Chap 4 EE

Raymond Hames Author

08/18/2017 Added

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Chapter 4 for Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (ANTH 212)

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[00:00:00.000]Chapter Four we're gonna deal with
[00:00:01.999]explanation and evidence.
[00:00:04.320]Basically it'll focus on how anthropologists
[00:00:07.459]do the research in terms of the source of questions they
[00:00:11.394]pursue and the kinds of evidence they present,
[00:00:14.059]so we'll look at explanations, why theories can not
[00:00:18.052]be proved, in fact they can only be falsified
[00:00:22.247]in a technical sense, how theories are generated,
[00:00:26.750]how evidence is collected to test explanations,
[00:00:30.960]and they types of research in cultural anthropology.
[00:00:36.121]Okay, we'll begin with explanations.
[00:00:38.364]An explanation is simply an answer to a why question.
[00:00:42.198]For example, in the online reading, why is there
[00:00:45.890]variation in the use of spices in meat dishes?
[00:00:48.986]We'll use this example a little bit later.
[00:00:51.900]What anthropologists tend to do, or any scientists actually,
[00:00:56.366]is to look for associations or relationships,
[00:00:59.885]that is how certain kinds of variables seem to
[00:01:03.903]hang together to be consistently present
[00:01:07.929]in a variety of different cases.
[00:01:10.563]And it's important to understand that when we talk about
[00:01:13.988]explanations we're talking about hypotheses
[00:01:16.958]that are deduced from some kind of theory.
[00:01:20.495]Now this is a very important point.
[00:01:24.963]It may come a surprise to many of you that theories
[00:01:28.084]can not be proved.
[00:01:29.578]Theories can never be proved with absolute certainty
[00:01:32.340]because we are unable to test them under all situations
[00:01:36.922]that are possible to test a theory.
[00:01:41.471]So what we do is employ the method of falsification
[00:01:45.143]which shows that a theory seems to be wrong
[00:01:47.721]is the main way in which that theories are judged,
[00:01:50.494]that is if we fail to falsify a theory
[00:01:56.223]or actually a hypothesis drawn from a theory
[00:02:01.147]then we can be confident that the theory or the hypothesis
[00:02:08.415]is reasonable and probably correct.
[00:02:14.806]According to the authors in their section under
[00:02:17.609]generating theories, there are two methods that have
[00:02:20.623]helped anthropologists produce explanations
[00:02:23.170]of cultural phenomena.
[00:02:24.855]We have the single case analysis.
[00:02:27.427]For example, we might see a pattern
[00:02:30.382]in our field data that shows that polygyny,
[00:02:34.302]or a man being able to marry more than one woman at a time,
[00:02:39.296]and status are connected.
[00:02:41.664]Therefore we might look through our data and see
[00:02:44.727]how many men are polygynous and have high status
[00:02:47.732]versus how many men are monogamous and have
[00:02:50.501]moderate or low status.
[00:02:52.575]This would be a kind of single case analysis.
[00:02:55.650]On the other hand we might want to find out if this
[00:02:58.839]relationship holds cross culturally, and I'd like to
[00:03:02.308]point out again that your authors Carol Ember
[00:03:06.046]and Mel Ember are really leaders in the field
[00:03:09.475]of comparative analysis, and so we might gather
[00:03:12.568]together a random sample of, let's say, 50 societies
[00:03:17.195]and look to see if indeed in all these societies
[00:03:22.223]there's a relationship between polygyny and status,
[00:03:25.990]and if we can't find a relationship then we've perhaps
[00:03:30.109]falsified the theory and we have to go elsewhere
[00:03:35.030]to figure out what polygyny is associated with.
[00:03:39.183]And so this is the value of comparative study,
[00:03:41.374]we can move from a single case we've observed in the field,
[00:03:46.263]in our own research, to see how well that idea plays out
[00:03:49.868]across the globe through some kind of comparative study.
[00:03:55.586]When we try to test a hypothesis we need evidence,
[00:04:02.487]and one of the first things we have to do
[00:04:04.334]is to operationalize the variables.
[00:04:06.607]For example, we're talking about the relationship
[00:04:10.298]between status and polygyny.
