roscoe 1995 the perils of positivism in cultural anthropology

8/22/2019 Roscoe 1995 the Perils of Positivism in Cultural Anthropology

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The Perils of 'Positivism' in Cultural AnthropologyAuthor(s): Paul B. RoscoeSource: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 97, No. 3 (Sep., 1995), pp. 492-504Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/683269 .

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OVERTHELASTTWOdecades, a widespread convictionseems to have emerged that positivism is an intellectualconceit cultural anthropology can no longer afford. Thetarget of relentlessly withering commentary, its programhas focused the fire of disciplinary disenchantment withthe post-Enlightenment project, and its perceived failingshave provided a rallyingpoint around which the identitiesof interpretive, deconstructive, and postmodern move-ments have formed.

Despite the race of the intellectual mill to which it hasbecome grist, however, it is surprisingly difficult to estab-lish what anthropological positivism is, who its adherentsare, and what precisely is the nature of their sins. Criticsseem ready to identify positivism in almost all they see,but they seem reluctant to identify its followers by name,and they afford the concept neither rigorous explicationnor sustained critique. In contrast to social sciences likesociology and economics, where positivism has formedthe subject of whole papers and even books, culturalanthropology seems content to caricature and criticizepositivism andpositivists in abbreviated-often cryptic-terms on the apparent assumption that the references arefamiliar to all.1 As with art, critics seem unwilling orunable precisely to define their subject, apparentlybeliev-ing they know it well enough when they see it.In this article, I wish to step back and question someof these complacencies. By examining how the termposi-tivism has been deployed in cultural anthropology, I at-tempt what I think is a long overdue deconstruction of itsimage in our discipline.2 Notwithstanding a jumble ofreferents that appear breathtaking in their breadth andchaos, I shall argue that this image is comparatively co-herent, albeit grossly reified, and the criticism launchedat it relatively well founded. What is questionable, how-ever, is the conclusion to which many critics seem to thinktheir analysis leads: that the methods of the natural sci-

ences are inapplicable to the study of human culture andsociety. Ironically, they seem to arrive at this conclusionby grounding it in a positivistic-and hence quite inade-quate-notion of natural science. In so doing, they over-look the hermeneutic nature of natural science method,which renders science indistinguishable from the anthro-pological interpretivism many critics advocate and desta-bilizes the security of the critical movement they com-mend.

The Imageof Positivism in CulturalAnthropologyMore than a century ago, John Stuart Mill (1965[1865]:2) wearily observed that "though the mode ofthought expressed by the terms Positive and Positivism iswidely spread, the words themselves are, as usual, betterknown through the enemies of that mode of thinkingthanthrough its friends." His complaint remains as true today

as it was then; in modem cultural anthropology (hereaftersimply "anthropology"),the image of positivism is almostentirely a construction of its critics. With remarkablesuccess, these commentators have transformed a termonce synonymous with progressive liberalism into one ofpejorative conservatism. Positivism is now cast as a faith,a fool's gold, or a vice, its adherents by implication dog-matists, dupes, or degenerates. Thus, Rabinow and Sulli-van (1987:9-10, 11) characterize "positivistorthodoxy"asa "fascination"with reductionistic models and quantifica-tion, promulgated by "dictum"ratherthan debate. Murphy(1971:106) talks of "simple positivistic faith," Shalvey(1979:97) of a "doctrine,"Harkin (1988:100) of "a naivepositivism," Geertz (1973:119) of"vulgar positivism," andHoly (1987:15) of the "hard-corepositivistic approach."The tone of this rhetoric echoes a broader criticalchorus in the social sciences.3 Yet it is surprisingly diffi-cult in practice to establish precisely who or what inanthropology is the target of attack. Although positivistsare readily fingered among the long dead-Durkheim andRadcliffe-Brown are particular favorites-only Ulin(1984:64-67), to my knowledge, has breached academicPAUL .ROSCOEs Associate rofessor, epartmentfAnthropology,UniversityfMaine, rono,ME 4469.Americannthropologist7(3):492-504. opyright1995,Americannthropologicalssociation.

PAULB. ROSCOE/ UNIVERSITYFMAINE

h e Peri l s o f 'Positivism'n ult 'raAnthropology

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PERILSOF POSITIVISM' PAULB. ROSCOE 493

