Introducing Cross-Cultural Research, an online course from HRAF, provides a brief introduction to the world of ethnography-based cross-cultural research. (1950). Yale University, along with Harvard University, the University of North Carolina, the University of Oklahoma, University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, and the University of Washington, became the first sponsoring members of HRAF to hold paper copies of the Files (Ford 1970: 10-11). Consistent with HRAF membership trends, there was a pronounced decline beginning in the late 1970s to early 1980s which coincided with the rise of post-modernism in anthropology. These questions further undermined the already weak reception for statistical studies such as those of Murdock.Networks and Process. and Informed consent includes the "full disclosure of research goals, research methods, types of analyses, and reporting procedures" (Bonvillain 2010: 62). Following the natural sciences' histories of geological formations and biological evolution, widely influential theorists, including Comte, Friedrich Engles (1965 [1846]), Lewis Henry Morgan (1870, 1877), Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer (1898), Max Mueller (1909), James Frazer (1907), and Edward Tylor (1889, 1903), each constructed an historical narrative that traced the emergence of human civilization from ancient, primitive societies into complex and sophisticated civilizations of Europe. International Encyclopedia of Marriage and Family. Durkheim's sociology echoed the analytical distinction between structure and process in Comte's positivist method. However, cross-cultural researchers want to go beyond mere description of particular societies and cultures. Another enduring contribution was to distinguish between kin terms used to describe and classify individuals. It should be noted, of course, that this comparison sometimes proceeded with the judgment that savages were superior to present Europeans; in either case it was a matter of finding the past in the present. illustrative comparison method in anthropology +1 (760) 205-9936. mead, m. ([1935] 2001). His goal was to identify structural forms or morphological units and their subtypes. No analytic statement about empirical observation can be made without at least one comparison providing the contrast that permits either inductive generalization or deductive proof. This guide covers the fields of cultural and linguistic anthropology and archaeology, Research methods in anthropology : qualitative and quantitative approaches, Handbook of methods in cultural anthropology, Digital Data Management for a New Generation, Use the Open Science Framework (OSF) to manage your work. Borofsky further indicates that comparison has really never gone away. ethnographic methods share with nonclassical ethnographic methods. During the later half the twentieth century, comparative studies of kinship dominated anthropology. British structural-functionalist analyses concentrated attention on kinship to the expense of the family, many contending that lineage and clan relations were the logical and psychological extension of ties among nuclear family members. Spyer, Juliano If we consider cultural relativism on a spectrum, then one extreme holds that all traits good within their cultural contextas stated by Conrad Kottak in Mirror for HumanityNazi Germany would be evaluated as nonjudgmentally as Athenian Greece using this extreme. window.__mirage2 = {petok:"Uyv77MUlbDZ6SSIi_gp.jm_UOMamDDHBB6ZUo6tahsU-86400-0"}; 2019. cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. The latter, a . Consequently, Leach (1966) raised serious doubts about the value of the typologies developed to describe the kinship systems. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. When scientists study chimpanzee cognition, for example, they compare chimp performance on cognitive tasks to the performance of human children on the same tasks. cultural complexity: studies in thesocial organization of meaning. Anthropology came to comparison because comparison was thrust on it by the rediscovery of classical antiquity and the opening of Africa, Asia, and the New World to a previously more isolated Europe. Ethnography is a research strategy where the approach is to get as much information as possible about a particular culture. FAX: 203-764-9404 Ethnography is a research strategy where the approach is to get as much information as possible about a particular culture. Part of the challenge in making ethical decisions is the fact that anthropology has always been an activist discipline. Accessibility StatementFor more information contact us atinfo@libretexts.orgor check out our status page at https://status.libretexts.org. The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology. French, John D. london: g.g. Comparative methods have been employed for both quantitative and qualitative studies of such diverse phenomena as language, political organization, economic relations, religion, myth, kinship, marriage, and the family. glencoe: the free press. (1923). 682-686. Legal. boas, f. (1940 [1896]). murdock, g. p. (1963). Methodology. new york: harpercollins. Contemporary primitive societies gave these theorists evidence of earlier social forms. 1934. findings and issues. Retrieved February 23, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/reference/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/comparative-analysis. 