[00:04:13.043]Now, the variable status is what we call
[00:04:16.113]the independent variable or a factor
[00:04:18.600]that we think determines a dependent variable
[00:04:22.295]that we call polygyny.
[00:04:25.340]And so, how do we kind of operationalize our variables?
[00:04:31.954]Well for status it could be a bit complex,
[00:04:35.246]that is we would perhaps do a survey and ask people
[00:04:39.625]in a particular community to rank order everyone
[00:04:42.354]in terms of their high status to low status position.
[00:04:46.565]Or we might think that perhaps certain offices held
[00:04:51.280]by individuals are indicative of high status,
[00:04:55.046]and so we get a sense of how to kind of measure what we mean
[00:05:00.522]by high status, and this is called operationalization.
[00:05:06.111]The way to operationalize polygyny is fairly
[00:05:10.379]straightforward, does a man have more than one wife
[00:05:14.286]at the same time, a very kind of simple sort of thing
[00:05:17.153]that we can observe.
[00:05:18.594]We also, when we do our research, want to generate a sample,
[00:05:23.110]and that sample needs to be random if we're going to do
[00:05:26.755]any kind of statistical test on it.
[00:05:31.375]That's an absolute requirement,
[00:05:33.354]and sampling and random sampling ensures that
[00:05:37.386]our collection of individuals that we include in the study
[00:05:40.741]are not somehow biased unconsciously that
[00:05:44.827]perhaps would allow our ideas to be more easily proved.
[00:05:50.850]We want to make sure that there's no bias in the sampling.
[00:05:56.128]Here is an example presented in Table 4.1
[00:06:00.149]of a kind of cross cultural research that looked
[00:06:03.685]at the relationship between the availability of protein
[00:06:07.149]and the duration of the portpartum sex taboo.
[00:06:11.347]The availability of protein has to do with availability
[00:06:14.315]largely of meat resources in the diet,
[00:06:17.096]and this can be accomplished by doing
[00:06:20.165]dietary surveys in societies and making measures
[00:06:25.554]of high protein availability to low protein availability,
[00:06:29.970]fairly straightforward.
[00:06:31.673]And so is the duration of what is known as
[00:06:34.481]the postpartum sex taboo.
[00:06:36.601]Well, what is a postpartum sex taboo?
[00:06:39.798]In many societies couples, married couples,
[00:06:43.569]are not permitted to have sexual relationships
[00:06:49.278]so long as the child they've produced
[00:06:53.401]is continuously nursing.
[00:06:56.304]The taboo ends typically after the child ceases nursing.
[00:07:01.897]It can range from a very short period of time
[00:07:04.713]to a couple of weeks to up to a year
[00:07:07.452]to more than a year.
[00:07:09.795]And so with this idea that there is a relationship between
[00:07:13.934]availability of protein in the diet
[00:07:16.959]and the duration of postpartum sex taboo,
[00:07:20.749]John Whiting looked at the relationship
[00:07:25.575]and he had measures of protein availability,
[00:07:29.080]high, medium, and low, and then also measures of
[00:07:33.789]short and long postpartum sex taboos,
[00:07:37.984]and as you can see where
[00:07:41.482]protein availability is high there tends to be
[00:07:46.556]a short postpartum sex taboo, and then if you look
[00:07:50.367]at the intersection between low protein availability
[00:07:55.314]and long postpartum sex taboo, that's higher than
[00:08:01.484]if you look up the column where societies have high
[00:08:06.642]or medium durations of, or excuse me, intakes of protein.
[00:08:13.035]And so we see a kind of pattern.
[00:08:15.034]The pattern is not strong but it's consistent
[00:08:17.445]and statistically significant.
[00:08:21.837]And so this is a way we can being to try and understand
[00:08:26.205]an interesting phenomenon, the duration of a postpartum
[00:08:30.000]sex taboo and why in some societies it is very short
[00:08:34.579]and why in some societies it is relatively long.
[00:08:39.241]Now, clearly this doesn't really unpack some of the details,
[00:08:44.053]that is, why should this relationship exist.
