Methods of Social Anthropology

 

Social anthropology is a scientific study of man, culture, and society, with the objective of understanding the truth about society's affairs and developing skills for human beings to live better lives. The discipline has a unique fieldwork methodology, which is the guiding force of this discipline. Method is logic, as anthropologists try to solve problems logically and argue how the problem can be approached logically to achieve the desired objective.

Fieldwork and empirical tradition have been constant characteristics of social anthropology research. It started with travel accounts written by travelers who traveled to distant corners of the globe for about four hundred years since the age of Columbus. These travel accounts provided the basic data for early social anthropologists, who used these accounts to make other Europeans aware of the varied human life on earth. Many European thinkers became interested in non-European cultures, and the study of man was initiated based on the accounts of travelers, missionaries, and government officials.

The value of fieldwork was realized at the beginning of the twentieth century when the outlook of social anthropology changed. It was understood that experiencing real-life situations was very important for the social anthropologists to get accurate and relevant data. Many anthropologists of this time engaged themselves with the groups of aborigines. E.B. Tylor was the first scholar who emphasised the need of direct data-collection in Anthropology, but Boas was the first to begin with this practice. The earliest attempt at professional data gathering was made in America by Franz Boas, who conducted the Jessup North Pacific Expedition in 1897. The second attempt at fieldwork was made in England under joint leadership of Haddon, Rivers, and Seligman in 1898, known as the Cambridge Expedition to Torres Straits.

Malinowski developed the most outstanding fieldwork tradition in Anthropology, believing that the various aspects in the life of people were interrelated. He stressed on fieldwork as the primary way of anthropological data gathering. A cultural anthropologist must possess real scientific aims and know the values and criteria of modern ethnography. Malinowski established participation as an important technique of fieldwork.

Qualitative research that involves huge descriptive accounts has become very useful and important in today's world. Not only Anthropology but also other disciplines like Sociology and Management studies have indulged into this type of research. Fieldwork remains unique to social anthropology.

Fieldwork is a part of training in social-cultural anthropology, enabling a student to perceive an alien culture with objectivity. Learning about two different societies (including their own) gives a student a comparative view, allowing them to estimate the similarity or dissimilarity between any two societies or cultures.

There are two classical streams in social anthropology to the employment of history as a method of study: one use of history is non-chronological, used by evolutionary anthropologists, and the second stream is Marxian. Another important method in Anthropology is the functional method, which emerged as a revolt against historical method. Empiricism is experience, and functionalism advocated the holistic study of society through fieldwork.

New methods have been emerging in social anthropology with new demands in response to the new challenges. Techniques related to these methods are also changing. Traditional techniques such as observation, schedules, questionnaire, interview, case study, survey, genealogy, etc. have been replaced by new techniques like ethnography, developmental anthropology, and visual anthropology. Anthropology is also experiencing new dimensions with the passage of time, and its methodological dimension is not exclusive to these changes.