The discussion of anthropology in this book began by introducing its distinct questions, its distinct perspective, and its distinct set of terms and concepts. But in order to answer its questions, to put that perspective into action, and to employ those terms and concepts, cultural anthropology also needs a method. How exactly do cultural anthropologists go about answering their questions, in particular collecting the data they require to solve the problems that they have set themselves? The social sciences have a battery of tried-and-true data-collecting techniques. These include
Neandertal
The species or subspecies of Homo that first appeared around 130,000 years ago and is associated with the cold climate of Europe.
They became extinct in the last 35,000 to 40,000 years and are generally not regarded as direct human ancestors, although this interpretation is still somewhat controversial.
Mousterian
The stone tool technology associated with Neandertals, first appearing less than 130,000 years ago.
PLATE 2.2 Hominid fossil skulls (from left to right):
Australopithecus afarensis, Homo erectus, Neandertal
surveys, interviews, questionnaires, experiments, and of course analysis of the data that other social scientists have already collected. Cultural anthropology would be remiss to ignore these techniques. However, none of them, nor all of them in concert, are adequate to accomplish what cultural anthropologists want to accomplish.
Imagine, for example, that you wanted to learn about Nuer cattle-herding culture in Africa or the Japanese tea ceremony. What would you do? You would probably first read every available book, watch every available movie, talk to every available researcher and traveler that/who might provide some information. One vast limita- tion of this procedure is that you would not learn anything new; there would be no opportunity for original discovery.
Seeking new knowledge, you might design a survey or a questionnaire to probe the issues you want to understand. So now what do you do with it? There being so few Nuer or Japanese nearby, you would have to send it to them by mail or e-mail.
You might find that very few receive mail or e-mail, even fewer read it, and fewer still respond. Besides, they may not speak your language, and they definitely do not know who you are or why you are asking these strange and perhaps personal questions. Even if they did receive it and cared to respond, they might find the questions invasive, or they might be inclined to tell you what they think you want to hear or what makes them look good. It is possible that you would not ask the right questions to begin with, and it is highly possible that you would not understand the information you received anyway.
Or, to bring the example even closer to home, imagine that a cultural anthro- pologist wanted to learn about the life of students at a college. The problems are roughly the same. Students at the college might not respond, or perhaps only the
“good” ones will respond (giving a skewed sample). Knowing that the researcher plans to publish and share the results, and that the findings may come back to affect them, the students may lie or admit only the positive parts of their behavior. And the anthropologist still may not really understand the results that come back from the subjects. In order to overcome the limitations of these techniques – whether in remote or familiar contexts – a cultural anthropologist has only one real choice: to go and live among the subjects.
Anthropology solves this problem with fifieellddwwoorrkk. All sciences depend on some manner of fieldwork. Geologists go out and dig rocks. Paleontologists go out and excavate fossils. Marine biologists go out and observe ocean life. The thing they have in common is going out. Accordingly, anthropologists cannot complete their research in a library or classroom; a person can study cultural anthropologyin the classroom (that is, what anthropologists have done and learned from it) but not culture. Culture is where the practitioners of that culture are.
So anthropologists go to the “field.” They could take their surveys and ques- tionnaires with them, recruit a sample of volunteers, and administer the tests to them.
The researcher could get closer, perhaps find a house near the subjects and sit on the porch and watch them go by, perhaps even invite them to sit on the porch too.
The researcher would see where the people are going and what they are doing, but would that necessarily provide any understanding of what is going on?
Fieldwork The anthropological method of traveling to the society one wants to study and living there for a prolonged period of time to collect data first hand.
Cultural anthropologists have discovered that the only way to acquire a serious, deep understanding of the lives of other people is to place themselves as much as possible within those lives. This is known as ppaarrttiicciippaanntt oobbsseerrvvaattiioonn. Participant observation is the truly unique and original aspect of cultural anthropology.
Anthropologists go to live among the peoples they study, but more than that, they go to live likethe peoples they study. No other social science does quite the same thing, although some have adopted the method on occasion. The first step in success- ful anthropological fieldwork is learning the local language. This is critical not only because most of the locals will probably not know the anthropologist’s language but because even if they do, their ideas and concepts possibly cannot be properly conveyed in another language. A language, like the cultural whole of which it is part, is a lens for seeing the world. Forcing them to function in the anthropologist’s language is forcing them to reshape, perhaps fatally distort, their thinking into something that is familiar to an outsider. For instance, it would be easier for an English-speaking anthropologist to force the local people to interact in English, but there would be something – maybe something critical – “lost in translation.” It is much better to learn their words for things, their concepts, and their realities. There are often no exact equivalents for their words and ideas in English or other foreign languages.
