Thursday, August 23, 2012

Key Problem in Anthropological Methodology

How can one delve into the "process of meaning-making", since the method is indeed the anthropologist, a person, which always exists WITH meaning.

One way is to differentiate the "levels" of meaning.  Anthropologist Gregory Bateson's formulation of "form and process" (which has been developed from anthropologists Radcliff-Brown and Frederik Barth) looks to be helpful to consider the pre-thought process.  This is exactly the way Gilles Deleuze accords for his own building up of the notion of "resilience", to investigate the "essence of now".

Anthropology, as a social science, needs fieldwork data in order to prove or argue any fact of human nature.  It is not only interesting but very difficult question that what condition or theme in the fieldwork may be usable as the reliable data to appropriately argue such a pre-thought process.

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