which differentiates scientific research from a non-scientific investigation.

What is Scientific Research?

Now let’s look at the scientific view on Anthropological Research .

Scientific Research in Anthropology

However, there is a small chance for such drastic transformation in subjects like biology or social science as they deal with living matters. In social science, the subjects of research are human beings. So, making alterations in such subjects is not at all possible for a social scientist.

Anthropological research is different from other social science research. E.g. , sociologists, by and large, work in complex societies. They often conduct surveys, use structured interviews, and administer questionnaires.

Scientific Research Methods in Anthropology

Science and scientific method.

The term science has been used differently by different people in different contexts. We often come across in advertisements and newspapers, statements such as ‘the product are scientifically proved/verified’, ‘Tests are carried out scientifically here’ etc.

Let’s summarise the above definitions which reveal science includes two aspects. One is the objective knowledge and the other is the method of investigation. So, science includes both the process and the product.

Scientific Process

Scientific products.

From the above discussion we can infer that in order to attain scientific knowledge, it is mandatory to go through certain scientific processes. We call it the scientific method. Knowledge of scientific methods helps researchers to design and organise their research activities. It would help them to differentiate facts from speculations.

Scientific Method

Characteristics of scientific method in anthropology.

These are some points of characteristics of the scientific method in anthropology :

Steps of Scientific Method in Research Anthropology

Anthropology as a science.

Hence, Anthropology is a science like any other science. Anthropologists study the different aspects of human behaviour like family structure, way of acquiring mates, dispute settlement, religious rituals and infanticide by applying scientific methods.

Method and Methodology Approaches and Perspectives in Anthropology

The terms method, methodology, approaches and perspectives have many times been used without much conceptual and operational clarity. It is very difficult to demarcate each of these terms.

Research Methods, Techniques or Tools

In general usage, a method is a broader term than a technique, which is very specific. A method could make use of more than one technique to achieve a given end. In this sense, a case study could be said to be a method, for which one might have to use different techniques such as observation, interview, questionnaire etc.

Approaches to Anthropology

Comparative approach.

The comparative method refers to the method of comparing different groups, societies or social institutions within the same society or between societies to show whether and why they are similar or different in certain aspects.

Cross-Cultural Comparison

In Anthropology cross-cultural comparison is a method of studying cultural phenomena across cultures of the same period.

Ethnology, a branch of Social-Cultural Anthropology is nothing but a comparative study of different cultures involving cross-cultural comparison. This examines, interprets, analyses, and compares the results of ethnography with the data gathered about different societies. This uses such data to compare and contrast and to make generalisations about society and culture.

Historical Method

We have already studied out that the historical method is nothing but studying a phenomenon in historical sequence and hence it facilitates comparison across time. The principles of biological evolution have definitely influenced the historical method.

Ethnographic Method

The ethnographic method is the core of anthropological research . The traditional ethnographic approach assumes that cultures are whole units and can be comprehended as such. It tries to interpret and describe the symbolic and contextual meanings of the everyday practices in their natural setting.

Types of Anthropological Data

Data is the basic unit of any scientific research. The term data usually refers to distinct pieces of information in a raw or unorganised form, such as alphabets, numbers or symbols. It can represent conditions, ideas, or objects. So data means any information collected for research.

Now let’s discussed different types of anthropological data such as primary and secondary data, qualitative and quantitative data in detail:

Primary and Secondary Data

In economics, the data may be primarily in the form of prices of goods and cost of production, or in other words, in the form of numbers. In Anthropology, it may be in the form of kinship terms, customs, rituals, texts of native culture, and descriptions of material and non-material culture, or in other words, in the form of words.

Qualitative Data and Quantitative Data

In social science research, different methodologies are used for arriving at results and conclusions. In a way, this is classified as either qualitative research or quantitative research.

Qualitative and Quantitative Research

Quantitative research involves statistical analysis. Hence, this is also known as statistical research. Objectivity is the prime merit of quantitative research, while it also claims to have higher reliability and validity.

Methods and Techniques in Anthropology

Following are the methods and techniques in anthropology:

FAQ Related to Anthropological Research Methods and Techniques

Does anthropology count as a science.

We have seen that any subject is called science because of its adoption of the scientific method. Anthropology applies the principles of science to study human behaviour in the same way as natural, biological and physical sciences do.

What are the major approaches of anthropology?

What are the methods of data collection in anthropology, you might also like, marriage, family, and kinship: meaning, definition, types, what is social-cultural anthropology theories, what is biological anthropology fields of study, history, what are archaeological sites types, linguistic anthropology: language, culture, features, what is kinship types of kinship groups, terminology, behaviour, folkloristic anthropology: meaning, definitions, folk literature, what is social anthropology definition, scope, nature, archaeological anthropology, process, types of sites, what is anthropology definition, nature, branches of anthropology, what are marriages 13 types of marriages, types of family in sociology: functions, leave a reply cancel reply.

