Cognitive Anthropology: A Primer, Part II
Introduction
Cognitive anthropology is the study of the mind in its cultural and cross-cultural context. Once again, we can turn to Edwin Hutchins (1995) and his groundbreaking book in the literature for a greater definition: “Human cognition in its natural habitat, that is – to naturally occurring, culturally constituted human activity.” It is a somewhat overlooked subfield of cognitive science more broadly, and yet it proposes a great many questions that can benefit our understanding of thought, the brain, and culture intermingle to create our experience of reality. Over the years, there have been a number of influential publications that seek to define, situate, and advance this reading of cognition.
In our previous exploration of cognitive anthropology, we examined the shifting definitions and assessments of the field. The role of this article is to define and examine the research methodologies, as well as the relationship cognitive anthropology shares with its close cousin, neuroanthropology. What is key to note is that both approaches make use of ethnographic information and seek to expand this qualitative information into empirically-rooted scientific data.
Methodologies
The ethnography is the prime method of gathering information for cultural and cognitive anthropologists. A qualitative method, ethnographies are the “recordings and analysis of a culture or society, usually based on participant-observation and resulting in a written account of a people, place, or institution” (Simpson & Coleman). These institutions can be large – entire nations or ethnic populations – or they can be smaller groups within a society, such as subcultures or even occupations (as Hutchins demonstrated when he followed sailors). In simpler terms, an ethnography is the traditional fieldwork in which the anthropologist directly places herself in the community that she is studying and participates in the cultural life of said community. At the same time, it is expected that there be an emphasis on defining this culture from the point-of-view of the individuals who are members, thus achieving the “native’s perspective” (Howell).
As an example, we may look at Bronislaw Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Though controversial today, the book, which follows the Trobriand people of Papua New Guinea, was a major influence in the structure and details of ethnographies. The focus of Argonauts of the Western Pacific is the economies of the islands. Malinowski used his publication to assert that the anthropologist must immerse herself completely and then gather completely, as the book is over 540 pages in some editions (Malinowski, xiii).
The contents of these ethnographies have historically examined kinship, religious beliefs, color terminology, economies, ethnozoology, ethnobotany, and marriage practices. Naturally, the goal of any ethnographer is to observe and document the community’s values and worldviews as manifested in their rituals and practices. Again, these communities can be found on any scale and may be as small as a few members or as large as millions. The informant can even be a single individual (Wassmann & Bender, 17).
Of course, ethnographies are not the only tools that cognitive anthropologists employ in their research. In fact, there are a large variety of methods for acquiring data. In his article for A Companion to Cognitive Anthropology, Handwerker (2011) outlines the issues that quantitative researchers may struggle to find at first, writing, “Ethnography rarely lends itself to the application of experimental design, which would rule out internal validity confounds” (122). What this means is that anthropologists have worked to close the gap between qualitative and quantitative measures. He spends his chapter focusing on the latter, with advice to anthropological researchers on how to track historical changes, for example, with more numerical data: “Plan to estimate parameters for age cohorts, so stratify your sample by age” (122). The goal of this chapter is to rework the ethnography to elicit numerical data.
Handwerker includes informal interviews and observations, as well as structured and semi-structured interviews as prime sources of data. To borrow Handwerker’s own example, if we are to examine the rates of recidivism amongst young women, the anthropologist might begin by inquiring after the mundane of the informant's life. These interviews can shed light on “social labels” (120), but more importantly, these interviews can be structured in various ways to explore different experiences in the informant’s day-to-day and other relevant data.
In social sciences like anthropology, there is a divide between the structure of these interviews. Some are called structured, meaning that they offer the informant a list of questions that the informant must answer with straightforward, specific sets of responses. True or false questions may be given, or yes or no questions. By comparison, a semi-structured interview, an approach favored by social scientists including anthropologists, permits the informant to reply with greater freedom, as there are only a few prepared questions and then the conversations ebbs and flows like a normal conversation (Handwerker, 121). Once again, we turn to an example: If the anthropologist is working to study sailors (to return to Hutchins’ work), he or she may have a script, open-ended questions that require complex responses, such as, “How do you acquire knowledge about navigating the seas?” Capturing the representation of knowledge and building upon these structures as ethnographies to be analyzed is a key feature of the cognitive anthropologist’s toolbox (Wassmann, 18).
Influenced by other programs in cognitive science, particularly computer science and artificial intelligence, some anthropologists have turned to simulations and modeling of the information gathered by the ethnography. Fischer and Kronenfeld (2011) note that simulations and modeling may be a combination of qualitative and quantitative work.
Simulations are defined as, “A computer program that defines the variables of a system, the range of values those variables may take on, and their interrelations in enough detail for the system to be set in motion to generate some output” (211). When modeling the relevant data for an anthropologist, historically, the simulations have been used to study marriage patterns or “social phenomena.” The authors point to a study wherein researchers modeled an Indonesian community’s relationship with water (a crucial ecological consideration for every culture or group); the simulation took parameters from the ethnographic record and consisted of data about how the water was viewed from a ritual perspective as well as a cultivator of rice. The simulations helped to “regain formal control of cropping patterns in Bali” (213).
This is not the only instance of anthropological methods being influenced by the other disciplines. Fryberg (2012) asserts that cultural psychology could form the “bridge” to connect anthropology to her sister disciplines within cognitive science. Fryberg states that cultural psychology’s methodologies, which include mixed-methods like interviews and experiments, can build on the two estranged fields. As anthropology relies on interviews, and cultural psychology incorporates interviews, this may serve as a reintegration for researchers. Furthermore, cultural psychology operates on many of the same assumptions as cognitive anthropology, namely the notion that membership in a group matters to all of us (438).
Conclusion
The principal methodologies employed by cognitive anthropologists are rooted in cultural studies, but the work of scientists to quantify the data has created an interdisciplinary and multifaceted program for current and future cognitive scientists.
References
Fischer, M. & Kronenfeld, D.B. (2011). Simulation (and modeling). In D.B. Kronenfeld, G. Bennardo, V.C. de Munck, & M.D. Fischer (Eds.). A companion to cognitive anthropology (pp. 210 – 226). Wiley Blackwell.
Fryberg, S.A. (2012). Cultural psychology as a bridge between anthropology and cognitive science. Topics in Cognitive Science, 4, 437 - 444.
Handwerker, W.P. (2011). How to collect data that warrant analysis. In D.B. Kronenfeld, G.Bennardo, V.C. de Munck, & M.D. Fischer (Eds.). A companion to cognitive anthropology (pp. 117 - 130).
Howell, S. (2018). Ethnography. In The Cambridge encyclopedia of anthropology. University of Cambridge. https://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/entry/ethnography
Malinowski, B. (2014). Argonauts of the western pacific. Routledge.
Simpson, B. & Coleman, S. (2017). Ethnography. In Glossary of terms. Royal Anthropological Institute. https://www.discoveranthropology.org.uk/
Wassmann, J. & Bender, A. (2015). Cognitive anthropology. In International encyclopedia of the social and behavioral sciences (2nd ed.). Elsevier. https://www.researchgate.netprofile/JuergWassmann/publication/304194594_Cognitive_Anthropology/links/62137ce4eb735c508ae73d9d/Cognitive-Anthropology.pdf
