By A.L. Epstein
In social anthropology, as in different branches of technological know-how, there's a shut dating among study equipment and theoretical difficulties. Advancing thought and shifts in orientation cross hand in hand with the improvement of recommendations and together effect each other. If the improvement of contemporary social anthropology owes a lot to its verified culture of fieldwork, it's also transparent that the systems that anthropological fieldwork should still stick with within the laboratory can by no means be prescribed in absolute phrases nor turn into completely standardized.
but as anthropological research is subtle, it turns into more and more very important that scholars within the box concentrate on the necessity to gather uncomplicated sorts of information, and understand how to set approximately doing so. during this quantity, anthropologists who've labored heavily jointly for a few years on the Rhodes- Livingstone Institute for Social learn, Lusaka, and/or within the division of Social Anthropology, collage of Manchester, speak about inside of a standard framework smooth fieldwork equipment as instruments for analyzing a few difficulties of present anthropological interest.
Elizabeth Colson, J. Clyde Mitchell, and J. A. Barnes rigidity features of the function of quantification in social anthropology and point out more than a few difficulties that may be illuminated by means of quantitative suggestions. equivalent significance is hooked up by way of all participants to the gathering and research of targeted case fabric, a subject matter explored in J. van Velsen’s essay. A. L. and T. S. Epstein, V. W. Turner, and M. G. Marwick contemplate the types of knowledge proper to anthropological dialogue within the fields of economics, legislation, ritual, and witchcraft, and the tools wherein such fabric should be accrued. the amount is brought by means of Max Gluckman, former director of the Rhodes-Livingstone Institute and previous head of the dept of social anthropology and sociology, collage of Manchester.
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Extra info for The Craft of Social Anthropology
Sample text
These correlations had emerged from direct observation in the course of ordinary fieldwork - in fact the characteristics to quantify were determined by direct observation - but quantification enabled the generality of the relationship between the social characteristics of village headmen and their social prestige to be demonstrated, and also enabled us to determine which social characteristics were most important. TYPES OF QUANTITATIVE DATA The fieldwork data, quantitative or qualitative, which social anthropologists use to base their conclusions on are all derived ultimately from 25 Orientations, and Techniques observation.
Quantitative data have also been used by Garbett (1960) in a study of changes in some Shona villages over a ten-year period. Garbett was able to carry out a survey of a group of five Shona villages in 1958 in exactly the same way as they had been surveyed by Bernardi in 1948. Among a number of aspects of change, Garbett considers he is able to show that, while the overall rate of labour migration had doubled, the village structure in terms of the proportion of kinsmen of various kinds present in them had not altered appreciably.
In the first place, as she observes, if the circumstances in the field allow of it, censustaking can become a routine activity for the anthropologist. In this way the anthropologist systematically visits every individual or household in the community and ensures that a certain basic set of information is recorded for each. The people of the community will probably know the anthropologist and since everyone is subjected to the same inquiry, this sort of activity comes to define the role of the anthropologist.