What makes fieldwork in anthropology different from how science is done in disciplines like chem & physics?

Question

What problems do cutural anthropologists encounter and how do they deal with these problems?

Answer 1

There is a split in social science methodology between "qualitative" and "quantitative" perspectives. The nature of physics and chemistry offers the ability to make operational definitions and measurements that are less interpretational than does something like anthropology. When an anthropologist begins their study, they are bringing all of the baggage of the culture that they are embedded within along with them, causing them to interpret the interactions and behaviors in this studied environment in ways that someone embedded within the target culture would definately not.
As a result, some post modernists subscribe to the idea that you can never really understand another's point of view and that all reality is subjective.
This is at odds with "positivists" that hold that there is really a reality and that we analyze our environment to find it.
Check out positivist, interpretativist and normative in wikipedia if you need to dig further with this.
Bottom line, field work in chemistry and physics offer clean concepts to examine. Anthropology is complicated since we are always part of the interpretation and sometimes event the outcome.

Answer 2

The clothes.... Cultural Anthropologists deal with a lot of problems, the first I think is maintaining Cultural Relativism and not trying to impose their cultural views upon others. This can be difficult, as in the case of infanticide. Also, there is a case with Margaret Mead where she was studying a group in New Guinea (I believe) and they lied about just about every element of their culture, because they took offense to her being there. There are also other political issues that cultural anthropologists deal with when proposing the results of their work. And with any science...FUNDING!

Answer 3

Anthro's who do field work are called Archologists. When doing field work- like at a "dig"- they have to use the same scientific principals and techniques that other "hard" scienctists use.

Example: lower jawbone of human skull, mixed with human skeleton. Firepit has charred bones from fish that became extinct 7500 years ago. Bits of flint indicate chipping of tools and weapons, primitive clay pot shards found with some cuineform impressed when the pots were made. Carbon 14 dating shows the bone fragments to be 6800 to 7700 years old. DNA anylisis shows somewhat older due to genetic mutations- suspect either C-14 data was contaminated, or body was moved from one gravesite to another. Further research shows bones were moved from up a river to current campsite during spring floods...

See what I mean? It all boils down to luck, intuition, hard work, and a disciplined approach to understanding humans, in this case.

Answer 4

I just think science is groovy. It was createdby men doing experiments in some remote place with potions and beakers right? Doctors came from scientists, and they go hand in hand. They could still be doing that, collecting plant species and stuff, but todays doctors and scientists are born of forefathering doctors and scientists who had all the know chemicals and plants handed to them. Right? So if scientists really wanted to get back to their ''roots'', and doctors too, with herbs and teas and the like, they could. They would open themselves up to making more friends that way too, instead of just rich robotic friends. People arejust so accustomed to following the previous professions and how they did it. Nobody said a person couldn't get a doctors degree, open up a herbal store with a scientist who practices new remedies with real herbs!

Answer 5

You stay at home and work in an airconditioned lab while sitting down when doing chemistry and physics. In anthropology, you go to god-forsaken places with heat and humidity and live in tents or worse and battle insects and arthropods and snakes and such and have to communicate with people through interpreters and trekk through jungles and deserts and rain and mud and eat horrid food and get fevers and diarrhea.....lotsa fun times. They deal with these problems by toughing it out.