courtesies to accuse the living-namely Horton andJarvie. Occasionally, scholars like Ottenberg (1990:157)will gloomily conclude that, despite their best intentions,they must be positivists, and even more occasionally onesuch as Bernard (1994:169) will defiantly flaunt the iden-tity. Usually, though, the indictment is indirect:works butnot individuals are labeled positivist.If academic criticism should be mounted ad opusrather than ad hominem, this is perhaps as things shouldbe. Unfortunately, shifting the focus of inquiryfrom schol-ars to scholarship does little to ease the deconstructivetask, for the coyness critics exhibit about identifying pres-ent-day positivists is matched only by the diversity of whatthey consider positivist thought. In abridgments, adum-brations, and asides scattered through well over a hun-dred cultural anthropological sources, I have found posi-tivism variously identified with or detected in the work ofBritish and French thinkers from Bacon and Descartes toSaint-Simon, Comte, and John Stuart Mill; the work ofVictorian anthropologists who esteemed these thinkers;logical positivism; Popperian falsificationism; empiri-cism; methodological pragmatism; methodological natu-ralism;scientism; naturalscience; social science; the com-parative method; holocultural methodology; participantobservation; anthropological experiment; mechanism; in-tellectualism; sociocultural evolutionism; environmentaldeterminism; functionalism; Marxism; Whitian culturol-ogy; cultural materialism;Levi-Straussian structuralism;conflict theory; action theory; methodological individual-ism; behaviorism; situational logic; logical atomism; "to-talizing"theory; Bloomfieldian linguistics; Chomskian lin-guistics; generative semantics; British anthropology intothe 1960s;Anglo-Saxon social science; British intellectuallife; Protestant culture;and Western culture.4To confusematters further, "cryptopositivism"(Friedrich 1992) hasbeen detected in the work of positivism's arch critics,Clifford Geertz and his postmodern descendants(Bourdieu 1988:11;Sangren 1988:405,409), while Marxistwritings and those of Malinowski and Levi-Strauss arefingered as positivistic by some yet championed as non-or antipositivistic by others.5In short, it seems, everybody is a positivist save crit-ics of positivism-and they turn out to be "cryptoposi-tivists." Clearlythe concept is radically underdeterminedand, if matters were left here, one might conclude thatpositivism has suffered much the same fate in anthropol-ogy as in philosophy and sociology-used, as Giddens(1974:2) puts it, "so broadly and vaguely as a weapon ofcritical attack... that it has lost any claim to an acceptedand standard meaning." A more charitable reading ofsubstance and context, however, suggests that in anthro-pology, at least, there is a relatively coherent image behindthe bewildering and seemingly fragmented objects of at-tack. Positivism emerges as a set of historically contin-gent, descriptive, and/or prescriptive precepts about the

subject and method of natural science that, supposedly,have become a pervasive habitus for social and naturalscience and even modernity itself. If the referents of posi-tivism seem bewildering and fragmented, it is perhapsbecause these articulations are never fully spelled out.The core of anthropology's image of positivism iswhat sometimes is called the "received model" of natural

science: a set of philosophical or epistemological concep-tions about the nature ofthe universe, theplace of humansin it, and the specific (scientific) means by which "objec-tive"or "true"knowledge of it is, or can be, generated. Thispositivistic model is said to predicate the existence of an"objective" reality independent of human perception andinterpretation;it asserts the abilityof humans to perceive,via the sensory organs, cognitively and linguistically un-mediated aspects of this reality (facts); and it aims toconstruct a "perfectly impersonal or objective," "value-free," cognitive representation (or "mentalmap") of real-ity as a whole (theories).6In its details, this image has some striking ambiguitiesand contradictions. The means through which positivistssupposedly seek their goal are variously represented asinvolving or comprising the collection of facts; the con-struction of an ideal language of science; controlled com-parison; abstraction; theoretical formalism and quantita-tive measurement; induction; deduction; verification;falsification; replication and disconfirmation; hypothesistesting; hypothetico-deductive method;and/or the logic ofthe experiment. Nor is there agreement on whether posi-tivistic method is description, prescription, or both: somesources present it as a model of, others as a modelfor,scientific practice, and yet others tender it as both. Inaddition, it is left unclear how positivists supposedly per-ceive the products of this practice: is it a body of authori-tatively established truths to which details may be addedbut which is not subject to basic revision; a body ofknowledge that, while not necessarily constituting the"truth"now, eventually will constitute it;a body of knowl-edge that is "cumulative and progressive in character";orsome sort of "universal"or "deterministic laws," or "gen-eralizations" about reality?7In the rhetoric of its critics, positivist philosophy isoften represented as though it were some sprawling ma-lignancy that has infiltrated its tendrils deeply into West-ern thought-an image that explains how positivism canbe detected in so many seemingly diverse intellectualsubcultures and movements. It is said to have originatedin the philosophical accompaniments of the scientificrevolution of late medieval and early modem Europe andto have matured during the Enlightenment. Its Frenchorigins are commonly traced back to Descartes throughthinkers such as Condorcet, Turgot, d'Alembertand Mon-tesquieu; its British provenance is fixed as Francis Baconthrough Hume (e.g., de Waal Malefijt 1968:58).As a phi-losophy bearing the name, however, positivism suppos-



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494 AMERICANNTHROPOLOGISTVOL.97, NO. 3 * SEPTEMBER995

edly did not appear until the middle of the 19th century,its founder variously identified as Henri de Saint-Simon orhis secretary, Auguste Comte.8With Saint-Simon and Comte, positivism reputedlyramified. In philosophy, it was communicated, via Machand Avenarius, to the neopositivist philosophers of theVienna Circle and the Berlin Society for Empirical Phi-losophy.9 Under Comte's influence, however, it alsospread beyond philosophy into the newly emergent socialsciences. In sociology, it reputedly influenced Spencer,Durkheim, Mauss, and later Aron, Shils, and Parsons. Inanthropology, 'it is identified in the thought of Maine,Maitland, Lubbock, McLennan, Tylor, Morgan, Rivers,Malinowski, and Radcliffe-Brown, whence it supposedlyspread throughvirtuallyall branches of modernist anthro-pology, unmningspecially amok in cultural materialism,comparative anthropology, and self-styled "scientific" an-thropology.'?