4th revised edition. A second wave of historical comparativists followed in the early twentieth century. Costa, Elisabetta jones. Society for Cultural Anthropology. illustrative comparison method in anthropology social structures : a network approach. There are multiple methodologies that can be employed: Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\) - Gillian Harper Ice conducting fieldwork for the Kenyan Grandparents study: "www.oucom.ohiou.edu/internatienya/index.htm". Robert Borofsky initiates the discussion by providing readers with an overview of the intellectual history of comparative anthropology, a history that is relevant both for the academic discipline at large, and also for HRAF, a longstanding pillar in cross-cultural research in anthropology: As anthropology became a more formalized field in the late nineteenth century, it also became more sophisticated in its comparisonsclassifying different societies into evolutionary schema. In his essay on The Limitations of the Comparative Method Anthropology (1896), Boas set a tone for what would become a tradition of comparative-anthropology bashing(Tobin 1990: 477). new york: harpercollins. Although the comparative method was firmly wedded to The second step is to do background research. "Comparative Analysis Read the latest issue.Current Anthropology is a transnational journal devoted to research on humankind, encompassing the full range of anthropological scholarship on human cultures and on the human and other primate species. Rather than assuming an objective separation of the researcher and data, he constructed ideal types, or analytical models that did not confuse the researcher's conceptualization of the phenomena with the phenomena itself. Content may require purchase if you do not have access. Encyclopedia.com. Furthermore the inferential histories paid little heed to the contextual factors that molded the particular institutions that they examined. In this series, four distinguished anthropologists have contributed their reflections on the topic. This enormous collection of descriptive information is critical to understanding different ways of life. SU, Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. In our age of globalization, cross-cultural understanding is more important than ever before. This type of data-gathering is when the anthropologist records their experiences and observations while taking part in activities alongside local participants or informants in the field site. Contemporary ethnography is based almost entirely on fieldwork and requires the complete immersion of the anthropologist in the culture and everyday life of the people who are the subject of his study. An illustration of two cells of a film strip. The social sciences draw their strength when they are able to compare data and make statistical comparisons. English philosopher Herbert Spencer read Charles Darwins On the Origin of Species (1859) and extended the idea of natural selection in an attempt to explain the evolution of cultural complexity. princeton, nj: princeton university press. in the beginning: the origin of civilization. View all Google Scholar citations outline of cultural materials. new york: cambridge university press. illustrative comparison method in anthropologyhorse heaven hills road conditionshorse heaven hills road conditions primitive culture: researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom. new york: bedminster press. r. k. merton, l. broom and l. cottrell. ." He employed ideal types in his comparative studies of the relationship between economy and religion in Protestant Northern and Catholic southern Europe, the differences between charismatic and bureaucratic forms of leadership in Europe and China, and religious practices in Europe, China, and India. meaning, scopes, methods, history and uses of anthropology, and its relations to other disciplines. Comparison and uniqueness are not incomparable; they are just different ways of looking (Ember 2016). In the influential The Golden Bough, James Frazer (1890, 1900, 190615) described religious beliefs among a range of societies. newyork: macmillan. murdock, g. p., and yale university institute of humanrelations. Video. Mrner, Magnus Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Both of these areas of study use secondary analysis as a research method. New Haven, CT 06511-1225, Tel: 203-764-9401 or 1-800-520-4723 This philosophical child of comparison, however, pursued it in some very special ways. OSF is a tool that helps you manage, store, and keep safe your research materials. Wang, Xinyuan ethnography, descriptive study of a particular human society or the process of making such a study. 