the analysis of the relationship between a culture and its enviornment
ethnography
a desccription of a society's customary behaviors and ideas
participant observation
living amon the people being studied. obseving and questioning people
within culture comparisons
testing a theory wthin a sociey if they decide to compare individuals, families, households, communities or districts.
regional controlled comparisons
the anthropologist compares ethrographic info obtained from societies found in a particular reason.
cross culture research
look for the differences between those societies having and those lacking a particular charactaristic. to test explanations
tsembaga
horticulures.have pigs to clean up. but where there is too many of them, they kill them all and have a pig feast
political economy
assumes that external forces explain the way a society changes and adapts.
clifford girtz
culture is like text that can be analyzed for meaning while the ethnographer interprits it. a ethnographer is a kind of selective intercultural translator.
2 kinds of explanations
association of relationships and theories
falsification
shows that a theory seems to be wrong.
main way theories are judged.
diffusion
the borrowing by one society of a cultural trait beloning to another society as the result of contact between two societies.