If many of positivism's confusingly diverse referentsstem from this image of a historically contingent set ofphilosophical precepts, most of the remainder can beattributed to two extensions that, though quite distinctfrom these precepts, are seen as deriving from or articu-lating with them. The first identifies positivism with meth-odological naturalism (or "methodological unity"). Sincepositivists reputedly believe scientific method-and onlyscientific method-produces "truth"or "objective knowl-edge,"they advocate its application to all forms of subjectmatter and its displacement of all other means of knowing.Metaphysics andphilosophy are thus purged, and the onlyworthwhile pursuit becomes perfection in the applicationof scientific method-"the reduction of epistemology tomethodology," as Ulin puts it (1984:65;see also Habermas1971[1968]:67-69). With respect to the social sciences,methodological naturalism asserts that the social world ispart of, or of a kind with, the natural world and that,therefore, the methods of the natural sciences can andshould be applied to the study of the social world.11The second extension of positivism is an anthropo-logical idiosyncrasy that, I shall argue, confers particularmoment on the image:positivism becomes identified withscience. Insome cases, this link is directly forged. Accord-ing to de Waal Malefijt (1974:331), positivism is "ascien-tific method using verifiability as its code" (see also Ar-dener 1971:460-461). Diener and Robkin (1978:506)comment that physics "haslargely abandoned" the "meth-odologies" of a "datedpositivism," by which they clearlymean that these methodologies once constituted whatscientists did. In other instances, the identification ofscience as positivism is covert: thus, both Tyler (1986:122-125) and Ulin (1984:68) talk of "science" and "scientificthought" even though they are apparently referring topositivist philosophy or scientists with discursive alle-giances to that philosophy. Hammersley and Atkinson(1983:3) refer to positivism as a philosophy, but in expli-

cating its major tenets, they frequently equate it to whatphysical and social scientists actually do (see also Pea-cock 1986:69, 108-109).In at least one instance, this willingness to conflatepositivism and science derives from an identification ofthe former with Newtonian mechanics and pre-quantum,atomic physics (Samuel 1990:17). More commonly, itseems to stem from an assumption that positivism's philo-sophical precepts underwent a subtle metamorphosis intheir post-Enlightenment history, becoming a kind of sci-entific habitus (Bourdieu 1990:52-65)-a "commitment,""model," "paradigm,""world view," "orthodoxy," "doc-trine," or "faith"predicating the practice of natural and,especially, social scientists.12Withpositivist precepts thusrecursively linked to physical and social scientific prac-tice, positivism becomes science. With this shift, positiv-ism is also portrayed as spreading beyond the academyinto Western-especially Protestant-culture in general,becoming in Ardener's words a "laypositivism," a "reli-gion" of the "compulsorily educated masses" (1971:461-462; see also Diamond 1974:10).

Positivismand the Interpretationof SciencePositivism seems to have blossomed into anthropo-logical consciousness around 1971. For the 25 years priorto that date, I could locate just four references-three ofthem in histories of anthropological thought referring toComte and his early successors-but at least six thenappeared in 1971alone, and 17inthe period 1971-75, mostof these in works assessing the direction of anthropology.One early critic, Fabian (1971), treated positivismthoughtfully and without vituperation, grounding his cri-tique in well-developed expositions of positivism beyondanthropology.13Other critics of the time also may havedrawn their models of positivism from external sources,but a tendency for caricature to occur in inverse propor-tion to careful citation and critiqueof sources was alreadyapparent (e.g., Geertz 1973:119;Murphy1971:84,106).If anthropology's positivism did begin from a securegrounding in sources beyond the discipline, this mightexplain why much in its image seems unobjectionable

enough. Broadly brushed, it seems to capture, albeit inhighly pejorative light, important philosophical and socio-logical trends in Western intellectual history. Whattrans-forms it from an intellectual curio to-anobject of academicmoment, however, is the pivotal role it has played ingenerating hostility to the idea of a science of society,thereby setting the stage for anthropology's hermeneuticturn and its postmodern concern with reflexivism andtextual representation.The means to this end have been twofold. First, con-sonant with the idea thatpositivism's philosophical claimshave become a scientific habitus, some critics have repre-



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sented positivism as science, andthen, by pointing out theobvious failings of the former,have appeared to demolishthe latter and, with it, pretensions to a science of society.In his "framingstory for a post-modern ethnography,"forexample, Tyler (1986:122-125) represents what I take tobe the positivist camp in the positivist dispute in Germansociology as "science"and the recognition of its inadequa-cies as the collapse of "scientific thought." Believing thathe has disposed of science and, hence, of a science ofsociety, he then proceeds to explore postmodern ethno-graphic alternatives.

Unfortunately, Tyler's argument classically exempli-fies Jarvie's complaint that positivism is a device to de-bunk science "by reducing it to a crude Aunt Sally ...which can easily be knocked down"(1988:428). Ironically,this kind of base reductionism collapses under the veryweight of positivism's failings. Positivism's charac-terizations of scientific method as induction, verification,falsification, and so forth all encounter well-known andformidable logical tangles, not least the problem of theo-retical underdetermination: there is, in principle, alwaysan infinite number of possible theories to fit any finite setof facts. As a programmatic statement, moreover, positiv-ist philosophy is doomed by its inability to justify withinits own terms the criteria it specifies for the generation ofknowledge. As a result, positivism cannot possibly consti-tute the habitus in which scientific practice is grounded,as Tyler apparently supposes, for the simple reason that,being flawed, it is impossible to execute. To be sure, manyscientists discursively entertainhighlypositivistic notionsabout what they are doing, clothing their practice in arhetoric of objectivity, the disinterested collection offacts, and the like. But to suppose that this accuratelyreflects what they are really doing is to mistake what thenatives say they do for what they actually do. ContrarytoTyler, therefore, the positivist dispute did not lead to acollapse of scientific thought:what collapsed was positiv-ism's representation of scientific thought.If Tyler's attack on a science of society seems obvi-ously deceptive, the second strategy by which the imageof positivism is deployed to undermine the idea of anatural science of society seems deceptively obvious. Itdraws on hermeneutic tradition to attack not science itselfbut methodological naturalism. Foreshadowed in thework of 19th-century German idealist philosophers, anddeveloped by scholars like Weber,Gadamer,and Ricoeur,it asserts that scientific method, developed with referenceto the natural world, is inappropriate to investigation ofthe social world. Among modem anthropological critics,Holy (1987) and Ellen (1984) make the point in particu-larlyexplicit terms. Inadvocating methodological natural-ism, "positivist anthropology" fails to recognize that "so-cial phenomena"

