AIM: HOW DO SOCIAL SCIENTISTS STUDY THE SOCIAL WORLD?

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Doing Social Research

• AIM HOW DO SOCIAL SCIENTISTS STUDY THE SOCIAL
  WORLD?

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What is Anthropology?

• The discipline of anthropology studies humankind
  in its entirety and aims to produce useful
  generalizations about the behavior of people
  around the world and throughout time.
• Anthropology follows the holistic perspective,
  meaning that through cross-cultural comparison we
  can recognize both the great diversity between
  people as well as the human characteristics that
  unite us all.

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Holism

• Study of a culture by looking at all the parts of
  the system and how those parts are interrelated

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Anthropology

• Anthropology the systematic study of humankind.
  
• What do we mean by systematic?
• Scientific Method
• Empirical based on observation and experiment
• Positivism - only authentic knowledge is that
  which is based on sense, experience and positive
  verification
• Concept a cognitive unit of meaning, an
  abstract idea or a mental symbol
• Variable logical set of characteristics of an
  object
• Hypothesis
• Theory

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Quantitative v. Qualitative

• Social Research Methods May Be Divided into two
  broad schools
• Quantitative research approaches social phenomena
  through numerical tabulations and statistical
  comparisons made possible by systematic surveys,
  observations, or analysis of records. Data is
  used to test hypotheses and create valid and
  reliable, general claims.
• Qualitative research uses rich descriptions of
  cultural situations obtained from interviewing,
  participant observation, and collection of oral
  and textual materials.
• Ethnographies are reports from qualitative
  research.

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Scientific Explanation

• Empirical Evidence (data) ? information we can
  verify with our common sense
• Science ? a logical system that bases knowledge
  on direct, systematic observations concerning
  human behavior
• The goal of scientific explanation is to permit
  the scientist to move beyond simple descriptions
  to make reliable statements concerning the nature
  of relationships existing in observed phenomena.
  Reliable statements posses a high degree of
  certainty that what is predicted will be the
  successful combination of theory and relevant
  research.

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Systematic plan for conducting research

• Experiment ? a research method for investigating
  cause and effect under highly controlled
  conditions
• Hypothesis ? an unverified statement of a
  relationship between variables
• A hunch or guess that is generally stated as a
  proposition of the ifthen variety
• Hawthron Effect ? a change in the subjects
  behavior caused by the awareness of being studied

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Science The Basic Elements and Limitations

• Positivism ? only authentic knowledge is that
  which is based on sense, experience and positive
  verification
• Concept ? refers to either relations or
  descriptions. Concepts are not statements and are
  neither true nor false
• When concepts are interrelated in a scheme, a
  theory begins to emerge
• Variable ? a trait or characteristic that can
  vary in value from case to case
• Characteristics that are variables can be made
  constant through experimental design, as when a
  researcher focuses on people of the same age,
  sex, social class, etc., in order to study
  variation in other traits
• Measurement ? a set of rules for the assignment
  of numbers to the different outcomes a variable
  can exhibit
• Concepts such as an inch, meter, etc., do not
  exist in nature but are arbitrary measures of
  length, with agreed upon meanings, invented by
  scientists
• Examples Strongly Agree, Agree, Neutral,
  Disagree, Strongly Disagree

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• Reliability ? consistency in measure
• In order to have reliability, the test must be
  able to be replicated and receive the same
  results
• Validity ? precision in measuring exactly what
  one intends to measure. A test must measure
  exactly what it says it will measure
• In order for research to be true, it must have
  both reliability and validity
• Correlation ? measured strength between two
  variables
• Control ? holding constant all variables except
  one in order to see clearly the effect of that
  variable

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Ethnography

• Ethnos (Greek) to describe a people
  Grapho to write
• Ethnography aims to describe the nature of those
  who are studied through writing.
• Might be called a field study or case report.
• Description of a culture, usually based on the
  method of participant observation and field work.
• Field Work living among a group of people for
  the purpose of learning about their culture.
• Employed for gathering empirical data on human
  societies and cultures.