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Field methods.

The various ways anthropologists conduct research in naturalistic settings, or in the field, are called field methods. They include participation in social life and various forms of observation. Anthropology relies on field methods as its ultimate source of information. Research in the field, known as fieldwork, involves collecting primary data on humans, other primates, and the objects and processes relevant to their lives. Through further examination, analysis, and comparison in library, laboratory, or office settings, researchers produce the discipline’s general principles and theoretical advances.

Various field methods are used, depending on the data available, to illuminate a chosen problem. The diverse range of interests in anthropology is usually represented in the North American tradition by reference to its four subfields, namely, physical or biological anthropology; archaeology; sociocultural anthropology, also known as cultural or social anthropology or ethnology; and linguistic anthropology. There is, however, significant overlap in the kinds of data, and therefore the field methods, used in each of the subfields.

Methods of the Four Subfields

Biological anthropology.

Physical or biological anthropology makes use of field methods combined with laboratory work to understand aspects of humankind as a biological species. The place of humans in nature, their anatomy, physiology, evolution, similarities and differences with related species, physical adaptations to various environments, and biological diversity are all topics of interest to biological anthropology and are studied in the field.

Biological studies of deceased individuals and past groups make use of archaeological techniques to acquire fossil, bone, and other tissue samples and record the context in which they are found. Genetic and medical studies use blood, other physical samples, and anthropometric data, such as weight and height, collected from living or deceased individuals. Ethological or animal behavior studies of nonhuman primates make use of social observation and limited participation in animal groups.

Archaeology

Archaeological anthropology uses field methods to understand all aspects of the human past, with particular emphasis on what can be learned from remaining material culture, including artifacts and stratigraphic contexts. Field archaeologists conduct landscape surveys and sampling to locate sites of past human activity and identify patterns of occupation of the landscape. They conduct controlled excavations to collect artifacts and human remains, from which they assemble detailed data about particular sites.

In ethnoarchaeology, living people are observed and joined by means of participant-observation and conversation in order to learn how artifacts are made and disposed. Discarded objects and the processes involved in the formation of archaeological sites, or taphonomy, are also observed to learn how to interpret the archaeological record.

Sociocultural Anthropology

Sociocultural anthropology studies contemporary human groups in the field in order to understand the range of social relationships and organizations that human groups exhibit, as well as the learned beliefs and values that guide behavior. Most fieldwork in this subfield is directed toward producing ethnographies, or written descriptions of ethnic groups. Thus, ethnological field techniques are often termed ethnographic methods.

Living among the people under study, ethnographers use observation and description of the settings in which people live, participant-observation in social activities, various forms of interviewing, and focus groups. Participant-observation is cultural anthropology’s central contribution to the methodology of social science.

Linguistic Anthropology

Linguistic anthropology is concerned with language and its relationship to human culture and biology. The field methods of linguistic anthropology include interviewing speakers of a language; engaging in participant-observation to discover locally important social contexts and corresponding language use; recording naturalistic utterances and discourse; and describing nonspoken forms of language, such as writing systems in physical media and visual signing.

Linguistic anthropologists in the field need to learn local languages in a naturalistic setting, without the aid of written texts or trained teachers. Language structure, including phonology (sound systems), morphology (word structure), and syntax (sentence structure), can be worked out in the field by collecting numerous texts for comparison and analysis. The ways in which language use intersects with social and cultural conventions, including the linguistic forms used in particular situations and the cultural meanings attributed to them, are best studied in the field.

Categories of Anthropological Field Methods

All anthropological field methods can be grouped into five basic categories: (1) material observation, (2) biological observation, (3) behavioral observation, (4) direct communication, and (5) participant-observation. All five types of field methods involve observation, including the use of any of the five human senses to acquire information about the environment.

There are two basic means by which the field researcher engages with a topic of study: subject-object and subject-subject relationships. A subject-object relationship is pure observation, involving a subject (the observing anthropologist) and an object (the observed thing, setting, or person). Subject-object relations are one-way, in that an active observer collects information about a passive, independent, or nonresponding object. This is an appropriate method to learn about inanimate objects, including artifacts, which reflect human and nonhuman primate activity. It is also ideal when collecting data on what people actually do as opposed to what they say they do or when biology and behavior are being observed without purposeful input from the people under study.