arenotexternal o man nthewayinwhichphenomenaofthenaturalworldare; heyareconstitutedbymeaningnthesensethattheydo not exist independently f the culturalmeaningswhichpeopleuse to accountforthemandhence to constitutethem.[Holy1987:5-6; ee also Ellen1984:28]In contrast to physical facts, "social facts are thus notthings which can be simply observed" (Ellen 1984:28).Theonly phenomena in social life observable in thepositivisticsense are physical-the physical actions of individuals,for example-but actors experience these only inthe lightof preconceived criteria that render them socially mean-ingful.'4Unless researchers want to distort the meaning ofthe actions they observe, they-like actors-must experi-ence these actions simultaneously through senses andthrough thought processes.For many critics of positivism, the anthropologicalconsequences of this train of argument are momentous.First, in studying the social world, anthropology mustreplace the methods of the natural sciences with a herme-neutic or interpretive method:

A ogicalcorollary f thetheoryof socialworldasconstructedthrough ts members' nteractionsand as intrinsicallymean-ingful is ... a theory of its cognitive availability hroughparticipation in the construction of its meaning. [Ellen1984:29;ee alsoHoly 1987:6]Second, if the ethnographer is not a detached ob-server of "social facts" in the unmediated fashion positedby positivism but instead is an interpreter inescapablyimplicated in their construction, then neither in practicenor in principle can ethnographic "knowledge"be objec-tive-that is, uninterested or value-free (Diener andRobkin 1978:505-506 and Dumont 1978:46). Conse-quently, the processes by which data emerge from thefieldwork process and are subsequently rendered as textbecome deeply problematic. To illuminate the influenceof the investigator's attitudes on the behavior of the inves-tigated, Dumont insists (1978:46), ethnography must saysomething about the dialectics of this process and itsinfluence on the data collected. To manage the influenceof interests and theoretical preconceptions on the collec-tion, or selection, of "facts,"Diener and Robkin advocateFabian's (1971) "methodology of 'dialectical dialogue',"a

"dialectical interaction between the researcher and hissubjects or subject matter"(Diener and Robkin 1978:505-506). In subsequently rendering our ethnographic narra-tives, Marcus (1986:184) argues, hermeneutic sensitivitymust impose "standards of puritanical honesty uponclaims... about who speaks for whom, and what is actu-ally being authentically represented."The flaw in this train of argument is the puzzlinglyconservative, hermeneutic conviction to which Holy andEllen give voice: "thatthe social world is not a real objec-tive world external to man in the same sense as any otherobjectively existing reality (natural world)" (Ellen



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1984:28; ee also Holy 1987:5-6). If the hermeneutic move-ment is right that humans are suspended in webs of sig-nificance that they themselves have spun (Geertz1973:25), then how can the natural world escape thesemeshes? Like the social world, it, too, must be a humanconstruct. Notwithstanding the claims of the natives (i.e.,scientists), physical facts cannot be out there waiting tobe discovered; rather, they must be in our minds waitingto be constructed.

Though phrased in different ways and with varyingopinions on how thoroughly idealistic "the facts"are (andeven on whether the issue is epistemologically relevant[Rorty 1982:3-18]), this proposition has long been ac-cepted in the philosophy of science.15 As Rorty, criticizingRabinow and Sullivan (1979:5), phrases the matter,

whenit is saidthat"interpretationofthe humanas opposedto the naturalworld]beginsfrom thepostulatethat the webof meaningconstitutes humanexistence," his suggeststhatfossils (for example)mightget constitutedwithouta web ofmeanings.... To say that humanbeingswouldn'tbe human,wouldbe animal,unlesstheytalkeda lot is trueenough. fyoucan'tfigureout the relationbetween a person,the noises hemakes,and otherpersons,thenyou won't knowmuchabouthim. But one could equallywell say thatfossils wouldn'tbefossils, would be merely rocks, if we couldn'tgrasptheirrelationsto lots of other fossils. Fossils are constitutedasfossils by a web of relationships o other fossils and to thespeech of the paleontologistswho describe such relation-ships.[1982:199]

Likewise, rocks would not be rocks, would be merelyhard, gritty things, were it not for their constitution asrocks by a web of meanings. Hard,gritty things would notbe hard, gritty things were it not for their constitution ashard,grittythings by a web of meanings. Andso on aroundthe hermeneutic circle. "Anything is, for the purposes ofbeing inquired into, 'constituted' by a web of meanings"(Rorty 1982:199;emphasis in original).The processes to which Rorty refers have been ablydocumented by sociologists of science. Tracingthe intel-lectual evolution of the pulsar, for example, Woolgar(1988: chaps. 4, 5; see also Latour and Woolgar 1986:105-186) shows how a group of astronomers first created andconstituted its existence from interpretations of docu-ments (texts) such as radio-telescope charts, previousresults, detection apparatuses, the astronomy literature,prevailing opinions in the scientific community, and so on.This achieved, a subtle process of splitting and inversionoccurred: although the object had been constituted invirtue of the documents (and more generally the socialnetworks of which they were a part), it was now inter-preted to be a separate entity that had been "out there"allalong and had given rise to the documents. Finally, theinterpretive and rhetorical details of this process of con-struction were minimized, denied, or backgrounded as

history was rewritten to give the discovered object itsontological foundation.