3rd edition. Haapio-Kirk, Laura Within anthropology, the most widely known example is the George Murdock's Human Relations Area Files. Our mission is to promote understanding of cultural diversity and commonality in the past and present. Boston: Houghton-Mifflin. studies, and theory, especially in anthropology, history, political science, cambridge, uk: cambridge university press. and sociology. As shown in the course, the expression apples and oranges provides an especially valuable analogy. w. (1799). Figure 1 shows a typical distribution of propensity scores. new haven, ct: human relations area files. In addition to epistemological issues that influence the nature of research questions and assumptions, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Social Science Research Methods tackles topics not normally viewed as part of social science research methodology, from philosophical issues such as poststructuralism to advanced statistical techniques. and change in human societies through time and the contemporary world. These are questions that people are interested in outside of anthropology. smelser, n. j. Following in the Boasian tradition, the idea of focusing on cultural traits rather than whole cultures became the subject of ridicule for subsequent critiques. In-depth interviews are used as the main research instruments. What makes them different? Max Weber (1968) took a less positivist approach to social analysis and based his comparative method on the formulation of ideal types. and zeitschrift fur ethnologie 37:2853. If the data is not published then it does not do the academic comunity much good as the information is inaccessible. spencer, h. (2002 [1898]). Whether you are coming from a scientific, interpretive, or applied anthropological tradition, you will learn field methods from the best guide in both qualitative and quantitative methods. Sociologists study societies, while anthropologists study cultures. Levi-Straus's seminal Elementary Structures of Kinship 1969) began by examining the significance of incest rules and rules of group exogamy (the practice of marrying outside of one's group) that used marriage as a means of both delineating group boundaries (in terms of those whom one may or may not marry) and establishing alliances. hage, p., and harary, f. (1996). A big question that every cultural anthropologist has to think about is this: What do you do if intervention could change the culture? Taken further, G. Elliott Smith (1928) and W. J. Perry (1923) contended that Egypt was the root of Western European civilization and that culture diffused to ancient Europe as the result of culture contact and migration. The American Anthropological Association has designed an online tool to help instructors in teaching about data management as an integral component of research design and data collection. What are the methods in anthropology? These are the fundamental questions asked by cross-cultural researchers (Ember 2016). ." Indeed, anthropology was born as a response to the great cultural contrasts thus exposed. A third response to the inadequacies of the historical comparative methods was to develop sample-based comparisons with ethnographic databases. Avoiding divisive debates over science and humanism, the contributors draw upon both traditions to explore fieldwork in practice. introduction to rethinking kinship and marriage. london and new york: macmillan. Questions were also raised about the ability to establish social rules based on historically contingent phenomena. [1896]. london: murray. Nancy Bonvillain (2010: 54-57) outlines the basic approach to cultural anthropology fieldwork. 1990. Comparative Studies in Society and History New Haven: Human Relations Area Files. . Its interesting information and I urge you to take a look at a couple of the cases. islam observed: religious development in morocco and indonesia. They reduced the variability among their comparative units by concentrating their research on regions of Africa with patrilineally and matrilineally based societies. Questions were raised about the nature of analytical definitions and the use of Western European concepts such as descent, marriage, and kinship as analytical constructs for the description and analysis of systems in other cultures (Needham 1971). Types of authority mclennan, j. f. (1886). Until steeped in the local traditions, there is always a chance that the researcher will unwittingly violate local norms, making it more difficult to get to know the study group. Family and kinship were central to the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century debates about the origins and evolution of society. (1972). John Bodley has been quoted saying that anthropology is a subversive science. Criticisms of the historical comparative methods concern the units of analysis used for comparison including similarity and diversity among the societies studied, the comparability of the data used, and the kinds of generalizations that are possible given the nature of the data. tyler, s., ed. There is clearly an upward trajectory of comparative anthropology in the twenty-first century. 270-280. Migration by members of formerly isolated societies forced researchers to face growing diversity and the disjunction of featureslanguage, common history, religious beliefs and practicethat had coincided in geographically bound populations. Use the Open Science Framework (OSF) to manage your work kinship, networks, and exchange. morgan, l. h. (1963). Claude Levi-Strauss developed another method based on the comparison of structural principles. The last chapter on medical anthropology will particularly help students understand 1966 Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History The course materials illustrate the rationale behind cross-cultural research and the importance of comparison: From the 1900s and into the present, anthropologists have spent considerable time living with and learning about the culture and social life of people all over the world. And even when we describe uniqueness, we are implicitly