Subject-subject relations, on the other hand, involve a mutual, dialogical relationship between two thinking beings. This relationship is ideal for research situations in which the people studied are capable of and willing to communicate information about their inner states or beliefs. The subject-subject mode of engagement allows the meanings, abstractions, and mental models of informants to be directly communicated. These data are among the most interesting and rich forms of anthropological knowledge. While all field methods involve observation, they vary in the degree to which subject-object or subject-subject engagement is used.

Material Observation

The observation of physical settings provides the best information on the material foundations of social life, including ecological and economic relations. Observation of physical settings is also the most reliable method for producing evidence of actual, as opposed to ideal, behaviors, which may be repressed or denied by the populations engaging in them. Family, social organization, and even ideologies respond to environmental conditions and leave physical traces.

Observing objects and settings allows the description and analysis of a range of physical characteristics. Anthropologists in the field document landscapes, natural objects, built environments, architectural features, and artifacts.

Contemporarily occupied settings are visible and in use and are often easily accessed, although gaining access may require negotiation with local people. Material remains of past behaviors, though, are often buried and deteriorated, making their discovery, recovery, and analysis challenging in other ways. Because material remains are often the only available evidence of past behaviors, archaeologists are most consistently developed and specialized in the study of material culture in the field.

Archaeological methods for recovering objects and settings are designed to allow the maximum amount of information to be obtained, preserved, and communicated. Survey methods vary depending on the size and characteristics of the terrain to be mapped for sites of interest, and these methods often make use of statistical techniques to ensure representative coverage. While survey techniques need have no impact on the material record, excavation systematically destroys contextual information about where objects were found in relation to one another. Therefore, excavation is done using an exactly surveyed, three-dimensional grid system, and each layer of soil is slowly and painstakingly removed and a careful record made of each stratum and how any objects found were situated.

Observing materials provides a window through time because of the relative stability of some material traces of behaviors. These methods produce data from objects rather than people, but in combination with the other methods of anthropology, they provide insight into how people make, use, and understand materials.

Biological Observation

Humans and related primates are biological species that can be studied in the field either as individual organisms or as populations. Such study can use methods that train observation on the form, function, and evolution of life. This group of methods includes gathering data on the anatomy and physiology of humans, hominid ancestors, and other primates.

Some of these data are recorded in the field from living subjects, using calipers, tape measures, scales, and other devices. Anthropometry, as this biological measurement is called, can be done either in the field or in the laboratory and provides data on such variables as stature, growth rate, and nutritional status of populations. In addition, samples of bodily fluids can be taken in the field and tested in the laboratory for blood group, diseases, and genetic characteristics and affinities. Biological observations can also be made of nonprimate species in order to determine which animals and plants are present in the environment and the ecological relations between these and the population being studied.

Refined physical observations are made in the laboratory, but contextual information, such as the disposition of the remains in relation to one another and surrounding objects, are discovered in the field and form the basis for sophisticated interpretations. Thus, field methods for collection and documentation of physical remains specify the same careful and detailed care that artifacts in archaeological sites require. Tiny biological samples, such as bone fragments and burned grains, can be retrieved by shaking soil through screens and by flotation, in which soil is placed in water, which allows light carbonized materials to float to the surface, where they can be removed for identification and study.

Biological observations are also made of fossilized remains of human ancestors and other species, and in these cases the field methods of paleontology come into play. Fossils are often embedded in sedimentary rock and are discovered through systematic survey of landscapes where sediments of appropriate age are eroding on the surface. Once an appropriate area is identified, excavation can reveal more materials and can provide geological samples of plant and animal remains, which can be tested in laboratories to determine the approximate age of the fossils as well as climatic, floral, and faunal information about the time when the fossilized animals lived.

Biological and material observation overlap when artifacts and human remains are found in association. For this reason the two groups of methods are often combined. For example, skeletal material associated with grave goods reveals information about mortuary practices and social status.

Physical anthropology traditionally emphasizes the observation of anatomy rather than physiology, which is left more to medical study. However, one extension of physiology, behavior, is of central interest to anthropology and is, for the most part, best observed in the field.

Behavioral Observation

All primates exhibit behaviors, defined as volitional movements, that can be observed directly in the field. These behaviors include kinesics, dance, and speech, as well as specific intentional movements such as ritual performances and food procurement. Behavior, in other words, refers to actions that derive at least in part from intentional direction. These actions include gross movements such as walking or speaking, but not physiological measures like heart rate, although some physiological measures are influenced by volitional behaviors.

By observing behaviors without engaging with the observed individuals, anthropologists can document interactions without influencing them. The primatologist, for example, can watch a monkey troop from a distance using binoculars. Such methods are also useful in situations in which linguistic communication is not possible, such as the earliest phase of some cultural anthropology fieldwork.