InterpretiveScience andEthnographyBy no means have all of positivism's critics over-looked the interpreted nature of physical facts. Ulin

rightly observes, for example, that "consciousness nevermerely copies [physical and social] facts but rather isresponsible for their constitution through a complex, lin-guistically mediated sociocultural learning process"(1984:68).16Yet even these critics fail to draw out theimportant consequence of this point: the equivalence ofthe methods of natural science and interpretive anthro-pology.Ifphysical facts arejust as constructed as social facts,then they cannot verify or falsify theory in the mannerenvisioned in positivism--the dilemma known as theQuine-Duhem equivocality of experimental and observa-tional result. Physical science, like social science, ceasesto be the objective construction of "mental maps" ofreality through recursive comparison with externallygiven, neutral facts. If facts have the same interpretivestatus as theories, scientific method becomes instead asubjective juggling and modification of interpretations interms of subjectively perceived consistency and problem-aticity, and scientific advance comes to rest on the inter-pretive capacity to render rival hypotheses implausible(see Campbell 1986:125-126).This being the case, it has to be asked how physicalscience differs from interpretation as this is conceived inanthropology. Unfortunately, interpretivists are often asreticent about their own methodological underpinnings asthey are cryptic about the details of positivism. For Rabi-now and Sullivan, following Ricoeur (1971:547, 550), in-terpretive method is a "dialectic of guessing and valida-tion" (1987:9). For Geertz, it involves "guessing atmeanings, assessing the guesses, and drawing explana-tory conclusions from the better guesses" (1973:20). "Inobserving people's behaviour we derive hypotheses fromour cultural knowledge to describe and explain their ac-tions, and we test these out against further information"(Hammersley and Atkinson 1983:16; see also Peacock1986:101-102).In the absence of more detail, it is unclear how thesemethods are supposed to differ from a scientific methodoften described as hypothesis or conjecture followed byvalidation or refutation. When more detail is furnished,any differences seem to vanish. Consider Paul Ricoeur'sideas on textual interpretation, in which Rabinow andSullivan (1987:9, 12-13) and many other interpretivistsfind their immediate methodological inspiration. Textualinterpretation, Ricoeur (1971:547-553, 1976:75-88) pro-poses, is a dialectic involving erkldren and verstehen.



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Inquirybegins with an initial guess about the meaning ofthe whole text, moves to procedures for "validation,"andfinally moves back to a more developed understanding ofthe text. Now, it is in the procedures for "validating" heinitial guess that Ricoeur sees the critical difference be-tween scientific and interpretive method. In textual inter-pretation, these are "comparable to the juridical proce-dures used in legal interpretation" (Ricoeur 1976:78).They are closer to a "logic of probability"than to a "logicof empirical verification" (i.e., scientific method) for, un-like the latter, juridical validation produces only a "prob-able,"not a "true," nterpretation (1976:78).We must suspect something is awry, however, whenan attempt to distinguish hermeneutic methods fromthose of natural science deploys the same, juristic meta-phor to characterize the former that some philosophers ofscience have used to represent the latter (Popper1959[1935]:109-111). The problem lies in Ricoeur's posi-tivistic notions of natural science. Contrary to his pre-sumption, "empirical verification" produces not "truth"but only an interpretation. Subjectively at least, to be sure,this interpretation seems more probable than others in thelight of a comparative and evaluative process that jugglesinterpretations (facts andtheories) with different, subjec-tively perceived degrees of problematicity. But thereseems no difference in principle between this and Ri-coeur's notion that in hermeneutics

Aninterpretationmustnot onlybe probable,but moreprob-able thananother nterpretation. herearecriteriaofrelativesuperiority or resolving[the]conflict [betweencompetinginterpretations], hich caneasilybe derived rom helogicofsubjectiveprobability. 1976:79]Holy and Ellen provide an alternative exposition ofinterpretive method couched inthe idiom of participation.Yet their proposals, too, appearindistinguishable from theinterpretive manner in which natural science is actuallypracticed. In the interpretive methodology, Holy (1987:6)contends, "thenotion of the researcher's participation inthe subjects' activities replaces the [positivistic] notion oftheir simple observation as the main data-yielding proce-dure." Ellen expands on what is meant:

It s amethodologywherethe notionofsuccessreplaces ruthas criterion of validityand where the participationof theresearcherbecomes the mainmeans ofverifyinghisaccount.Ifable to interactsuccessfullywithandtowardssubjects, .e.if able to pass for a member,the anthropologist'sunder-standingof theirculture sright.And t is, of course,thegroupwhichdefines the terms of acceptanceandrejectionof newmembers. 1984:30]Yet these descriptions would seem also to describethe means by which physical scientists verify their ac-counts of the (constructed) facts of the scientific world.It is not some inherent truth or falsity that permits themto determine the validity of the facts but whether their

construction of the facts facilitates their competent par-ticipation in scientific life. If able to interact successfullywith and toward other scientists, then they can be assuredthat their understanding of the physical world is "right."Conversely, if their statements or practices elicit puzzledlooks, polite corrections, or outright ostracism, then theyknow equally well something is "wrong."By extension,their attempts at scientific innovation (e.g., the discoveryof a new stellar body) succeed or fail by the same processas attempts at cultural innovation: namely, whether or notthey meet with social acceptance.In sum, when Holy (1987:8, 12) notes that anthropol-ogy has recently redefined itself as "an interpretativehumanity concerned with cultural specificity and culturaldiversity, rather than as a generalizing science," he isremarkingon an artificial wedge that many interpretivistshave driven between their own activities and those ofscience. Likewise, when Tyler represents a postmodernethnography as a "cooperatively evolved text consistingof fragments of discourse intended to evoke in the mindsof both reader and writer an emergent fantasy of a possi-ble world of commonsense reality"(1986:125), he is doingno more than making explicit what natural science asmuch as ethnography is all about.

