Transcript Why Conduct Qualitative Research?

Anthropology: the humanistic science
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Are you as interested as I am in knowing
how, when, and where human life arose,
what the first human societies and languages
were like, why cultures have evolved along
diverse but often remarkably convergent
pathways, why distinctions of rank came into
being, and how small bands and villages gave
way to chiefdoms and chiefdoms to mighty
states and empires?
 --Marvin Harris, Our Kind
The four fields of
anthropology
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Anthropology is the science of humanity
– all of humanity, in all its complexity.
There are four field of anthropology:
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Cultural Anthropology
Archeology
Linguistic Anthropology
Biological Anthropology
Cultural anthropology
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Cultural anthropologists study the
variation in thought and behavior
among people of contemporary
societies.
Archeology
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Archeologists also study the variation in
human thought and behavior, but focus on
past societies.
Archeology, however, adds more than the
dimension of time to the study of human
cultural variation. It adds an enormous
number of societies to the database of
experiments that humans have conducted in
social living.
Archeology
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Classical archeologists focus on the
reconstruction of ancient literate
civilizations. They get their training in
departments of classics. The majority of
archeologists in the U.S., however –
those who study ancient preliterate
civilizations – get their training in
departments of anthropology.
Linguistic anthropology
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Linguistic anthropologists study the
variation in human languages, the roots
of human languages, and the role of
language in shaping human thought
and behavior.
Biological anthropology
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Biological – or physical –
anthropologists are biologists who study
humans as organisms.
Biological anthropologists show us how
the capacity for culture itself has
evolved and how that capacity, in turn,
has influenced our biological evolution.
Applied anthropology
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Applied anthropology is the application
of anthropological knowledge to the
solution of human problems.
Many anthropologists work in
applications – that is, trying to solve
human problems.
Applied anthropology
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Delivering better health care, producing
better crops, teaching literacy more
effectively – these and other
development programs across the world
are enhanced by anthropological
knowledge of local cultural patterns.
Applied anthropology
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All four fields of anthropology have a basicscience and an applied-science dimension.
Forensics anthropology is applied biological
anthropology.
CRM, or cultural resource management, is
applied archeology.
Bilingual education makes use of applied
linguistic anthropology.
Medical anthropology
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Medical anthropology, for example, is
based on both cultural and biological
anthropology.
Studies of health systems and studies of
the cultural correlates of disease.
Some anthropological
questions I
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Biological anthropology:
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What is the relation between modern apes
and humans? Who are the oldest humans
and where did they develop?
What happened to the Neanderthals?
Are we still evolving?
What accounts for the different color of
people’s skin around the world?
Are gendered behaviors genetic?
Some anthropological
questions II
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Archeology:
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When were plants and animals domesticated?
When did the earliest states arise, and how did
complex societies evolve at all?
When did the first people come to America?
Why did complex states develop so much later in
the Americas, in Europe, and in Africa than in
China or the Middle East?
Some anthropological
questions III
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Linguistics:
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Are all human languages of equal complexity? Are
some languages harder to learn than others?
How did language originate?
Are all the languages of the world related to one
another?
Why is it so hard to speak a foreign language
without an accent?
Does language shape thought or vice versa?
Some anthropological
questions IV
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Cultural and biocultural anthropology:
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Is violence and war inevitable in human society?
Why do people have different cultures?
Why is there economic and social inequality? Is it
part of being human?
What accounts for differences in IQ scores around
the world?
Are there innate behavioral and cognitive
differences in men and women?
Why anthropology?
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Partly, to satisfy our curiosity about the
range of variation in human thought and
behavior. This is a motivating force in all
sciences.
Partly to shake the foundations of ethnocentrism and to create a respect for
cultural diversity.
And partly to help ameliorate human
problems.
Methods
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There are three levels of method:
epistemology, strategy, and technique. At the
epistemological level, there are two
fundamentally different approaches in the
social sciences.
One approach is rooted in the scientific, or
positivist tradition; the other is rooted in the
interpretive, or humanistic tradition. (K10:19)
More about these traditions later.
Humanism and science
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The methods of humanistically oriented
anthropology are the same as those used in
all the humanities, particularly those used in
the comparative study of literature and in
history. (K10:19)
The methods of scientifically oriented
anthropology are the same as those used in
comparative sociology and psychology. (K10:
20-23)
Strategic methods vs. technique
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In the social and behavioral sciences, the
scientific tradition in cultural anthropology
has, in the past, represented the larger
tradition of natural science.
Psychology has, in the past, represented the
larger tradition of experimental science.
