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Methodology and Field Research in Africa

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 August 2012

W. Lloyd Warner
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Extract

Until comparatively recently the problem of the use of an objective methodology in field research did not sufficiently exercise the minds of research men in the social sciences. The field man usually gathered what he thought he observed, and generalized his collected facts into preconceived categories. Many of the recorded data we depend upon at the present time are of this quality. To-day the exercise of a technique is too frequently an implicit and uncritical part of the theoretical concepts of the researcher. Obviously a methodology must have an ideological context which motivates it, but it is highly necessary to separate the theoretical concepts from it, if we are to obtain the objectivity of the natural sciences.

Type
Research Article
Information
Africa , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , January 1933 , pp. 51 - 58
Copyright
Copyright © International African Institute 1933

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References

page 52 note 1 For a good example of a concrete expression of this method see Kroeber, A. L., Anthropology (Harcourt, Brace Company, 1923), pp. 293–325.Google Scholar

page 53 note 1 Ibid. Wissler, Clark, American Indian, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 1922).Google Scholar

page 53 note 2 Kroeber, , op. cit.Google Scholar

page 54 note 1 Kroeber, pp. 200-2.

page 56 note 1 ‘Morphology and Functions of the Australian Murngin Type of Kinship,’ by Warner, W. Lloyd, American Anthropologist, vol. xxxii, no. 2, April, 1930Google Scholar, and vol. xxxiii, no. 2, April-June, 1931.

page 56 note 2 American Anthropologist, vol. xxxii, no. 2, April, 1930, pp. 252–254Google Scholar, and vol. xxxiii, no. 2, April-June, 1931, pp. 172-179.