Integrating Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Culture: The “Hard” and the “Soft” (original) (raw)
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Some Comments on the Use of Mathematical Models in Anthropology
American Antiquity, 1974
It has become increasingly apparent that mathematical models may play a significant role in anthropological methodology. Less apparent is the fact that such models have an important place in formulation of theory as well. At the same time, many errors appear in attempts to use mathematical models. This paper attempts to indicate the nature of such errors and a methodology by which they can be avoided. A case study is presented showing the relationship of mathematical models to anthropological theory.
Applying v. Using Anthropology.
Practicing Anthropology
: [19][20][21][22]. Although not collaborative in the same sense, other articles that share some or all of the characteristics I am about to discuss are "Keeping Some Distance: Anthropology in Urban Planning" by Jeffery F. Dow (16,2[1994]:24-26) and "Reforming Electric Utility Regulation: The Engineer as Anthropologist" by Eric Hirst (16,2[1994]:27-30). The methodological approach suggested in these articles has some very disturbing features. These features have the potential to transform applied anthropology into the Mac-Science of the ninties-with its practitioners reduced to the role of flipping technocratic hats according to what disciplines "collaborate" in the research. If we are to avoid this, we must establish the difference between applying and using anthropology. To apply anthropology is to expand the knowledge base to a different reality through careful contextualization of previously acquired knowledge. New insights developed in the process can contribute towards the improvement of methods, theory, and research procedures. The user of anthropology, on the other hand, is mostly concerned with the gathering of information to prove or disprove the effectiveness of this or that instrument or mode of analysis; the user of anthropology treats the social realm as yet another laboratory where human interaction is to be replicated though not understood. The first disturbing feature is the idea that the best way to undertake anthropological research is to hyphenate it with another discipline. While there is nothing in principle that can be damaging to applied anthropology from its interaction with other disciplines, careful attention must be paid to the conditions under which such interaction takes place. A second, related disturbing feature is the heavy reliance on the so-called partnership arrangement as the preferred vehicle to undertake field work. Partnerships of the kind advocated might very well mean that field work is reduced to information scavenging on the remains of "the other," i.e., the research participants. Let us look closely at these two paradigmatic characteristics and the methodological consequences of using vs. applying anthropology. The principal reason for cross-discipline cooperation is to join forces in order to solve common problems. In applied anthropology, however, collaboration too often means applying our research tools to problems defined by other disciplines--or even loaning our tools to those disciplines. It is . irresponsible for Baba and Falkenburg to suggest that an engineering graduate student who takes notes and asks questions can become an ethnographer solely on the basis of this "experience." To reverse their simplistic analogy, to behave like an engineer but to think like an ethnographer is not a sufficient condition to conduct sound quantitative research. Mastering the tools of the trade cannot and must not be confused with the need to obtain scientifically rigorous results. Another problem with the cross-disciplinary collaboration described by Baba and Falkenburg is that it omits active involvement from the workers at the site. Throughout the article, the workers appear as nothing more than lower-order information devices whose very livelihood activities need "translation" via engineering students who know the jargon used, though not the human beings who use it. Clearly, this kind of cross-discipline interaction is intended to act on people rather than with them. In the Old Days, when glorifying corporations and putting academic credentials at their service was not part of a researcher's duties, this kind of research was called exploitative and manipulative. It is the inevitable result of putting applied anthropology at the service of third party interests under the guise of collaborative efforts. Within the practitioner/ researcher model there can be no legitimacy whatsoever in a study that systematically denies participation to those who are most affected by it. However, if applied anthropology is seen as a user-friendly discipline, willing to bend and twist as the requirements of the user demand, this type of research becomes possible. In such a case, we are not applying anthropology; we are using anthropology to suit someone else's needs. The reliance on partnership as the preferred way to conduct field work has similarly negative results. Partnership is conceived of as a combined effort on the part of two disciplines that, while taking part in a common task, nevertheless remain totally independent from one another. This sort of "coequal partnership" leads-as Baba and Falkenburg show-into various kinds of power-plays and mind-games between "professionals of different occupational subcultures." The main component in these power-plays is the issue of control over the definition, design, and implementation of field work. Three-quarters of field work time, it seems, was spent trying to convince engineers of the benefits of qualita, tive methods. The focus of the field work, however, was "what was wrong at the informant's work site"-that is to say, workproductivity improvement. Engineers alone cannot figure out the problems in an industrial setting, so let's bring in the anthropologists. Thus, the task is not to do what ethnographic work demands (careful, long-term investigation); rather, the task is to take the path of least resistance and do what works. Partnerships of this type are, in essence, opportunistic arrangements entered into to manipulate the social realm. It is ironic that, while some of us are not prepared to accept the disintegration of indigenous societies in the name of progress, others, it seems, have no quarrel with the prospect of turning
Anthropology as a Natural Science
Clifford Geertz set forth interpretative anthropology as a natural science, based on " the extrinsic theory of the mind. " Observation of the use of words and cultural symbols will determine theory meaning. Symbols are models or templates, and enter into the constitution of every perceived object or event we recognize or identify. We do not perceive what others perceive, but what they perceive " with, " " by means of, " or " through. " But the objects and events we or others perceive are already and from the first symbolic. Thoughts and emotions are articulated, generated and regenerated by words and other symbolic objects. Without, or before, words and symbols, there is only general, diffuse, ongoing flow of bodily sensation. This essay criticizes these theses in the light of the philosophy of mind and the phenomenology of perception.