Sociologists have combined these two
traditions in survey research. (K10:327)
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In other words, the strategic methods have
been historically associated with particular
social and behavioral sciences
 experiments with psychology
 questionnaire surveys with sociology
 participant observation with anthropology
Each strategic method comprises many
techniques.
Methodological convergence in
the social sciences
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Today, the dominant tradition in cultural
anthropology is interpretivism – the search
for meaning rather than the search for cause
(K10:330).
And, the social and behavioral sciences are
becoming less identified by their methods of
data collection and analysis and more by the
theoretical and practical problems they
address.
Participant observation
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Most people are familiar with the method of
questionnaire surveys and with the method of
experiments, including the idea of controls
and placebos.
Most people are not familiar with participant
observation, but this method has become
part of the general social science toolkit in
the last 30 years. (K10:324-326)
Participant observation
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Participant observation involves
immersion in another culture, including
the learning of another culture's
language. (K10:324-326)
Participant observation
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Participant observation is the strategic
method that makes possible the
collection of data:
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about things that people would ordinarily
not talk about;
about behavior that people can’t
intellectualize and talk about at all.
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How far apart do we stand when we talk to one
another? What’s the average?
Qualitative and quantitative data
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Participant observation ethnography is often
called a qualitative method, but actually, all
sciences use qualitative and quantitative
methods – in different amounts, of course.
Long before the physics of avian flight were
understood, ornithologists watched and took
notes about how birds learned to fly.
Anthropology’s strategic method
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But for almost all cultural
anthropologists – those who advocate
the humanistic or interpretivist
approach and those who favor the
scientific or positivistic approach alike –
participant observation is the strategic
method for collecting data.
The qual-quant question
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The first cut in the social sciences, then,
is not qualitative or quantitative.
The first cut is: can a question be
answered with the scientific method?
Many questions can not be answered
with the scientific method.
Key concepts in method and theory
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Emic vs. etic data: Patterned cognition
vs. observable reality. (K10:329)
Individual vs. aggregate phenomena –
the science in social science is a focus
on aggregate phenomena.
In contrast, the focus in the humanities
is on more on understanding the
individual.
Culture I
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All of anthropology is tied together by the
concept of culture – the mechanism by which
modern humans adapt to their changing
physical and social environment. (K10:ch13)
Culture comprises:
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the ideas for patterned behavior;
patterned behavior; and
the products of patterned behavior.
Culture II
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Culture is
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(K10:345-356)
Learned; psychic unity of humankind
Shared; enculturation by groups and
subgroups
Integrated; parts change together –
eventually
Particular, general and universal
Mediated symbolically; language and
artifacts
Culture III
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Norms and variations within limits
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Ideal vs. real culture
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We see this in all aspects of everyday life.
We see this everywhere, too.
Culture is always changing.
Three paradigms
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Sociobiologists look for evolutionary,
biologically rooted explanations for human
behavior.
Idealists emphasize the internal emotional
and/or cognitive states of human beings in
the search for the causes and consequences
of variations in human behavior.
Materialists emphasize external conditions –
infrastructure and structure
Ethnography
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If culture is the mechanism of human
adaptation, we can see a culture as a
set of adaptations.
Ethnography is the study of a culture.
(K10:10-25; 324-326)
Ethnology
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But cultures differ occur across space
and across time.
A theory of culture must account for
these differences in patterned ideas,
behavior, and artifacts across space and
time.
Ethnology is the comparative study of
cultures. (K10:10-25; 324)
Cultural materialism
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I support the cultural materialist
paradigm as a way to find explanations
for differences.
The cultural materialist paradigm was
developed by Marvin Harris (1927–
2001).
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The emphasis is on aggregates and
long-term outcomes.
It is not a replacement for understanding the unique in people or in
societies.
The key concepts: infrastructure,
structure, superstructure
Infrastructure
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Infrastructure is the interface between
nature and culture – where nature
includes the physical environment and
the technology for production, as well
as the biological and psychological
constraints on reproduction.
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Including the mode of reproduction is one
key difference between Marx’s and Harris’
materialist paradigm.
Harris’ challenge
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“The etic behavioral modes of
production and reproduction
probabilistically determine the etic
behavioral domestic and political
economy, which in turn probabilistically
determine the behavioral and mental
emic superstructures.”
(Harris 1979:55-56. Cultural Materialism. The
Struggle for a Science of Culture)
Structure and superstructure
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The structure of society includes its the
economic and political components.
The superstructure of a society is the
ideology – the internal states of values,
beliefs, and attitudes.