Many nuances of daily life reveal themselves to the quiet and patient observer of behavior. Through these observations one can develop a typology of the kinds of behaviors that are repeated and keep a record of how often and in what circumstances individuals undertake them. For example, one can describe grooming, greeting, and ritualized actions in a relatively objective manner by employing pure observation. Initial language learning also benefits from simple observation of utterances. Certain sounds and words are often repeated, allowing an initial entry into an unfamiliar linguistic world.

When linguistic communication is possible, one can listen to others’ utterances without engaging in conversations. Here, the behaviors observed are linguistic and thus include information on meanings and inner states, but such communications are not truly dialogic, as direct communication is.

Direct Communication

This group of field methods includes all means of linguistic, paralinguistic, and other conscious interaction between anthropologist and research subjects. Rather than merely observing a living person or animal or taking notes on an inert object, these methods include two-way communication and allow the deepest possible exchange of information on mental states between two minds. In other words, direct communication is a subject-subject rather than a subject-object means of encounter.

The weakest form of direct communication is the survey, comprised of a series of standard questions, often requiring numerical or precisely formatted answers, distributed to a large number of people. Surveys are particularly useful for providing information, summarizable in charts and graphs, about whole populations. To ensure that survey results are representative of very large groups, for which complete coverage is impractical, the surveys must be distributed to a representative sample of the population.

Surveys are favored in sociological research but are used only lightly in anthropology because of their tendency to distance the researcher from the subjects and because they can be awkward to use among illiterate populations. Surveys can be conducted in some situations by mail, that is, without the anthropologist’s having to enter the field. However, anthropologists can also administer them in person in either written or oral form or distribute them directly while in the field.

Among the most valued field methods in anthropology are interviews, which are conversations between the anthropologist and informants and are designed to elicit a specified kind of information. In formal or structured interviews, the anthropologist provides a standardized list of questions. These are carefully planned to provide data capable of addressing theoretical and empirical concerns. Formal interviewing is a particularly useful method for producing comparable, quantifiable data on a particular topic. Its disadvantage is that it can force informants’ knowledge into predetermined categories, ratifying rather than enriching and correcting theoretical models. Furthermore, as an artificial form of communication, it has the potential to stifle the more natural and genuine exchange of ideas that is found in informal conversation.

In informal or unstructured interviews, anthropologist and informant chat about a set topic. While the anthropologist has particular questions and a range of issues in mind, he or she allows the conversation partner to indulge in digressions and tangents and to take a great deal of control over the content of the discussion. The data produced by informal interviews are relatively idiosyncratic and thus often not amenable to statistical analysis. However, they may represent the best compromise between obtaining data to test a particular hypothesis and gaining insight into local views.

In focus groups, the researcher brings together several people selected for their particular knowledge or social roles and moderates a discussion among them about a topic of interest. The advantage of focus groups is that the participants jog one another’s memories, encourage one another, and together can provide a more complete, nuanced, and publicly acceptable account of the topic of interest than an individual interviewee could.

The simplest yet also the most intimate and rich form of direct communication is a spontaneous conversation between the anthropologist and an informant. Interlocutors are most likely to speak in an unselfconscious manner, revealing those things that are most important to them.

Finally, there are forms of direct communication that are nonlinguistic but nevertheless often deeply revealing. First of all, during conversations and interviews, a great deal of valuable information is conveyed  paralinguistically, by such means as tone of voice, facial expression, and gesture; although these paralinguistic modes could also be categorized as observed behaviors, in a conversational context they are often used to enrich direct communication.

When the interaction is between a human researcher and a nonhuman primate, nonlinguistic behaviors are a valuable medium for direct communication. Calls, gestures, and glances can communicate feelings and desires between species. In ethological field research, however, anthropologists must avoid assuming that expressions resembling ones from their species and culture have a similar meaning for another species. Nevertheless, anthropological researchers of nonhuman primates can attain a remarkable degree of direct communication with their research subjects without the benefit of language or mental apparatus identical to the other species.

Direct communication allows intentional transmission between researchers and subjects of information about internal states. However, except insofar as the local language and its idioms are used, researchers using direct communication need not enter the world of their informants behaviorally. Crossing that threshold characterizes the final group of anthropological field methods.

Participant-Observation

Participant-observation involves the immersion of the researcher in another social world. The researcher seeks to emulate the subjects’ behaviors and thought patterns in order to achieve an empathetic understanding of their points of view.

The attempt to emulate local ways of life gives the researcher a firsthand experience of what they are like, and it demonstrates the researcher’s respect for local customs, which may improve rapport. However, it must be stressed that even though an anthropologist lives in a local style of dwelling, eats traditional foods, attends native rituals, and so on, the anthropologist does not have exactly the same quality of experience as these activities evoke in local people. This is so first of all because the anthropologist does not merely participate in routines but is highly conscious and observant, taking nothing for granted and noting the experience in great detail. Second, if the anthropologist hails from another cultural background, these new experiences will be registered in the context of earlier experiences that are different from those of local people and that may on a personal level seem strange or even immoral.

