Research Methods in Anthropology Study Guide Ch. 1
1
   Anthropology and the Social Sciences

 

Outline

  1. The Craft of Research
  2. Methods Belong to Everyone
  3. Epistemology: Ways of Knowing
  4. Rationalism, Empiricism, and Kant
  5. The Norms of Science
  6. The Development of Science -- Democritus to Newton
  7. Exploration, Printing, and Modern Science
  8. Science, Money, and War
  9. The Development of Social Science: From Newton to Rousseau
  1. Early Positivism: Quételet, Saint-Simon, Comte
  2. Technology and Science
  3. Social Science Failures
  4. The Varieties of Positivism
  5. Later Positivism: The Vienna Circle
  6. Instrumental Positivism
  7. The Reaction against Positivism
  8. About Numbers and Words: The Quantitative/Qualitative Split
  9. Ethics and Social Science
 

Examples and Illustrations
 

Links

Emic/Etic Distinctions by James Lett

Least You Should Know

  1. A definition of "science" ... objective, logical, and systematic method of analysis of phenomena devised to permit accumulation of reliable knowledge
  2. Name and explain the three "norms of science" ... objective, method, reliable
  3. The embeddedness of "methods" in epistemology
  4. The difference between deduction and induction
  5. The meaning of "empirical" and "positivism"
  6. Be able to say something about humanism, hermeneutics, and phenomenology
 

Food for Thought

Themes introduced here (e.g., rationalism vs. empiricism) are echoed over and over in the study of human beings:


Science/Epistemology Individual Ethics Social Theory
rationalism essence/nature universal idealism (Hegel)
empiricism learning/nurture relativism materialism (Marx)

 

Concepts, terms, vocabulary

Comte (12-3)
Condorcet (11)
constructivism (3.2)
deduction (9)
dualism (9)
empiricism (3)
epistemology (3.4)
experiment (8)
 hermeneutics (21-2)
humanism (3, 20)
hypothetico-deductive model
   of science (9)
induction (9)
interpretavism
metaphysics (5-6)
phenomenology (22-3)
positivism (3)
 Quételet (12)
rationalism (3-4)
reliable (6)
Rousseau (12)
social contract (12)
tabula rasa (4)
Vienna Circle (18)
Voltaire (11)


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