Science, Interpretation,and Observational ndRepresentationalAuthorityGiven anthropology's traditional emphasis on the in-terpreted nature of any worldview, and given how widelyrecognized is the hermeneutic nature of natural scientificknowledge in philosophy and sociology, it is puzzlingthatso many of positivism's anthropological critics shouldneed reminding of the point and its implications. Perhapsthe pretensions of positivists have diverted them into anoverly mechanistic view of natural science that has ob-scured not only the thoroughly hermeneutic nature ofscience but also the thoroughly scientific nature of theirown hermeneutic ethnography.17 Or perhaps the un-focused nature of their image of positivism, which can soeasily prompt the erroneous conflation of science andpositivistic conceptions of science, leads them temporar-

ily astray.If there is a difference between scientific and ethno-graphic practice, it surely lies in the greater observationaland representational authority that pragmatic circum-stances confer on the ethnographer. In the natural sci-ences, the ubiquity of the physical world, coupled withliberal funding, traditionally has furnished a compara-tively democratic access to observation and repre-sentation: the solar spectrum, for example, is accessibleto, and describable by, almost any astronomer with accessto the requisite equipment. As a result, individual author-ity over observation and representation is relativelyunsta-



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ble and, in a community that customarily transforms thefruits of skeptical behavior into symbolic capital, thishelps ensure the critical scrutiny, "validation,"or "refuta-tion" of published facts and theories long recognized asthe "scientific method."

In anthropology, by contrast, the ethnographer-thelone fieldworker-typically monopolizes observationaland representational authority, a capital that he or shetraditionally has buttressed through rhetoric that "enactsa specific strategy of authority ... [involving]an unques-tioned claim to appear as the purveyor of truth in the text"(Clifford 1983:120). Access to a non-Western culturalworld is generally much less democratic than access tothe natural world, constrained by the spatiotemporallycircumscribed nature of cultural worlds, the premiumplaced on exploiting virgin ethnographic fields, the num-ber of available ethnographers, pitifully inadequate re-search funds, and disciplinary codes that discourage thechecking of other ethnographers' facts as somehow impo-lite while sanctifying the privacy of fieldnotes at leastuntil-and often beyond-their owner's death.18Conse-quently, published claims (interpretations) about a cul-tural world are seldom subject to scrutiny, "validation,"or"refutation"for the simple reason that no one but theirethnographic author commands the necessary observa-tional and representational authority for the task.Still, the scientific nature of ethnographic construc-tion sometimes emerges in ethnographic reanalyses orwhen two ethnographers work the same field. Thus,Evans-Pritchard's data on the Nuer frequently have beendeployed to rebut his functional interpretationof their lifein favor of new constructions. In an exercise as scientificas any laboratory experiment, Fortune (1939:27, 36)sought to challenge Mead's (1935) representation of thepeaceful Mountain Arapesh with data such as a surveyindicating that, at contact, one half of all adult males hadkilled. Similarly, Lewis, "in he interest of science," empiri-cally challenged Redfield's ethnographic construction ofthe Mexican village of Tepoztlan on issues ranging fromthe origins of the barrios, through land ownership, to thesymbolism of cloth bound around a mother's abdomenfollowing a birth (1963[1951]:x, 19-20, 125-126, 360 n. 12,428-440). Culturalanthropology has tended to problema-tize such cases as the "Rashomon effect," but they mightbetter be represented as normal science. Wereit usual forseveral noncollaborating fieldworkers (rather than justone) simultaneously to study a community, their sub-sequent public scrutiny of one another's constructionswould make fully apparent the scientific nature of theinterpretive method.As much as any of positivism's supposed excesses, Isuggest, it is this monopoly of ethnographic observationand representation that accounts for the rise of postmod-ern preoccupations with the problematic integrity of thefieldwork exercise and its textual representation. In the

natural sciences, data elicitation and textual repre-sentation appear relatively unproblematic: if in doubt,members of the scientific community can always "see forthemselves" and "render for themselves." In anthropol-ogy, where only one member of the academic communitytypically can "see for him- or herself," observational andrepresentational integrity comes to seem much moreproblematic.Because they generally fail to address the bases ofthis ethnographic monopoly, the remedial prescriptionspostmodernists offer, laudable though they may be, canbe no more effective than positivism's prescriptions forobjectivity. Herdt and Stoller (1990:352), for example,advocate the ethnographic inclusion of extensive detailabout the fieldwork process to facilitate "unpacking"ofthe ethnographer's interpretations (see also Dumont1978:46).Yet they fail to engage the authoritythat the loneethnographer exercises not only over the interpretationsmade but also over precisely which fieldwork details areincluded and omitted. When Marcus (1986:184)urges eth-nographers to adopt "standards of puritanical honesty"about who is speaking for whom in their texts and whatis actually being authentically represented, he likewisedisregards the typical ethnographer's status as the onlyperson who can know and represent his or her standardsas of "puritanical honesty." "Monological authority," asClifford (1983:134-135, 139) notes, is not eliminated; theproblems thus remain.It is no coincidence, I think, that postmodern con-cerns have had rather less impact in economics, sociol-ogy, and psychology than in anthropology. With the em-pirical attention of most of their practitioners focused onWestern society, access to observation in these disci-plines is more democratic and hence seems less problem-atic than in anthropology. It may be, therefore, that an-thropology would be better served by contemplating apath that leads less to postmodernism than to pragmaticways of breaking down observational and repre-sentational authority. In this brave but more brutal newworld, multiple ethnographers mightbe pitted one againstanother in the same field, or anthropological journals andbook editors might invite literate members of a society tocritique ethnographies of their culture.