Some methodological considerations for anthropology
2017
Anthropologists’ longstanding ambivalence toward political advocacy has, in recent years, come under sustained fire—a shift that is often framed in terms of the discipline’s “moral turn.” In this essay, we make a case for the value of ambivalence, asking what lessons it yields as a methodological heuristic. Tracing the history of the concept, we argue that anthropology was founded on an epistemological ambivalence regarding its orientation to social problems. Thus, the moral turn implies a fundamental transformation in the ways that ethnography is conceived. Although the possibility of conflating moral evaluation with anthropological interpretation is a recognized danger of this shift, we don’t believe that the problem can be resolved by being reflexive, or that all ethnographers confront it. Instead, we suggest that cultivating an analytic of ambivalence is our best strategy for understanding what is going on around us, and teaches us more about the character of social relations th...
Anthropology as Interpretive Quest [and Comments and Reply]
Current Anthropology, 1987
The symbolic anthropology that is increasingly ascendant in our discipline takes the study of cultures to be preeminently an interpretive quest. Although finding much of deep value in it, I argue that our task goes well beyond interpreting cultural meaning and that interpretation itself is fraught with difficulties, some pe: haps ultimately intractable. I suggest that views of culture as col lective phenomena need to be qualified by a view of knowledge a distributed and controlled-that we need to ask who creates and defines cultural meanings, and to what ends. I further suggest tha cultures as texts allow alternative readings and that, with our pre dilection for the exotic, we may read cultural metaphors too deeply. If symbolic anthropology is to make a lasting contribution, it will have to be situated within a wider theory of society, and cultural meanings will have to be more clearly connected to the real humans who live out their lives through them.
2001
Series Preface vii Preface to the Second Edition viii Preface to the First Edition ix 1. Proto-Anthropology 1 Herodotus and other Greeks 1; After Antiquity 3; The European conquests and their impact 6; Why all this is not quite anthropology yet 10; The Enlightenment 11; Romanticism 15 2. Victorians, Germans and a Frenchman 20 Evolutionism and cultural history 21; Morgan 23; Marx 25; Bastian and the German tradition 27; Tylor and other Victorians 29; The Golden Bough and the Torres expedition 32; German diffusionism 35; The new sociology 38; Durkheim 39; Weber 41 3. Four Founding Fathers 46 The founding fathers and their projects 49; Malinowski among the Trobriand Islanders 52; Radcliffe-Brown and the 'natural science of society' 55; Boas and historical particularism 58; Mauss and the total social prestation 61; Anthropology in 1930: parallels and divergences 64 4. Expansion and Institutionalisation 68 A marginal discipline? 69; Oxford and the LSE, Columbia and Chicago 72; The Dakar-Djibouti expedition 74; Culture and personality 77; Cultural history 80; Ethnolinguistics 82; The Chicago school 83; 'Kinshipology' 86; Functionalism's last stand 90; Some British outsiders 92 5. Forms of Change 96 Neo-evolutionism and cultural ecology 99; Formalism and substantivism 104; The Manchester school 107; Methodological individualists at Cambridge 112; Role analysis and system theory 117 6. The Power of Symbols 120 From function to meaning 121; Ethnoscience and symbolic anthropology 125; Geertz and Schneider 127; Lévi-Strauss and structuralism 130; Early impact 133; The state of the art in 1968 135 vi A History of AntHropology 7. Questioning Authority 138 The return of Marx 139; Structural Marxism 141; The not-quite-Marxists 145; Political economy and the capitalist world system 147; Feminism and the birth of reflexive fieldwork 151; Ethnicity 155; Practice theory 158; The sociobiology debate and Samoa 161 8. The End of Modernism? 166 The end of modernism? 171; The postcolonial world 176; A new departure or a return to Boas? 179; Other positions 184 9. Global Networks 192 Towards an international anthropology? 194; Trends for the future 200; Biology and culture 203; Globalisation and the production of locality 211 Bibliography 221 Index 239
THE ANTHROPOLOGIST AS ONTOLOGICAL CHOREOGRAPHER
R Françoise Brun-Co an Thus the Theory of Description ma ers most. It is the theory of the word for those For whom the word is the making of the world. The buzzing world and lisping fi rmament. It is a world of words to the end of it In which nothing is its solid self. It ma ers because everything we say Of the past is description without a place A cast of the imagination, made in sound. —Wallace Stevens, Description without Place Ethnographers—anthropologists, sociologists, social scientists, and others trained in using ethnographic techniques—encounter a myriad of dif-fi culties when they go into the " fi eld " 1 and a empt to understand and then describe the behaviors of the people they are studying in terms both meaningful to the people studied and relevant to other people interested in the understandings gleaned. In this chapter several problematic elements intrinsic to conducting and reporting about activities studied in anthropological fi eldwork will be considered and some of their most tren-chant causes noted. For current purposes, I am concerned with situations in which anthropologists are hired, as employees or consultants, to observe and analyze the activities of third parties (in collaboration with other people from other Notes for this chapter begin on page 177.