The Personal Approach in Cultural Anthropological Research [and Comments and Reply

Abstract

The personal approach in cultural anthropology, self-consciously and deliberately undertaken, perceives value in the unique combination of interests, personal values, theoretical orientation, imagination, sensitivity, and other idiosyncratic qualities embodied in a particular competent investigator or team of investigators. Because of the uniqueness of the factors through which the personal approach yields knowledge, the approach is not easily taught, and the conclusions it reaches are incapable of being fully tested for their reliability. The credibility of the conclusions reached by that approach depends heavily on the cogency, consistency, logic, and persuasiveness with which they are argued and presented. From the time description is begun, through subsequent analysis of data, to the final presentation of conclusions, idiosyncratic factors enter research undertaken by the personal approach because of the nonstandardized vantage point from which the events are observed. Considering the very substantial part played by the personal qualities of the observer when knowledge is produced by this route, accuracy of conclusions cannot be equated with one-to-one faithfulness to independently existing facts. The personal approach has been more often utilized in ethnography and ethnology than in archeology and is most appropriate for research whose goal is historical narration, depicting a way of life, the interpretation of meaning, or tracing relationships between cultural patterns. The credibility of knowledge obtained through the approach is no more unstable than that of knowledge founded on the objective method; all knowledge is constantly being upset as new evidence, new techniques, new standards, or new theories are brought to bear on a topic.