Participant-observation is suited almost exclusively to the study of living human societies. To an even greater degree than interviewing, it allows the anthropologist to attain a sense of local points of view, cultural assumptions, and social conventions because one must live in accordance with them. Social errors are frequent at first but are often easily forgiven by one’s hosts, who recognize the foreign anthropologist as being in a childlike condition of ignorance but growing in poise under their instruction. Each social blunder in participant-observation is a learning experience pointing to a cultural difference between the anthropologist’s and the hosts’ cultures. As time goes on, errors become fewer and competence grows.

The lengthy period scheduled for participant-observation fieldwork, typically at least a year, allows initial impressions to be tempered, enriched, and corrected as familiarity with the local way of life deepens. It also allows a growing rapport that, under the right conditions, matures into a state in which the anthropologist’s presence becomes so familiar to people that they behave more naturally. For this reason, in spite of its relatively high reliance on subjective feelings of empathy, participant-observation is arguably the most accurate way of understanding another culture.

Technologies of Fieldwork

Anthropologists use a wide variety of technologies to enhance what can be taken in by the senses and recorded in memory. Survey and excavation of artifacts and biological remains make use of many tools, ranging from rulers to remote sensing and geographic information systems equipment to precisely locate and map finds. Simple trowels in dry settings, and hoses in wet ones, aid the recovery of objects from the earth.

All anthropological fieldwork makes intensive use of writing, either on paper or via computer, to produce permanent records of findings, or field notes. Taking good field notes depends on purposeful observation, as true in ethnographic as in other anthropological research. Quite often, rough notes are taken during the day’s labor, as much to avoid being obtrusive as to allow the field-worker to take in what is happening with full attention. In the evening, before sleep intervenes and memories are lost, rough notes are carefully transformed into full, detailed ones.

 Descriptive field notes are supplemented by technologies that allow the direct capture of information. Sound recording allows exact words, songs, and linguistic samples to be collected. Photography allows the capture of settings, sites, objects, and activities. Cinematic recording captures visual action and sound together and is particularly useful for the study of dance and craft techniques. Of course, portable computers allow storage of all of these media and can run helpful applications, such as databases that store data for further analysis. Genealogical information, for example, is managed much more easily with the help of computer databases. Where there are no power grids, portable solar electric systems can be used to power this equipment.

Ethical Issues

A variety of ethical concerns surround fieldwork. For example, anthropologists must take care to collect information in the field without producing harm or discomfort for their hosts. Field-workers avoid putting informants into dangerous or awkward positions. For instance, field-workers may allow informants to remain anonymous if they desire.

Field-workers may also encounter conflicts over the ownership and study of the artifacts, biological specimens, and even ethnographic data they collect. The populations under study, as well as people acting as their descendants or representatives, may challenge researchers. To ensure that local groups’ approval is secured and respected, it is vital that proper permits be obtained and that those groups be consulted and involved in the research.

Objectivity, Subjectivity, and Intersubjectivity

All anthropological research requires acute attention to perspectives as an integral part of its system of knowledge, or epistemology. In the field, this attention takes the form of an awareness of multiple points of view, guiding assumptions, and purposes.

From the perspective of the researcher, there are three possible epistemological stances, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, and each appropriate to different kinds of fieldwork: objectivity, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity. Objectivity refers to perceiving and describing something from as neutral and unbiased a perspective as possible in order to produce observations that can be verified by a trained community of observers. Although objectivity can never be absolute or perfect, it is an important baseline from which to accurately and comparably measure objects, organisms, and behaviors. Objectivity is also needed to provide a factual description of what things physically exist, as opposed to imagined, abstract, or metaphysical entities. It also provides a guide for accuracy. Without a commitment to objectivity, anthropological fieldwork loses its grounding perspective as well as its trustworthiness.

Objectivity is insufficient for successful fieldwork, however, because it enforces a distance between researchers and researched, serving as a barrier to empathy. Self-consciously engaging their own subjectivity, researchers can draw on their own background and interests to allow a more emotional and value-based engagement. Using subjectivity in the field, one interprets observations with the help of personal feelings or opinions, which provide one with a more meaningful and artistically expressive connection to the objects and subjects of research. While unbridled subjectivity can allow observers to lose touch with the reality before them, measured and self-conscious subjectivity can deeply enrich the humanistic engagement of researchers with the topic or people under study. Indeed, since even the most objective observation is tinged with subjectivity, field-workers strive to know their own biases.