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Ethnography

• Anthropological texts are usually written in the
  present.
• Many societies have changed since original
  fieldwork was done.
• Importance of studies of these peoples does not
  lie primarily in their historical or genealogical
  explanatory power, but rather in their
  contribution to our understanding of similarities
  and differences of social life in general.

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Cultural Social Anthropology

• Developed around ethnographic research and their
  canonical texts which are mostly ethnographies
• Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1928) by
  Bronislaw Malinowski
• Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) by Margaret Mead
• The Nuer (1940) by E.E. Evans-Pritchard

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The Range of Ethnographies

• We Eat the Mines and the Mines Eat Us (1979)
  June Nashs description of Bolivian tin miners
  and the ways in which transnational economic
  processes affect their lives.
• Tuhami Portrait of a Moroccan (1980) Vincent
  Crapanzanos ethnographic biography describes his
  encounter with an illiterate Moroccan tile maker
  who believes himself married to a camel-footed
  she-demon.
• The Channeling Zone American Spirituality in an
  Anxious Age (1997) Michael Brown presents a
  fascinating look at the lives and experiences of
  New Age channellers and their place in
  contemporary American spiritual life.
• Medusas Hair (1981) Gananath Obeyesekere
  brings insight from psychoanalysis to bear on
  personal symbols and religious experience among
  ecstatic priests and priestesses in Sri Lanka.
• Geisha (1983) Liza Dalby trained as a geisha in
  Kyoto and provides a fascinating look at the
  willow world.
• Javanese Shadow Plays, Javanese Selves (1987)
  Ward Keeler lived with a Javanese puppeteer for
  several years and wrote this fascinating account
  of an ancient art form, is practitioners, and its
  place in modern culture

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Typical Ethnography

• Attempts to be holistic
• Typically follows an outline
• Brief history of culture being studied
• Analysis of physical geography / terrain
  inhabited by the people, including climate and
  habitat
• Material Culture, technology and means of
  subsistence (associated with physical geography
  and include descriptions of infrastructure)
• Kinship Social Structure (age grading, peer
  groups, gender, voluntarily association, clans,
  etc. )
• Languages spoken, dialects and history of
  language change
• Practices of childrearing, acculturation and
  native (emic) views and values

(1955)
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Data Collection

• Participant Observation
• Interviews
• Questionnaires
• Surveysjust to list a few

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Participant Observation

• Direct, first-hand observation of daily
  participation.
• Living among the people being studied
  observing, questioning, and taking part in the
  important events of the group while also keeping
  a detailed record of your observations and
  interviews.
• Obtrusive Effect you thrust yourself into the
  culture, changing what is taking place.

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Participant Observation

• Generally agreed that the anthropologist ought to
  stay in the field long enough for his or her
  presence to be considered more or less natural
  by the permanent residence.
• Anthropologist should also learn the local
  language as not have mistakes in translation or
  meaning.

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Participant Observation

• The anthropologist is the most important
  scientific instrument used, investing a great
  deal of his or her own personality in the
  process.
• Anthropological writings are shaped by each
  authors biography, literary style, and rhetoric,
  as wells as the historical period in which they
  are writing (such as colonialism).
• The gender, age, race and class of the
  anthropologist inadvertently influences the field
  work.

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Doing Anthropology

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vBhCruPBvSjQ

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Emic v. Etic Perspective

• Emic life as experienced and described by the
  members of a society themselves.
• Natives point of view
• Etic Analytical description or explanation of
  the researcher.
• Cultural Relativism understanding the ways of
  other cultures and not judging these practices
  according to one's own cultural ways.