The superstructure is what provides
humans with meaning, including
disappointment and satisfaction.
Primacy of the infrastructure
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The cultural materialist paradigm is based on
the principle of infrastructural primacy.
This principle only works in aggregates and
over a longer periods of time.
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At any moment, the three components of society
may be in flux.
In fact, the infrastructure may change as a
consequence of human intervention.
Some generalizations:
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States only arise after agriculture.
Monotheism is found only in state-level
societies.
Ideas about sexuality, family size, and
age of marriage follow changes in
structure and may be facilitated by
changes in the infrastructure.
Idealism I
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Ideas can take a long time to catch up
to changes in material conditions.
And so, despite the many examples of
infrastructural determinism, this
principle does not account for all
changes in structure and culture.
Idealism II
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The idealist paradigm focuses on
psychological, mental, and on the
symbolism inherent in cultural behavior.
By contrast, materialism focuses on
behavior as the expression of values
and assumes that technoenvironmental
forces shape both behavior and ideas.
Explaining
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We should, then, look first to the
infrastructure when we try to explain
broad changes in a society because that
is where the explanation is most likely
to come from.
And understanding
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And we should look to the
superstructure (idealism) when we want
to understand the meaning of behavior
and symbols to people in a society,
because that is where the explanation is
most likely to come from.
The biological substrate
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Culture often trumps biology, so it is
important to look for nonbiological
alternatives in explaining human behavior.
We should, however, look to evolutionary
forces (sociobiology) when we try to explain
the long-term evolution of reproductive
behavior, on a global scale.
Paradigms and theories
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Sociobiology, idealism and cultural
materialism are paradigms, not theories.
They are principles for finding theory – for
finding explanations of specific cases, of
things that beg to be explained.
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Example: The small, important probability of stepchildren being injured or killed.
There are sociobiological, idealist, and
materialist explanations for this phenomenon.
Sociobiological explanation
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The sociobiological explanation for the
battering of nonbiological children is
appealing for aggregate, evolutionary
phenomena—the big, big picture.
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A sociobiological explanation addresses the
question: What is the reproductive
advantage of this behavior occurring at all?
The SB explanation
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Maximize inclusive fitness:
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The reaction would be strongest for stepparents who support other biological
children.
These frustrations will cause some
people to become violent, but not
others.
But why some?
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The behavior is not inevitable
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A sociobiological explanation can’t explain
why only some step-parents hurt their
children.
At this level of analysis, we need a
processual explanation.
Cultural materialist explanation
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Some step-parents who bring resources
to a second marriage become frustrated
by the possibility of having their wealth
diluted by their new spouse’s children.
Penn Handwerker’s study
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In Barbados step-parents were no more
likely to treat children violently than
were biological parents.
But with the presence of a stepfather,
women were
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more likely to batter their daughters
less likely to batter their sons.
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These women saw their daughters as
potential competitors for resources
available from their partner.
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They saw sons as potential sources of
physical protection and income.
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Women who had their own sources of
income protected their children from
violence.
In these families, sons also developed
affectionate relationships with their
biological father.
Conclusion:
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Men battered powerless women and the
children of powerless women, and powerless
women battered their own children.
Is there a sociobiological imperative for
powerful spouses to batter powerless ones?
Or is this stimulated by material conditions,
like poverty?
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Apply Occam’s razor
Idealism
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In different cultures, the rare event of
child battering is sometime more likely
to be at the hands of the mother,
sometimes at the hands of the father.
These are cultural differences.
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They may be accounted for structural
differences, but the content of culture is
important to our understanding these
phenomena.
Another example:
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Women everywhere in the world tend to
have nurturing roles.
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There are biological, cultural, and
materialist explanations for this fact.
These competing paradigms are
complementary – depending on the level of
analysis and the time frame.
Nomothetic and idiographic theory
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In 1977, the New Delhi police reported
311 deaths by kitchen fires of women,
mostly young brides who were killed
because their families had not delivered
a promised dowry to the groom’s family.
By 2001 …
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By 1987, the government of India
reported 1912 such “dowry deaths” of
young women.
By 1994 the number was 5199—over 14
per day.
By 2001, it was over 7000
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/crossing_continents/3071963.stm
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Daniel Gross’s theory of hypergamy
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Theorized that the Indian kitchen fires
were a consequence of female
hypergamy and dowry.
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Families try to marry off their daughter to
someone of greater means by offering
higher dowry.
This created a bidding war, as families of
wealthier sons demand more and more for
the privilege of marrying those sons.