While elements of both objectivity and subjectivity are involved in all the field methods, a third mode of engagement characterizes direct communication and participant-observation. This mode is inter-subjectivity, or the mutual engagement of two or more subjective perspectives in conversation or activity. Intersubjectivity is self-consciously used as a field method to remind researchers that their individual informants are, like the researchers, perceiving their world from unique perspectives meaningful to them. Intersubjectivity is a valuable method to communicate the meaning systems of conversation partners in a way that helps to preserve their emotional tenor.

The theoretical perspective of a researcher profoundly influences what questions are asked and what field methods are employed. A theoretical interest in how environmental factors influence behavior would direct the field-worker to observe and measure these factors in quality and quantity. On the other hand, a theoretical interest in how local value systems influence choices would necessitate interactions with people to access, relate to, and describe their inner states.

Through anthropology we study ourselves by learning how we compare to others: our ancestors, other peoples and cultures, and our cousins in the animal kingdom. The range of field methods reflects anthropology’s effort to understand humanity from within and without, in both its broadest outlines and its most particular manifestations.

References:

• Banning, E. B. (2002). Archaeological survey. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
• Bernard, H. R. (2001). Research methods in anthropology: Qualitative and quantitative approaches (3rd ed.). Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira.
• David, N., & Kramer, C. (2001). Ethnoarchaeology in action. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• DeWalt, K. M., & DeWalt, B. R. (2001). Participantobservation: A guide for fieldworkers. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira.
• Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (1995). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Hester, T. R., Shafer, H. J., & Feder, K. L. (1997). Field methods in archaeology. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield.
• Newman, P., & Ratliff, M. (Eds.). (2001). Linguistic fieldwork. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Setchell, J. M. (2003). Field and laboratory methods in primatology: A practical guide. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
• Spradley, J. P. (1980). Participant observation. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

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The 4 Main Branches of Anthropology – Unlocking the Secrets of Human Diversity

Welcome to our exploration of the fascinating world of anthropology! In this blog post, we’ll delve into the four fundamental branches of anthropology, shedding light on how each contributes to deciphering the intricate tapestry of human diversity.

From archaeology to linguistics, biological anthropology to socio-cultural anthropology , each branch offers unique insights into the complexities of human society and culture.

What is Anthropology?

Anthropology is a multidisciplinary field of study that explores and examines human beings, their societies, cultures, and the biological aspects of humanity.

It seeks to understand the diverse facets of human existence. By studying social structures, cultural beliefs and practices, language and evolutionary history, anthroplogists seek to decipher the ways in which individuals and groups interact within their environments.

It also provides valuable insights into the complexity and diversity of human life. Thus it helps us better understand ourselves, our origins, and our place in the world.

What Do Anthropologists Do?

Anthropologists use a holistic approach, considering various factors such as historical context, environmental influences, and societal dynamics when studying human societies and cultures.

They employ a range of research methods, including participant observation , interviews, surveys, and analysis of artifacts, to gather data and gain insights into different aspects of human life.

The field of anthropology is typically divided into four main branches.

The Four Main Branches of Anthropology

Anthropology, the study of humanity, encompasses a vast array of subjects and disciplines.

Within this expansive field, four distinct branches have emerged – Archaeological Anthropology, Biological Anthropology , Linguistic Anthropology, and Socio-cultural Anthropology.

Together, these four branches of anthropology provide a comprehensive framework for understanding the intricate facets of human existence.

They offer valuable insights into our past, present, and future, fostering cross-cultural awareness, challenging ethnocentrism, and promoting a deeper understanding and appreciation for the diversity that defines us as a species.

Through their collective endeavors, anthropologists continue to unlock the secrets of human history, culture, biology, and language, enriching our knowledge and expanding our horizons as we navigate the complexities of the world we inhabit.

Archaeological Anthropology: Revealing the Footprints of Our Ancestors

One of the foundational branches of anthropology, archaeological anthropology, serves as a bridge to our collective past.

It is an academic discipline that delves into the historical fabric of civilizations, unraveling the intricate tapestry of human history through the remnants left behind.

In their quest to understand and interpret the past, archaeological anthropologists engage in a detailed study of artifacts, structures, and cultural remains from previous civilizations.

The fragments of ancient societies they uncover shed light on the customs, beliefs, and daily routines of those who lived before us.

Archaeological anthropology provides a unique perspective on the diversity of human civilizations throughout history. By examining cultural artifacts, architectural structures, and even burial sites, these researchers can draw conclusions about societal norms, value systems, and technological advancements.

Through the study of archaeological anthropology, we are given a glimpse into the material worlds produced and inhabited by ancient human communities.

This exploration not only enriches our understanding of human evolution but also enhances our appreciation of the complexities and richness of human cultures across time.