[00:08:47.641]The idea here is that high quality protein in the diet
[00:08:52.506]is a kind of measure of the ability of a mother to undergo
[00:08:58.701]short term periods of nursing, which then allows her
[00:09:02.698]to wean her child making sure that her milk is replaced
[00:09:06.547]with high quality protein,
[00:09:08.631]and so we have this kind of short postpartum sex taboo.
[00:09:14.877]In Evidence Testing Explanations we again look
[00:09:18.530]at operationalization.
[00:09:20.952]And what it says here, in order to ensure research is done
[00:09:24.370]accurately, a researcher typically provides an operational
[00:09:28.031]definition of each concept or variable.
[00:09:31.382]Operational definitions are really important
[00:09:33.910]because it provides clarity in terms of
[00:09:37.365]what is really meant by something,
[00:09:40.078]as we mentioned before, having high status.
[00:09:43.631]And also it's really critical because if someone wants
[00:09:46.578]to test another researcher's ideas, he needs or she needs
[00:09:52.595]to know exactly how the variable was measured,
[00:09:56.173]so operationalization is really critical,
[00:09:59.885]and because it essentially deals with how
[00:10:03.314]the variable or the set of variables will be measured.
[00:10:07.929]We're gonna look now at the types of research
[00:10:09.679]in cultural anthropology, beginning with ethnography.
[00:10:12.027]Ethnography tends to be descriptive.
[00:10:16.154]When people do ethnographic research they're not
[00:10:18.537]necessarily trying to test ideas scientifically
[00:10:22.936]but rather just to describe what goes on in a particular
[00:10:26.826]culture in terms of what are their patterns of marriage,
[00:10:31.263]how the status system works, how they adapt to
[00:10:34.560]the environment, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:10:37.033]But we also might want to move to within cultural
[00:10:41.019]comparisons, and again, the example of polygyny and status
[00:10:45.700]will give you an idea of how this works.
[00:10:48.423]For example, we know that there's some variation
[00:10:51.130]in marriage patterns.
[00:10:52.329]Some men have one wife or they have no wives
[00:10:56.130]and some men have several wives.
[00:10:58.623]And so if we want to try and discover
[00:11:02.072]within that particular culture what seems to be associated
[00:11:06.466]with polygyny, and here we mentioned before it was
[00:11:09.079]high status, we could do an analysis within
[00:11:13.113]a particular culture.
[00:11:15.038]And then we can move to regional controlled comparisons.
[00:11:20.370]Or we might want to look at, for example,
[00:11:24.029]the relationship between having herding
[00:11:29.268]as a major part of your economy where you have
[00:11:32.142]animals that you have to graze
[00:11:34.984]and the relationship between a pattern of descent
[00:11:38.557]such as patrilineality.
[00:11:40.666]And so we might restrict our analysis to sub Saharan Africa,
[00:11:46.125]as an example, and look at maybe 30 or 40 different
[00:11:48.939]societies in that particular region.
[00:11:52.764]And indeed the search has indicated that there is
[00:11:56.443]a strong relationship between patrilineal descent
[00:11:59.697]and having herd animals.
[00:12:01.775]The agricultural peoples in sub Saharan Africa
[00:12:05.224]tend to be matrilineal or bilateral in their social
[00:12:09.406]organization, you'll learn about that later,
[00:12:12.023]but almost all of the herding people are patrilineal.
[00:12:16.829]And then we can move to what we call
[00:12:20.258]cross cultural research which was presented to you
[00:12:24.640]a little bit earlier in Whiting's research on postpartum
[00:12:28.345]sex taboos and the availability of protein the diet.
[00:12:33.948]And then finally we might want to look at
[00:12:39.168]how a particular society or a set of societies
[00:12:43.040]have changed through time.
[00:12:46.015]As certain factors become more important
[00:12:48.811]other factors change, and we can do this temporally
[00:12:53.012]or historically through historical research.
[00:12:56.626]The other kinds of research across cultural
[00:13:00.696]or regional controlled comparisons are typically
[00:13:03.540]what we call cross sectional research
[00:13:07.028]because they occur at a particular moment in time
[00:13:11.154]and not through time.
[00:13:13.688]Again, in your text it looks at ethnography.
