Ethnology: the comparative and
analytical study of cultures; cultural anthropology. Anthropologists aim to
describe and interpret aspects of the culture of various social groups--e.g.,
the hunter-gatherers of the Kalahari, rice villages of the Chinese Canton
Delta, or a community of physicists at Livermore Laboratory. (See ETHNOGRAPHY for description of the
fieldwork method.) Topics of
particular interest include religious beliefs, linguistic practices, kinship
arrangements, marriage patterns, farming technology, dietary practices, gender
relations, and power relations.
Cultural anthropology is generally conceived as an empirical science,
and this raises several methodological and conceptual difficulties. First is the problem of the role of the
observer. The injection of an
alien observer into the local culture unavoidably disturbs the latter. Second, there is the problem of
intelligibility across cultural systems (radical translation). One goal of ethnographic research is to
arrive at an interpretation of a set of beliefs and values that are thought to
be radically different from the researcher's own beliefs and values; but if
this is so, then it is questionable whether they can be accurately translated
into the researcher's conceptual scheme.
Third, there is the problem of empirical testing of ethnographic
interpretations. To what extent do
empirical procedures constrain the construction of an interpretation of a given
cultural milieu? Finally, there is
the problem of generalizability.
To what extent does fieldwork in one location permit anthropologists to
generalize to a larger context--other villages in the region, the dispersed
ethnic group represented by this village, or this village at other points in
time?
The
Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, edited by Robert Audi (Cambridge University
Press, 1995)
Ethnography: an open-ended family
of techniques and procedures through which anthropologists investigate
cultures; also, the organized descriptions of other cultures that result from
this method. Cultural anthropology
(ETHNOLOGY) is based primarily on fieldwork through which the anthropologist
immerses him- or herself in the daily life of a local culture (village,
neighborhood) and attempts to piece together a description and interpretation
of aspects of the culture. Careful
observation is one central tool of investigation. Once established in the field the anthropologist can observe
and record various features of social life in the given context--for example,
trading practices, farming techniques, or marriage arrangements. A second central tool is the interview,
both formal and informal, through which the researcher explores the beliefs and
values of members of the local culture.
Tools of historical research, including particularly oral history, are
also of use in ethnographic research, since the cultural practices of interest
often derive from a remote point in time.
The
Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, edited by Robert Audi (Cambridge University
Press, 1995)
Ethnomethodology: a phenomenological
approach to the interpretation of everyday action and speech in various social
contexts; derived from phenomenological sociology. Introduced by Harold
Garfinkel, the method aims to guide research into meaningful social practices
and everyday activity as experienced by participants. A major objective of the method is to arrive at an
interpretation of the rules that underlie everyday activity and thus constitute
part of the normative basis of a given social order. Research from this perspective generally focuses on mundane
forms of social activity--e.g. psychiatrists evaluating patients' files, jurors
deliberating on defendants' culpability, or coroners judging cause of
death. The investigator then
attempts to reconstruct an underlying set of rules and ad hoc procedures that
may be taken to have guided the observed activity. The approach emphasizes the contextuality of social practice--the
richness of unspoken shared understandings that guide and orient participants'
actions in a given practice or activity.
The
Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, edited by Robert Audi (Cambridge University
Press, 1995)