Linguistic Anthropology: Decoding the Power of Language in Shaping Culture

Language is not merely a tool for communication. It is a powerful force that shapes our perceptions, behaviors, and cultural identities.

Linguistic anthropology, one of the main branches of anthropology, delves deep into this intricate relationship between language and culture, exploring how language both reflects and influences society.

From the standpoint of linguistic anthropology, language is seen as a symbolic system of sounds or gestures that convey meaning. This discipline emphasizes the importance of context in language use and stresses the social and cultural factors that influence how language is used in specific situations.

Linguistic anthropologists scrutinize various aspects of language, including syntax, semantics, and phonetics, to understand the subtle nuances that different languages carry.

They delve into the study of language patterns, dialects, and even non-verbal communication, such as gestures and body language. Through this lens, they decode the intricacies and complexities of human interaction.

The Impact of Language on Identity and Culture

One of the core focuses of linguistic anthropologists is examining how language shapes our perceptions and identities. For instance, the language we use can reflect our social status, professional role, or regional identity. It can also reveal our beliefs, values, and biases, providing a window into our cultural background and personal worldview.

The Dynamics of Power

Moreover, linguistic anthropology explores the dynamics of power in language use. It investigates how language can be used to establish, reinforce, or challenge social hierarchies and power structures. For example, the choice of language or dialect can signal social superiority or inferiority, and the control over language use can be a form of power.

The study of linguistic anthropology also extends to the realm of literacy practices. Linguistic anthropologists examine how the ability to read and write impacts social interactions and cultural practices. Literacy is seen not just as a cognitive skill but as a social practice that can influence power relations, social status, and cultural identity.

Biological Anthropology: Tracing the Origins and Evolution of Homo Sapiens

Situated at the crossroads of biology and anthropology, biological anthropology offers a fascinating and in-depth exploration of our evolutionary history.

This field delves into the study of human evolution, genetic variations, and adaptations, tracing the intricate journey of the evolution of mankind.

Biological anthropologists employ a range of tools and methodologies to investigate our origins. From examining skeletal remains and ancient DNA to studying primates , our closest living relatives, they unravel the complex web of our shared ancestry.

This holistic approach enables them to shed light on the biological diversity present among different populations and understand the factors that have shaped this diversity over time.

The Study of Human Evolution

The study of human evolution is central to biological anthropology.

Our understanding of human evolution has been significantly advanced by paleoanthropology, which involves the study of fossilized bones and teeth.

Fossil evidence helps us trace the lineage of Homo Sapiens back to our apelike ancestors, revealing a timeline that spans millions of years.

Genetics also plays a crucial role in our understanding of human evolution.

Geneticists have been able to retrace our roots back to Africa, providing compelling evidence that Homo Sapiens originated on this continent.

Furthermore, the study of genetic variations among different populations offers insights into human migration patterns and the forces of natural selection.

Biological anthropology also encompasses the study of primatology .

By studying non-human primates, we can gain valuable insights into our own behavior, social structures, and evolutionary history.

This comparative approach underscores the interconnectedness of all primates and provides a broader context for understanding human evolution.

Socio-Cultural Anthropology: Unraveling Society’s Patterns and Belief Systems

Located at the very heart of anthropology, socio-cultural anthropology provides an in-depth examination of human societies and cultures. It serves as a bridge to understanding the intricate patterns, belief systems, and social structures that shape our world.

Socio-cultural anthropologists immerse themselves in communities across the globe, adopting an approach known as participant observation.

They live among the people they study, sharing their experiences, observing their behaviors, and engaging in their daily activities.

This immersive methodology offers a unique, ground-level perspective on the customs, practices, and social dynamics of different cultures.

Rituals and Ceremonies

A central focus of socio-cultural anthropology is the study of rituals and ceremonies. These communal events often serve as a microcosm of a society’s values, beliefs, and social hierarchies.

By analyzing these rituals, anthropologists can gain insights into the collective identity of a community and the symbolic meanings embedded in their cultural practices.

Kinship Systems

Kinship systems and family structures are another significant area of study within socio-cultural anthropology. The nature and dynamics of familial relationships can reveal a lot about a society’s norms, values, and social organization.

Whether examining matrilineal descent in certain African societies or the nuclear family structure prevalent in Western cultures, socio-cultural anthropologists shed light on the diverse ways humans form and maintain social bonds.

Economic Systems

Moreover, socio-cultural anthropology also investigates economic patterns and systems.

Anthropologists study how resources are produced, distributed, and consumed in various societies, offering insights into the interplay between culture and economics.

From the market economies of industrialized nations to the subsistence farming practices of indigenous communities, the field illuminates the broad spectrum of economic systems and their sociocultural implications.