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Families of daughters go into debt to
accumulate the dowries.
When they can’t pay off the debt, some
families of grooms murder the brides in
faked kitchen accidents, where
kerosene stoves purportedly blow up.
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The problem intensifies with the advance
of industrialization
Paredes’ study of the Poarch Creek Band
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When he began his research in 1971,
the Indians were a remnant of an
earlier group.
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They had lost the use of the Creek
language
They were not recognized by the U.S.
government as a tribe
They had little contact with other Indians
for decades.
Poarch Creek identity
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How did the Poarch Creek maintain
their identity?
There was a cultural revitalization
movement since the 1940s, led by key
people.
The value of unique cases
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This is a single case, and the
explanation is unique.
But with other cases, we see the
commonalities of people who make a
difference in the maintenance of ethnic
identity.
Gross’s idiographic theory
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Gross’s explanation for the kitchen fires in
India rings true but it doesn’t explain why
other societies that have escalating dowry
don’t have kitchen fires.
Nor does it tell us why dowry persists in India
despite its being outlawed since 1961, or why
dowry—which occurs in just 7.5% of the
world’s societies—exists in the first place.
Gross’s theory is idiographic.
Paredes’ idiographic theory
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Paredes’s theory doesn’t explain:
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Why other Native American groups managed to
maintain their identity or why some groups did not
manage it.
Why other ethnic groups maintain or fail to
maintain their identity in the United States.
Why ethnicity persists at all in the face of pressure
from states on ethnic groups to assimilate.
Paredes’ theory is idiographic.
Nomothetic theories
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Nomothetic theories address questions
like:
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“So, what does account for the existence
of dowry?”
Boserup’s theory of dowry
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Dowry should occur in societies where
women’s role in subsistence production
is low.
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She was right, but many societies where
women’s productive effort is low do not
have dowry.
Steven Gaulin and James Boster add to it
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Dowry exists in stratified societies that
have monogamous or polyandrous
marriage.
They tested this on a sample of 186
societies, the Standard Cross Cultural
Sample (SCCS).
The SCCS, HRAF, and comparative research
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The Human Relations Area Files at Yale
University: a million pages of
ethnography.
Using cultures as units of analysis.
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The Gaulin-Boster theory misclassifies
fewer societies than Boserup’s, but still
makes mistakes:
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77% of dowry societies are, in fact,
stratified and have monogamous marriage,
but
63% of monogamous, stratified societies
do not have dowry.
Harris adds more…
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Harris suggested that Esther Boserup’s
model should work in societies where
women’s value in production and
reproduction is low.
In those cases, we expect dowry as a
compensation to the groom’s family for
taking on the liability of taking the bride
into their family.
Kenneth Adams tests this …
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In societies with plow agriculture and highquality agricultural land, women’s labor is of
low value.
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If those societies also have high population
density, then women’s reproductive role should be
of low value.
In societies with both these characteristics,
patrilocal residence would make accepting a
bride a real liability and would lead to
demand for compensation—hence, dowry.
Nomothetic theory grows
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Adams’ theory makes 25% fewer errors
than the Gaulin-Boster theory does in
predicting which societies in the SCCS
have dowry.
This is how nomothetic theory grows.
Schlegel and Barry
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Alice Schlegel and Herbert Barry
predicted that women will be more
respected in societies where they
contribute a lot to subsistence than in
societies where their contribution is low.
(Schlegel, A., & Barry, H., III. (1986). The cultural consequences of female contribution to subsistence.
American Anthropologist, 88, 142–150)
To operationalize:
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In societies where women contribute a lot to
subsistence, women:
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will be able to space their pregnancies;
will subjected to rape less often;
will have greater sexual freedom
will be worth more in bride wealth
will have greater choice in selection of a spouse.
All of their hypotheses supported by the SCCS.
John Whiting: post-partum taboo
and protein availability
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Comparative studies use a statistical
approach.
Whiting’s data are in a contingency
table.
Available protein and duration of post-partum sex
taboo
Protein
availability
Duration of post-partum taboo
Short term
(0-1 year)
Long term
(>1 year)
Total
High
47
15
62
Medium
38
25
63
Low
20
27
47
Total
105
67
172
p-values for contingency tables
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The p-value for Whiting’s table is <.01.
Accounting for falsifying cases:
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carrying infants in a high-protein society
recently adopting grain agriculture in a
low-protein society – culture lag
measurement error
Theories and probabilities
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Why do societies that have low protein
availability tend to have a longer postpartum sex taboo?
Recurring relationships and theories:
facts vs. explanations.