TranscendingCultures:TheLimits of ScientificMethodin AnthropologyIf interpretive and scientific methods are one and thesame, then the proposals of positivism's more sympa-thetic critics (M. Jackson 1989:182-187) that anthropolo-gists avoid the crude either-or dichotomy of science ver-sus interpretivism in favor of epistemological openness,or an inclusion of both, are rendered moot. So too is thedefense that verstehen, or interpretive method, is in-



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tended not as "analternative to positivism and the scien-tific method, as it is sometimes said to be, but as a correc-tive against the too mechanical application of thismethod" (Parkin 1988:21). If interpretivism and scientificmethod are one and the same, then clearly the one cannotbe a methodological correction of the other.What is really at issue, I believe, are not methodologi-cal corrections but rather empirical and theoretical ones.Onthe one hand, what some interpretivists really want tocorrect are positivists' supposed notions that the "real"data are "social facts"-norms, institutions, networks of"actuallyexisting relations"-rather than the specific ac-tions and utterances of individuals in dialogical interac-tion with one another and with the ethnographer (Ellen1984:20 and Murphy 1971:84, 106). On the other hand,interpretivists object to a common theoretical presump-tion among positivists that ideas are not an autonomousforce in human behavior but are reducible to other pa-rameters of existence.This latter issue can be illustrated by considering afurther concern that some of positivism's critics harborabout a science of society. Many interpretivists seem totake their prime intellectual goal as understanding andrepresenting a single culture. As Holy (1987:7) summa-rizes the matter, analyses "aimed at understanding a cul-ture 'internally' ... 'in its own terms' ... or 'from theactor's point of view'.. . have characterized most of sym-bolic or semantic anthropology, resulting... in the prolif-eration of descriptions and analyses of particularsocietiesand cultures." Fired by the principle of methodologicalnaturalism, however, positivists supposedly insist on go-ing much further. Just as natural scientists go beyondcollecting and representing facts about rocks, floral andfaunal species, stellar bodies, and so forth and constructtheories of what lies "behind" he behavior of these physi-cal phenomena, so positivistic anthropologists seek toidentify a second order of (scientific) interpretation "be-hind"first-order ethnographic interpretations-a totaliz-ing theory embodying transcultural laws and causes thataccount for behavior both within and among human so-cieties.

For critics, this quest is fatally flawed. It erroneouslypresumes a "determinism"of human action, one that posi-tivists usually render theoretically via a reduction of mindto material and/or functional exigency. It takes humansand their behavior to be no different analytically fromphysical or biological matter and its behavior.19For somecritics, in fact, this quest is not just flawed but offensive.According to Schultz and Lavenda, "Anthropologists canbe charged with being insensitive to the humanity of theirresearch subjects when their positivistic reports treathuman beings as if they, too, [like rocks or molecules,]lacked thoughts, feelings, dignity, the freedom to choose"(1990:52). Diener and Robkin (1978:506) believe that "thevery process of'objectifying' humansubjects" in this 'posi-

tivistic' manner leads to ethical problems such as theoperant conditioning of deviants without their consent,and Skinnerian calls to move beyond freedom and dignity.It is difficult to evaluate these criticisms because, inanthropology at least, neither their grounds nor the pre-cise meanings of highly problematic terms like laws,causes, and determinism are spelled out. Still, the generalform of the argument is familiar, and in what follows Ishall consider the outline offered by Anthony Giddens andby Ira Cohen, who summarizes and expands Giddens'sdiscussion.20According to this argument, the applicationof scientific method unavoidably presumes a uniformi-tarian principle, a metaphysical faith in the existence ofan Order of Nature, of regularities or recurrences in theworld. Without such faith, scientists would be unable toformulate "universal (empirical) laws" of the sort, "If in-itial condition(s) A obtain(s), consequence(s) B will al-ways follow." If identical experiments or circumstancesalways, or even just sometimes, gave rise to varying re-sults, then, the argument goes, the scientific methodwould collapse.In the case of natural science, faith in an Order ofNature is justified-or so positivism's critics seem to sup-pose-because the physical universe is held to be a deter-ministic one in which entities are wholly governed by atrans-spatial, transtemporal order of forces or relation-ships. Humans, however, have certain, possibly uniquecharacteristics, variously identified as self-awareness, re-flexivity, creativity, intentionality, rationalization of ac-tion, and purposiveness, that confer on them freedom todictate their action. In consequence, there is no thorough-going determinism of human agency in the sense thatthere are forces to which humans must respond automat-ically as do atoms, molecules, and the like. Universal lawsof human behavior, always valid within oramong cultures,can never be formulated, because humans, unlike atoms,have the ability to detect lawlike regularities in theiraffairs, build them into their assessment of their situation,and so in principle undermine them.The problem with this argument is that it works onlyas a critique of positivistic notions of natural sciencemethod and what it produces. Contrary to its implicitassumption, the success of natural science depends nei-ther on a thoroughgoing determinism in its subject matternor on the universality ofthe uniformitarianprinciple; andits method does not and cannot produce universal laws.First, of course, if human behavior is nondeterministicand nonlawlike then so too must be the physical world, tothe extent that humans are in that world and affect itsbehavior. According to chaos theory, moreover, certainphysical processes, such as turbulent gaseous and liquidflow, population dynamics in predator-preyspecies, evenmultiple mechanical collisions, can never be captured asuniversal laws even were their behavior wholly determin-istic. Finally, as the quantumfoundation of modem phys-



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ics now tells us, there is no thoroughgoing determinism inthe physical world, and, consequently, no law can everapply to all space and all time.