Learning the language is not only a necessary step but it is a good way to earn one’s way into the society and to spend time with them. An anthropologist will eventually want, and if lucky be able, to visit with them, travel with them, work with them, even live with them. They are not coming to the anthropologist’s world;
the anthropologist is going to theirs. The goal is to eat their food, perform their tasks, participate in their rituals. In this way, cultural anthropology is the most intense and personal of the sciences. No other research takes such a commitment of one’s life. An astronomer may spend every night for weeks peering through a telescope, but at least s/he goes home, takes a shower, and sleeps in his or her own bed.
Anthropologists may not even have showers or beds where they do their studies.
Often there is no going home for a long time. A typical fieldwork experience may take a year or more. And usually, a professional anthropologist goes back to the field periodically to see what new things have transpired, what s/he missed before, or simply what one cannot learn in such a “short time.” Some anthropologists take their families with them, but most travel alone. Depending on how far away the society is, the anthropologist may not see friends or family during the entire period.
The work can also be physically challenging: climate extremes (most of the world’s small-scale societies live today in the most inhospitable environments), natural dangers, strange food, exotic diseases, few amenities, few or no facilities in the event of injury. It can be lonely and isolating.
But if all goes well, the anthropologist slowly wins his or her way into the confidence and friendship of the people. S/he may even be “adopted” into a family, given a kinship name, and assigned local responsibilities. This is not easy to achieve or to perform. Generally the local people do not know the anthropologist when s/he first arrives. It would be like someone coming to your neighborhood, knocking on
Participant observation The anthropological field method in which we travel to the society we want to study and spend long periods of time there, not only watching but joining in their culture as much as possible.
your door, and asking to live in your house for a year or two. New people are always strangers first, friends later (if they are lucky). And anthropologists depend on that friendship – sometimes to keep them fed, always to keep them informed. An anthro- pological fieldworker needs at least a few good informants or consultants, people who will take the time and effort to explain their culture. That sounds very scientific, but it is not. Informants/consultants are the people who like and trust the fieldworker well enough to want to take time from their busy lives to talk to the stranger, answer silly questions, and teach their ways. In an essential way, the informant/consultant is a teacher. Likewise, anthropologists in the field are students, virtually children.
Many local people consider anthropologists to be literally like children – petulant, demanding, prone to error (see e.g. Briggs (1970) for an unusually honest account of the foibles of fieldwork). The analogy is not bad: if anthropologists are like chil- dren, then anthropological fieldwork is like enculturation. The fieldworker is learning the culture “from the inside.”
Once in the field, there is a variety of activities in which the researcher can engage. S/he may still administer his or her surveys and questionnaires. Interviews are a standard technique in the field, either in a ssttrruuccttuurreedd (with the questions prepared in advance) or an uunnssttrruuccttuurreedd(unplanned and free-flowing) format. It is always important to collect genealogical information, not only because anthro- pologists need to know who is related to whom and how, but because kinship and ggeenneeaallooggyyare so central to the organization of most societies. Commonly anthro- pologists will collect oral histories, either biographies of individuals or accounts of the history of the group; a well-told life story can shed light on a society far beyond the experiences of that single individual (see e.g. Shostak (1983) for a classic biography of a hunter-gatherer woman). And a few anthropologists, especially in the early twentieth century, carried formal tests (for instance, psychological and
“projective” tests, like the Rorschach “ink blot” test) into the field to measure specific cognitive or perceptual tendencies and to compare these with other traditional societies and with their own.
Often enough, even the best-prepared anthropologist will encounter two surprises: (1) the things that s/he came to study are not the really important things, and/or (2) s/he does not even know what the right questions are at first. By jump- ing into the society and its culture, by taking his or her place in its structure, the researcher gets a better idea “on the ground” of what should really be studied.
Most fieldwork diverges from its initial plans when it confronts the reality of the new culture, and this is fine: one cannot know what one will find, or what will be important to consider, before arriving in the field. But if there is one critical fact to remember, it is that anthropological fieldwork is a relationship, and the knowledge an anthropologist takes home is a product of those relationships. S/he will have talked to specific people at specific times in specific contexts, and each anthropologist as an individual brings a certain quality to the experience. Cultural anthropology is science, but it is also a personal encounter between human beings.
Structured interview A fieldwork method in which the anthropologist administers a prepared set of questions to an informant/consultant.
Unstructured interview A fieldwork method in which the anthropologist conducts a relatively free- flowing conversation with an informant/consultant, either without prepared questions or unconstrained by these questions.
Genealogy
Kinship or “blood” and
“marriage” information about a society.
Shostak, Marjorie. 1983 [1981]. Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman.
New York: Vintage Books.