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Emic v. Etic Perspective

• Reasons why anthropologists view may never be an
  emic description
• Usually have to translate between two different
  languages
• Use a written medium to reproduce oral statements
• Meaning of utterances changes when they are
  transformed into writing
• Anthropologist can never become identical with
  the people he or she writes about.
• Only true emic descriptions possible in
  anthropology are therefore accounts written by
  natives in their vernacular

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Types of Data Collected during Observation

• Census Taking
• Population, age, sex, marital status, household
  composition, age/sex relationship
• Mapping
• Locate people, material culture (villages,
  fields, pasture, livestock), environmental
  features (rivers, lakes, mountains)
• Document Analysis
• Public records, news papers, diaries, scientific
  publications
• Geneologies
• Writing down relatives of informants, kinship
  relationships, how they are referred to,
  addressed, treated
• Event Analysis
• Documenting an event as it takes place (fight,
  puberty rite, cooking, marriage)

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Problems with Participant Observation

• Precludes a large sample size
• Problems in recording
• Limited knowledge of language
• Ones informants may fail to represent society as
  a whole

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The Problem of Translation

• How can we translate an alien way of experiencing
  the world into our own mode of thought?
• How can we be certain that we do not misinterpret
  or distort the society when we try to describe it
  in our own terms?
• How can we be entirely certain that we understand
  the alien society and culture at all?

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The Problem of Translation

• It is necessary to use abstract terms kinship,
  social organization, social control, religion,
  etc.
• Terms are necessary for the discipline to be
  comparative in scope
• Abstract, technical terms used by anthropologists
  rarely exist in societies studied.
• Descriptive usually close to native
  conceptualization of the world, and a major
  challenge lies in translating native concepts
  into the anthropologists working language.
• Analysis trying to connect the society to other
  societies by describing it in the comparative
  terms of anthropology.
• Will describe the society with concepts which do
  not exist in the society itself

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Dichotomies

• Dichotomy separation of different or
  contradictory things.
• Small-scale / Large-scale
• Oral / Written
• Traditional / Modern

• The world as it is studied by anthropologists is
  not characterized by clear, binary boundaries,
  but rather by grey areas and differences in
  degree.
• Models are not identical with the social world
  but a aid in organizing facts from the social
  world.
• Dichotomies may be used as scales marked by
  differences in degree rather than absolute
  contrasts.

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Interviewing

• May include conversation with different levels of
  form and can involve small talk to long interviews

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Questionnaires

• Can be used to aid in the discovery of local
  beliefs and perceptions

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Asking Questions Survey Questions

• Survey ? research method in which subjects
  respond to a series of statements or questions in
  a questionnaire or an interview
• Population ? the larger the population the better
• Sample ? part of the population that represents
  the whole. The participants in a survey are the
  sample population of that survey
• Using Available Data
• Secondary Analysis ? a researcher uses the data
  available
• Inductive Logic ? from inside out. The researcher
  works from the specific to the general.
  (Individual problem to larger social issue)
• Deductive Logic ? from outside in. The researcher
  works from the general to the specific. The
  theory is stated first then a hypothesis is
  formed and a method is found to test it

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Anthropology vs. Sociology

• Anthropology has traditionally distinguished
  itself from sociology through
• Emphasis placed on participant observation and
  fieldwork
• Mainly study non-industrial societies
• Sociology has concentrated on understanding,
  criticizing, and managing modern societies
• Anthropologist try to account for variations and
  similarities in human existence and to record
  disappearing peoples ways of life in writing.

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Ethical Guidelines for Internal Assessment

• Do not use data for any purpose other than the
  fieldwork for which it was collected.
• Develop and maintain a working relationship with
  the people that you study so that other
  researchers can continue to work with them.
• Check with your teacher when the right way to
  behave is not clear.
• Participate in reviews of the ethical
  considerations in the fieldwork proposals of your
  peers.
• Fieldwork conducted online is subject to the same
  guide lines.

• Do no harm to the people who participate in the
  fieldwork.
• Respect the well-being of humans and the
  environment.
• Obtain informed consent from the people who are
  the subjects of the fieldwork in a form
  appropriate to the context before you begin,
  providing sufficient information about the aims
  and procedures of the fieldwork.
• Fieldwork involving children needs the written
  consent of parent(s) or guardian(s).
• Maintain the anonymity of the people
  participating in the fieldwork, unless
  participants have given explicit permission to
  the contrary.
• Store all data collected securely in order to
  maintain confidentiality.
• Be honest about the limits of your training.
• Do not falsify or make up fieldwork data. Report
  on research findings accurately and completely.

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Covered Girls (2003)

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vzkfXHB48rrs