What strategies do cultural anthropologists use that is differ from others social scientists?

Question

wt 3 approaches that are differed from psychologists, sociologists, economists when studying a society?

PS: not the sub field such as lingistics or archaeology.

Answer 1

I was very happy with the answerer before me, I just wanted to add one thing.

The other social sciences are based primarily on quantitative research. If you haven't taken a research methods class you may not be familiar with this term (if you are, skip this next part). Quantitative research involves mainly numerical values. The data usually answers the question "How many..." and sometimes "Who, What, or Where" - even though these are not numerical, they can still fit nicely into the cell of a spreadsheet and still be counted.

Cultural anthropology is almost completely qualitative. Qualitative data is harder to measure. It is not a number or an amount, it is an almost subjective observation of what is going on. Qualitative questions are more like "Why, What is, and How"?

A quantitative question would be: How many people from 18-25 say that they are in love?

A qualitative question might be: How do young adults describe love?

Economists, Sociologists, and Psychologists (hereafter I will group them as ESP's) do use qualitative data, but to a lesser extent than cultural anthropologists.

Also, think of who employs these groups. ESP's are often put into research positions for non-profits, gov't agencies, or universities where they receive grant money to 'prove' or 'disprove' a hypothesis - they are social SCIENCES so they still use the scientific method.

Other anthropologists may disagree with me, but when I tackle ethnographic research I think of it less like a hypothesis and more like a topic. I wouldn't travel halfway across the globe to Australia to live for months with an Aboriginal tribe just to prove or disprove a research statement. I'd want to learn all I could, completely immerse myself into their culture, and come away with more than I ever could have planned.

The difference in approach is the use of mainly quantitative or qualitative data, and the implementation of a hypothesis versus a topic sentence to be explored and expanded.

Answer 2

The closest social science to cultural anthropology is sociology.  The biggest difference between these two very similar fields is that cultural anthropology prefers the use of ethnographic observations, integrating with the community, learning the language of the locals and becoming so comfortable that they hopefully can start to observe and think about things more from the perspective and in the language of the community rather then from the perspective of an outsider.  Sociologists, alternatively, make more use of statistics and frequently study societies more broadly on a macro scale then on the micro scale that cultural anthropologists attempt.  Learning the language and integrating with the society in question is NOT the priority of the sociologist.  I'm not saying that either field can't work within the others primary mode of study, but as a general rule this is how it is.  Otherwise, they are both social sciences.