ABSTRACT
How do anthropologists understand living societies? In contrast to the tantalizingly fragmentary archaeological record, living societies are overwhelmingly rich in data. Participant observation is like parachuting into Disneyland, all kinds of people bustling here and there. Some of them, you’re sure, are masking their real selves, and you suspect that some of the structures around you may not really be very true to the past they supposedly represent. Anthropologists try to follow the basic scientific method of recording careful observations, organizing them according to what seems likely to be significant principles of classification, and checking the validity of these hypothesized principles by seeing how well they accommodate new data. This mode, of scientific analysis, is one of our modern Western worldviews. It won’t closely match perspectives of people in the society, although there will be overlap. Both descriptions, the scientific and the native, are worth presenting: The scientific uses terms and looks for principles of organization that may be universally valid, the native highlights concepts that the particular society tends to believe are important.
participant observation:
living in a community in order to learn and understand their culture
