Tibetan Identity and the Cultural Consensus Model

Abstract

Anthropologists have typically been polarized in their preferred methods of data collection and analysis. Quantitative research is characterized by its detractors as being reductionistic and positivist, while qualitative research is viewed as being non-scientific because of issues of reliability and validity. In the Survey Methods course at SCRM, participants were primarily from qualitative backgrounds. It quickly became apparent that we represented a small, but perhaps growing, subgroup of ethnographic researchers who are interested, for a variety of reasons, in bridging this qual-quant divide.