saying that something differs from all other cases we know about. In Race Language, and Culture. David Schneider (1968) contended that kinship systems were culturally constructed idioms of social relations. heyerdahl, t. (1952). Illustrative comparisons are used in historical reconstructions, and to support interpretations or general assertions. federal premium 300 win mag 165 grain nosler partition; star tribune obituaries this week; . (1976). smith, g. e. (1928). The ethnographer, or cultural anthropologist, tries to get information from many angles to see whole picture--again, striving for that holistic view. cleveland, oh: world pub. Comparative analyses remain an essential aspect of anthropology and other social sciences, just as Durkheim asserted (1938). sperber, d. (1985). in sociology today; problemsand prospects, ed. They were unable to adequately respond to Francis Galton's criticism in the discussion that followed Tylor's address to the Royal Anthropological Institute (Tylor 1899) that, if data were gathered from neighboring groups, it would be impossible to determine if similarities resulted from a common history or arose independently from common functions. weber, m. (1968). london:athlone press. It also involves learning about the area in which they are going to study--the history, politics, environment, climate, customs, etc. They were of three types, each closely aligned with the theories of Boas, Durkheim, and Weber, and concerned with social structure rather than history. However, the trend is now turning upward, and the number of cross-cultural studies is almost back up to the peak levels. During the 1960s and 1970s comparative studies declined, in part due to methodological and epistemological debates that questioned the concepts employed in comparative research. One of the best is the SAGE Research Methods Database: Digital Data Management for a New Generation This article highlights the issue of informed consent. tylor, s. e. b. (1982). (1853). We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. This point is in alignment with the objectives of HRAFs open access resource, Explaining Human Culture, which includes findings from over 1,000 cross-cultural studies as well as topical summaries of what we have learned from cross-cultural research, or more precisely, what we think we know, and to point out some of the things we do not yet know (Ember 2016). Where is the ethical line in that situation? The Golden bough, a study in comparative religion. View more articles from Science. } Cambridge University Press (www.cambridge.org) is the publishing division of the University of Cambridge, one of the worlds leading research institutions and winner of 81 Nobel Prizes. (1979). Home; Categories. Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown (1881-1955) was one of the most eminent anthropologists of the first ha, Malinowski, Bronislaw Miller, Daniel w. p. lehmann. Refer to each styles convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates. Request Permissions, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Society for Comparative Studies in Society and History. Cross-cultural data analysis can help to answer these questions. It publishes over 2,500 books a year for distribution in more than 200 countries. sanjek, r. (1978). Published online by Cambridge University Press: WORKERS BY WEBER In an illustrative example, a selection circuit may switch the high learning rate to the low learning rate based on a comparison of a moving average . ), Handbook of social and cultural anthropology, A handbook of method in cross-cultural anthropology, Social anthropology and the method of controlled comparison, The social organization of the western Pueblos, The classification of residence in censuses, A cross-cultural anthropological analysis of a technical aid program, Use of anthropological methods and data in planning and operation, Family and inheritance: rural society in Western Europe 12001800, Comparing household structure over time and between cultures, The material culture and social institutions of the simpler peoples, Universityof California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology, Culture element distributions: X Northwest California, Social origins of dictatorship and democracy, Witchcraft in four African societies: an essay in comparison, The disputing processlaw in ten societies, A handbook of method in cultural anthropology, The social organization of Australian tribes, The sun dance of the Plains Indians: its development and diffusion, A suggested origin for gentile organization, The distribution of kinship systems in North America, On a method of investigating the development of institutions; applied to laws of marriage and descent, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. Cultural Anthropology. Analysis of social action Choosing to live in the same place as the study group is the best way to conduct research, but living in close proximity can make it difficult for the anthropologist to remain neutral local conflicts, something that is important for the researcher to do. From this starting point, he compared the complex patterns of marriage-based alliances among a number of Australian aboriginal groups and societies in Southeast Asia and India, to compare the various conceptual elaborations of the principles of marriage exchange and alliance. The Study of Sociology