The prefix, science was added to social or the study of society, when it was believed that societies are like natural beings or that social behaviour is subject to rules that are organised, systematic and capable of being classified and generalised as laws, for example, the Principles of Kinship as postulated by A.R. Radcliffe-Brown and Structuralism as advocated by Levi-Strauss which attempts to be viewed as a universal theory. The period of modernism in anthropology was marked by the application of the scientific method to the collection and analysis of data on society. Anthropology thus has the basics of science like theory and methods. It also had the scientific perspective of objectivity based on the duality of mind and matter, like the attempt of classical anthropologists to develop an objective attitude towards the subjects of their study. This period was
marked by the application of the comparative method borrowed from the natural sciences in order to overcome the limitations posed by the impossibility of conducting laboratory experiments on human subjects and society.
The comparative method takes either a temporal perspective or a spatial perspective for the sake of establishing relationship between two variables. For example if we wish to study the effect of the introduction of television on family life, one way would be to study a family before and after they buy a television.
However if this is not feasible then one can study a family that has a television and one that does not. Again such a comparison will be somewhat successful if all other variables are held constant. Although some commendable works have
been done by the comparative method including Raymond Firth’s method of dual synchronic study to document the changes that took place in Tikopia society over a period of twenty years, it remains an awkward method especially in today’s world when there is a need for quick documentation. The comparative method however remains an inherent part of anthropological research even when a particular research is compared to others through reference to existing and ongoing works.
The modernist period also focused on the generation of what was regarded as ‘factual data’, emphasising on collection of quantitative and substantive data such as field census, household budgets, genealogies, demographic and geographical data and so on. The basic philosophy of the scientific method, namely that of evidence based truth and of applying reason was and is still being followed in most anthropological research.
Alan Barnard (2000: 5) has to say about the theory in anthropology as compared to theory in pure sciences.
Barnard considers four aspects of theory: Questions, Assumptions, Methods and Evidence. He summarises his opinion about these four aspects as follows:
The most pertinent questions are regarding what one is trying to find and how this knowledge is useful. The first question relates directly to the nature of the discipline. In anthropology the questions pertain to the nature of culture and of society, they look for explanations to behaviour, to the material products of culture, they are directed towards finding both causes and effects of change and any number of questions with respect to why humans behave as they do. The second aspect can be of either esoteric or instrumental and more frequently a combination of both. Scientific inquiry was ideally supposed to have been ‘pure’ or what is known as ‘knowledge for the sake of knowledge’. However the knowledge so gained, like about the properties of matter or about the nature of heredity were applied for numerous instrumental ends like making of machines and treatment of cancer. Yet one can distinguish the initial query as being directly in the applied field like if someone is looking for cure to a particular ailment or driven by pure inquisitiveness like looking for a new species.
Assumptions refer to what we have already discussed as basic premises or the presumed laws of nature. At this point it may be mentioned that assumptions play a very significant role in a discipline like anthropology, where the various schools of thought go their different ways. For example while all anthropologists believe that societies are the creation of human beings and not of any divine being, they differ in thinking of societies as harmonious and integrated or as driven by inner contradictions. Some may assume that all social institutions are functional and some others may not agree.
A third aspect of any theory is method. Method refers to the operational aspect of doing research but it is closely related to theory. Some theories are associated with a synchronic method where the data needs to be collected mostly for things as they are, but some others that emphasise upon change or social transformation, need to refer to history. Even the understanding of change differs, for example in the classical structural functional method, change was seen as external to the system and studied that way but in the Marxist perspective change is internal to the system and therefore the study will focus on the process of history. The method of study is thus closely linked to the basic assumptions that any scholar or school of thought holds with respect to how they view what society is or what culture is, and what is the relationship between individual and society and whether a sociological perspective should include psychological aspects also or not.
The last aspect of Evidence, again depends to a large extent on the theoretical perspective; some anthropologists who have a positivist approach may think that evidence can only be collected by an objective and impartial method from the outside while those who think more subjectively might derive evidence from the narratives of the informants and from the beliefs and values held by the members of society rather than by those held by the researcher. Thus some may believe in the comparative method and some may believe in holistic ethnographic method for comprehensive evidence of any social phenomenon.