The observer of human behaviour is inevitably a participant in the field of observation. Can anthropology claim to be a science?

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Q1 The observer of human behaviour is inevitably a participant in the field of observation. Can anthropology claim to be a science?

Introduction

“All properly scientific knowledge rests upon observation, but there can be no observation without participation – without the observer’s coupling the movement of his or her attention to surrounding currents of activity.” (Ingold.2000: 108)

It is impossible to see how objectivity can be achieved in the face of glaring subjectivity as the quote above suggests in current thinking. It seems that there is a “widening gap between the arts and the humanities on the one hand, and the natural sciences on the other” (Ingold.2000: 1). Natural science is the benchmark by which objective and rational reasoning is to be measured. With cultural absolutes’ lacking abundance and human behaviour lacking any pattern that can be measured definitively how then are we expected to determine anthropology as a science? This essay shall argue that anthropology and ethnography are indeed worthy of scientific viability.

The Question of Science Fact

There is a strong belief in science as fact, especially in the methodology of science that the results are an intellectual given and consequently cannot be argued against. It is argued here that science is not absolute fact that it only lends itself to be more or less useful to our every day experiences. In other words, science is not a body of truth and fact that sets itself apart from the experience in which we live; it is itself involved in culture and society. As Hacking argues, “The harm comes from [scientific thinking] a single-minded obsession with representation and thinking and theory at the expense of intervention and action and experiment” (cited in, Carrithers. 1992: 153).  What we must gather from this is that to be a scientist you must be involved in the process of a social and cultural process in order to observe, interpret, interact with others to debate and discuss findings. These activities are in themselves social and can be found in the methods of ethnographical and anthropological study.

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In relation to the previous point is the view that science and each respective branch has history and a community of followers, which is based within a society and culture. As Carrithers puts it, “No knowledge is knowledge simpliciter, but rather all knowledge is relative to a community of knowers” (1992:154). If we understand from the word “community” that it has a history, a social construction, a culture and based in the human world we see that science and its knowledge is not infallible or rather as infallible as the humans who administer and use it.

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