London: Henry S. King. On the other end there is the idea that there is no way to be truly culturally relative because we are all human beings with cultural baggagehave ideas about what are right and wrong. Three strategies are used in comparative methodologies: illustrative comparison, complete or universe comparison, and sampled-based comparisons (Sarana 1975). Anthropology came to comparison because comparison was thrust on it by the rediscovery of classical antiquity and the opening of Africa, Asia, and the New World to a previously more isolated Europe. . His structuralist treatment of kinship and marriage (referred to as alliance theory) examined the nature of relationships among groups, rather then focusing upon groups' rules of composition. It is particularly important for anthropologists to find out if there are legal restrictions for working outside of their home country. Introducing Cross Cultural Research. The HRAF as Radical Text? "what is network analysis, and what isit good for?" No matter the technique and ethnographic approach, it is obligatory that cultural anthropologists conduct ethical research. Request Permissions, Ruth Mace, Mark Pagel, John R. Bowen, Biman Kumar Das Gupta, Keith F. Otterbein, Mark Ridley, Thomas Schweizer and Eckart Voland, Published By: The University of Chicago Press. They are distinguished by the units of comparison (including cultures, societies, regions, or communities) and the particular items or features used to compare the units. new york: basic books. For more information, visit http://journals.cambridge.org. An illustration of an audio speaker. From the time he was ten he lived, Cultural studies has become an increasingly difficult field of communication scholarship and political activism to define, mostly owing to the attemp, Boas, Franz Boas was a lifelong opponent of nineteenth century theories of cultural evolution such as those of Tylor, Morgan, and Spencer and he was a strong critic of the comparative approach. "family and household: theanalysis of domestic groups." Most significantly these theories seemed increasingly less credible as researchers had greater contact with people in the societies they attempted to explain. edition. He described the legal or jural dimensions of family and kinship among the Iroquois of the state of New York, and compared their family and clan structures with those of European societies and Australian Aborigines (who have figured significantly in comparative studies of kinship) (Morgan 1870, 1963 [1877]). london: g. routledge and sons. Such practices ultimately support long-term managementincluding upload into digital data archives and institutional repositoriesand facilitate data sharing where appropriate. The first step is define a problem and choose a field site. Anthropology has been in permanent crisis about the comparative method since its inception, due to the unique combination of generalizing versus particularizing dimensions at the core of the social anthropological study. in areader in nineteenth century historical indo-european linguistics, ed. sarana, g. (1975). for Contributors at Cambridge Journals Online. Not only were classical comparative studies called into question on epistemological grounds, their adequacy in representing kinship and family systems was attacked for their substantive limitations grounds. Ford, C. S. 1970. This includes getting informed consent, which means that the group/person under study agree to take part in research. With the growth of literacy and political activism, the peoples who anthropologists had studied and described have challenged professional social scientists' place as ethnographers. Comparisons by sociologists focused on variations across time and national, ethnic, and class lines, rather than across cultures. According to Adedoyin (2020), in-depth interviews include the piloting of systematic or vigorous personal interviews with a focus on a. Clifford Geertz (1963, 1968) used ethnographic cases as real types for comparisons of social organization, economic systems, and educational systems, and paved the way for comparisons in interpretative anthropology and cultural studies. Comparativists use five principal methodologies in their research. Holy (i987) remarked that "the line between comparativists and non-comparativists is probably more sharply drawn than ever before," the latter being in the numerical ma-jority. london: allen and unwin. haddon, a. c. (1895). 1982. Identifying a problem can happen multiple ways; it might stem from something an anthropologist has read about; it might begin with a long-term interest in a particular region or country, or in the case of graduate students, it might be a class that captures an interest. These comparative studies of social forms focused on kinship and marriage and the structural relationships among kin groups. tylor, s. e. b. Each author has written from their experiences working as an anthropologist and that personal touch makes for an accessible introduction to cultural anthropology. Posts about illustrative method written by readingreid. systems of consanguinity and affinity of the human family. New York: Macmillan. Anthropologists want to move beyond the problematic broad conjectures of earlier times. forum for new research and interpretation concerning problems of recurrent patterning growing up in new guinea: a comparative study of primitive education.