Conclusion – The 4 Main Branches of Anthropology

In conclusion, the four main branches of anthropology offer us windows into the vast tapestry of human diversity.

Archaeological anthropology unveils the footprints of our ancestors, linguistic anthropology decodes the power of language, biological anthropology traces our origins, and socio-cultural anthropology unravels the patterns and beliefs that define our societies.

By exploring these branches, we gain a deeper appreciation for the rich complexity of human culture and the myriad ways in which we express our diversity.

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Anthropology How To

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Collecting Data

Irb at emory, quant/qual resources, qualitative methods, quantitative methods.

• Methods Training and Tutorials
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If you have not already made significant progress on your literature review, STOP ! Start searching the literature and reading as soon as possible. More than one student has neglected their literature review until after collecting data only to learn that they have made a mistake and it is too late to start over. Don't let this happen to you.

This is also a good time to think about how to organize and manage your data. The Research Data Management site offers a comprehensive guide to services and tools available at Emory.

If you are conducting research that involves "human subjects" then your project might need to go through the IRB process. The Emory IRB website has several resources to help you complete and submit applications, including tutorials, instructional videos, webinars, help clinics, and more. Here are a few helpful pages for general information about requirements and the review process:

• Does my project need IRB review?
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• Sage Research Methods Online This link opens in a new window A database of quantitative and qualitative research methods in the social and behavioral sciences. It includes texts, reference works, videos, statistical explanations, and many other resources.

To find additional texts and resources available through the library, search the library catalog or a relevant database .

Emory Center for Digital Scholarship (ECDS) offers a variety of workshops and expertise related to GIS and mapping, statistical, network and text analysis, multimedia production, and more. Check the ECDS calendar for upcoming workshops. Typical semester offerings include workshops on coding in R, ArcGIS, Network Visualization, and Data Cleaning.

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) links to a variety of tutorials and resources on research design, data collection methods, data analysis, and analysis tools. There are some good resources here, but several of the links are broken or outdated.

This  Qualitative Research Guide highlights key methods texts and electronic resources on qualitative methods in general, as well as autoethnography, case study, content analysis, focus groups, interviewing, participant-observation, and mixed methods research. You will also find information on finding qualitative datasets, software and equipment resources.

Oxford Bibliographies Online includes a few articles on qualitative methods. Try these as a place to start:

• Ethnography - Anthropology
• Qualitative Methods - Sociological Research
• Qualitative Methods - Geography

The Qualitative Data Repository (QDR) maintains a list of conferences workshops and training opportunities in data collection and analysis. Several of the opportunities take place at Emory and many others are online workshops. Some workshops require a fee.

The Institute for Quantitative Theory and Methods (QTM) offers a variety of resources in support of quantitative methods across disciplines. See their webpage for course offerings, events, and other programming. The Resources page highlights quantitative tools, software, and a few tutorials.

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• Last Updated: Aug 30, 2023 11:19 AM
• URL: https://guides.libraries.emory.edu/main/anthropologicalmethods

DSpace JSPUI

Egyankosh preserves and enables easy and open access to all types of digital content including text, images, moving images, mpegs and data sets.

• IGNOU Self Learning Material (SLM)
• 02. School of Social Sciences (SOSS)
• Master's Degree Programmes
• Master's in Anthropology (MAAN)

MANI-001 Anthropology And Method of Research Community home page

Collections in this community, block-1 introducing anthropology, block-2 field work tradition in anthropology, block-3 research design, block-4 data collection techniques, block-5 statistical analysis, block-6 project work.

• 3 Banerjee, B. G.
• 3 Garg, Neha
• 3 Patnaik, S.M.
• 2 Das, Mitoo
• 2 Ghose, Abhik
• 2 Ghosh, Abhik
• 2 Kaliraman, Rajesh
• 2 Kumar, K. Anil
• 2 Naidu, G.S.
• 2 Reddy, B. Krishna

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World on the Move Exhibit Tackles Migration and Displacement

AAA brings the lens of science, history, and lived experience to another timely yet timeless topic: migration and displacement.

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The RACE Project

This project explains differences among people and reveals the reality – and unreality – of race. The story of race is complex and may challenge how we think about race and human variation.

Anthropologists Go Back to School

To better connect the Annual Meeting with its host city, the AAA promotes Anthropologists Go Back to School, an initiative in which meeting attendees introduce elementary, middle, and high school learners to the discipline of anthropology.

Anthropology

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Explore anthropology resources for K-12 students and teachers, including the Junior Anthropologist Award membership program for students, teaching and learning materials, and more.

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AnthroGuide

A fully searchable reference of anthropologists within universities, colleges, museums, non-profits, government agencies, and businesses.