Participant observation and objectivity in anthropology

Julie Zahle

pp. 365-376

in: Hanne Andersen, Dennis Dieks, Thomas Uebel, Wenceslao J. Gonzalez, Gregory Wheeler (eds), New challenges to philosophy of science, Berlin, Springer, 2013

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the early history of discussions of participant observation and objectivity in anthropology. The discussions resolve around the question of whether participant observation is a reliable method for obtaining data that may serve as the basis for true accounts of native ways of life. I show how Malinowski in 1922 introduced participant observation as a straightforwardly reliable method and then discuss how – and why – most of the discussants in the 1940s and 1950s maintained that the method is reliable only if the researcher takes a whole number of precautionary measures.