Looking Backward

Social anthropology strives for theoretical understanding of human behavior. It sets out to isolate and expose the regularities manifested in social behavior and to present a rational description of these relationships. It thus shares a general orientation with those sciences that endeavor to discover and analyze the regularities in nature. It shares too with the natural sciences many of the same problems of demonstrating the validity of theory and methods. Among the most important of these is the central problem of fitting theories to reality, whether social or physical. Theory is, after all, not an absolute end. It is devised to disentangle information and its validity is ultimately determined by nothing more or less than the extent to which it assists in unwinding what is sometimes a fantastic tangle of empirical data.1

Field (mathematics · Sociology · Transport engineering · TRIPS architecture · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · Engineering · Mathematics · Psychology

• Participant Observation and the Collection and Interpretation of Data

  Arthur J Vidich•American Journal of Sociology•1955

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• The Participant-Observer Technique in Small Communities

  Florence Rockwood Kluckhohn•American Journal of Sociology•1940

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