What are different research methods that cultural anthropolgoists use?

Question

What are different research methods that cultural anthropolgoists use?

Answer 1

Cultural Anthropology is the study of customary and socially hereditable patterns in human behavior, thought, and feelings. Cultural Anthropologists perform research in two areas: Ethnology and Ethnography.

Ethnography is a detailed description of a particular culture primarily based on fieldwork. An ethnographic method is participant observation, that is to participate socially and observe personally.

Ethnology is the study and analysis of different cultures from a comparative or historical pov. This method utilizes ethnology to formulate theories and explain differences and similarities of a particular culture. For example, Cultural anthropologists looks at hours that Chinese and West African males spent at domestic chores to explain gender roles with respect to economic background.

Answer 2

The hallmark of research in cultural anthropology is an approach called "participant observation" where a person lives in a community for an extended time and participates in daily life while also making detailed observations about peoples beliefs and behavior.

While doing fieldwork, cultural anthropologists make great use of interviews, both formal and informal, which may be specific in nature, such as with life history or genealogical interviews, or may be more general in scope.  They may also employ questionaires.

They also do library research, reading and synthesizing the work of other scholars to help them.  Often this approach is interdisciplinary.

In the field, anthropologists use cameras (still and video) and audio recording devices to gather data, and cartography is also another important research tool.