[00:13:17.031]And after doing a spate of field work
[00:13:20.614]typically lasting more than a year, an anthropologist
[00:13:23.871]may prepare an ethnography, or a description
[00:13:27.473]and perhaps some analysis of a single society,
[00:13:29.981]so that's what an ethnography is all about,
[00:13:32.759]and most anthropologists engage in ethnographic
[00:13:36.233]kinds of research.
[00:13:38.704]It's also important to do research ethically.
[00:13:42.941]For example, before we can do any kind of research
[00:13:47.903]we have to present our methods to what is known as
[00:13:51.643]the IRB, or the Institutional Review Board,
[00:13:55.844]which is for the protection of human subjects,
[00:13:58.901]and we have to convince the IRB that we have safeguards
[00:14:04.351]in place to protect our research, our subjects
[00:14:11.341]in our research, and also the American Anthropological
[00:14:14.826]Association, or the AAA, has its own code of ethics.
[00:14:18.402]The preeminent one is to essentially, in your research,
[00:14:21.695]do not harm the people that you are studying.
[00:14:27.811]In the types of research in cultural anthropology
[00:14:30.355]we can look at within cultural comparisons,
[00:14:32.834]that's testing a theory within one society
[00:14:35.239]comparing individuals, families, households, communities,
[00:14:38.429]or districts, for example.
[00:14:40.467]And again, as I mentioned before,
[00:14:43.467]looking at the relationship between status and polygyny
[00:14:46.661]would be a kind of within culture comparison.
[00:14:50.999]Another type of research in cultural anthropology
[00:14:53.106]is a regional controlled comparison.
[00:14:55.938]And it's an ethnographic comparison between societies
[00:14:58.371]in the same or similar region.
[00:15:01.471]And the example I gave you before was herding
[00:15:04.263]and patrilineal descent in sub Saharan Africa.
[00:15:07.985]And what we found out, or what researchers have found out,
[00:15:11.689]is that there is a powerful association
[00:15:14.175]between patrilineal descent and dependence on herd animals,
[00:15:18.080]largely cattle but sometimes camels and horses
[00:15:23.702]in sub Saharan Africa.
[00:15:26.410]And again, to reiterate on cross cultural research,
[00:15:30.463]these are worldwide comparisons between societies having
[00:15:34.079]and those lacking a particular characteristic.
[00:15:37.047]This method is beneficial in that the conclusions drawn
[00:15:41.140]probably are applicable to most societies.
[00:15:44.152]And indeed, cross cultural comparisons,
[00:15:46.846]both in anthropology and the psychology of sociology
[00:15:50.889]are kind of a gold standard.
[00:15:52.903]If our ideas are true within a particular society,
[00:15:56.740]we find them true in a controlled regional comparison,
[00:16:02.475]then if we can't successfully test them cross culturally
[00:16:07.011]through a worldwide sample, then we have
[00:16:10.770]a great deal of confidence in our theory.
[00:16:15.592]Lastly we have historical research,
[00:16:17.919]sometimes called ethnohistory.
[00:16:19.965]It consists of studies based on descriptive materials
[00:16:22.875]about a single society at more than one point in time,
[00:16:26.970]but actually you can do this kind of research over
[00:16:30.217]several societies at more than one point in time.
[00:16:33.927]For example, you might want to study the impact
[00:16:37.985]of contact in terms of trade and commercialization,
[00:16:43.679]the subsistent systems of a particular group,
[00:16:46.977]and you can look at what they were like
[00:16:50.013]prior to the impact of commercialization,
[00:16:55.048]and then as commercialization gained steady hold
[00:16:58.631]you can look at the various sorts of changes
[00:17:01.047]until they're completely commercialized.
[00:17:03.066]And so this is an example of historical research.
[00:17:05.911]It's done through time, and so what happens is that
[00:17:09.746]as certain variables, the impact of commercialization
[00:17:13.019]as an example, begins to slowly increase
[00:17:16.694]and we make predictions about the certain kinds
[00:17:19.719]of changes that should occur through time
[00:17:23.217]as commercialization becomes stronger and stronger.

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Chap 4 EE

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