Recognizing that the physical world is neither whollydeterministic nor wholly regular or recurrent in its action,natural scientists get on with analyzing those aspects ofthe physical world that do seem to exhibit regularity orrecurrence. Social scientists could only be prevented fromfollowing suit were there no regularities or recurrences atall in human behavior. It is doubtful, however, that eventhe most committed idealist could entertain such a notion.Even if humans could, in theory, act to subvert all regular-ity in their behavior, it is unlikely they would do so inpractice if for no other reason than that cultural reproduc-tion-indeed, human reproduction and survival-wouldbecome impossible.In fact, though human reflectivity, creativity, andfreedom of action may inject a degree of indeterminismand irregularity into human behavior, there is reason tosuppose, as Giddens (1984:343-347) notes in some detail,that agents can never be wholly autonomous. They arealways subject to social and material constraints that theyare unable to change; they are subject to the dialectic ofcontrol-their asymmetric access to resources; and thereare limits on the range of practices they are capable ofcompetently performing.As for their abilityto predict andhence, in principle, undermine regularities in behavior,there are a whole set of circumstances under which thisknowledge can have no transformational consequences.Not least is when the empirical referent is to past events;when reflexive knowledge is used to sustain rather thanundermine existing circumstances; and when those whoseek to apply this knowledge are not in a situation to beable to do so effectively (Giddens 1984:341-343).

ThePerils of PositivismThe perils of positivism, in sum, are of two sorts. Onthe one hand are those putatively associated with adher-ence to the positivist ideal in anthropology. As I have

sought to show, these are less threatening than they seem;whatever damage positivism can cause has been self-lim-iting since, by virtue of its flaws, it is impossible to putfully into practice. As in the natural sciences, whateveranthropological positivists (and their critics) thought theywere doing was assuredly very different from whatever itwas they actually were doing. Onthe other hand, there arethe perils that unreflective deployment of the image ofpositivism poses for anthropology. The most important, Ihave argued, is the ease with which this image facili-tates-covertly in some cases, explicitly in others-rejec-tion of the methods of natural science as applicable tosocial science.

Given its manifest failings, it must be asked how sounderdetermined and conflicted an image as positivismhas not only survived but prospered in the ecology ofanthropological ideas. Whatever its substantive merits,the image may have flourished in part because its under-determination rendered it a powerful vehicle of intellec-tual consolidation and attack. Capable of meaning manythings to many people, it may have fostered an impressionof much broader intellectual agreement about positiv-ism's deficiencies than obtains in actuality. As a sketchyand contradictory representation of complex ideas andcriticisms, moreover, it has confronted those who mightwant to respond to the critique with an extensive prelimi-nary interpretive exercise, while simultaneously exposingthem to the easy rejoinder that they have misrepresentedwhat was intended.The pragmatics of academic discourse, however, failto explain the particular image that positivism repre-sents. Clearly,critics feel they have identified a movementthat has led anthropology astray. Yet the vitriol heapedupon positivists and positivism seems out of all propor-tion to the sins of omission and commission that theirprecepts purportedly have wrought. Where a measuredresponse might seek to build on the foundations of thepast while avoiding its fissures, too many of positivism'scritics have seemed bent on reducing it all to a uselessrubble.Such ire suggests the covert presence of a furthertarget, and I suspect this is scientism: the unreflective,epistemological, and theoretical arrogance with whichpositivists supposedly deploy the precept of methodologi-cal naturalism, smugly deriding all knowledge not gener-ated by what they take to be scientific method. Scientismhas an early and distinguished ancestry in Bacon's(1900[1605, 1620]:319) reductive dismissal of all philoso-phy prior to his "positivedoctrine"asjust "species of idols[that] beset the human mind." It perhaps antagonizespositivism's critics for two reasons. The first is the scien-tistic mien itself-the unreflecting derision that many ofus have experienced at the hands of positivism's heroes,the natural scientists, and at least some anthropologicalacolytes who pontificate about scientific method inastonishingly naive terms. The second is scientism's im-plicit political agenda. Scientism deploys the term scienceas though it were a magical talisman guaranteeing theauthenticity of whatever half-baked ideas are trotted outunder its aegis. Unfortunately, such claims do exercise asort of magic over the uninitiated-the lay populace andpoliticians who vote on funding priorities-thereby con-tinually threatening to disenfranchise humanistic inquiryand other forms of inquiry as nonscientific. If I am notmistaken, however, the scientistic boast is hollow: mostforms of humanistic inquiry are as scientific as quantumphysics; they differ only in their subject matter.



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If scientism is indeed the real target of antagonism,this would explain the general failure rigorously to engageand critique positivism's claims: simply put, critical inter-ests have been elsewhere. It also would account for thereadiness to collapse science into positivism; in arrogat-ing natural science to their epistemological cause, thescientistically inclined have trapped incautious criticsinto accepting at face value their claim that the positivistprogram is science. Where modern critical anthropologyperhaps went awry was in failing to follow a lead laiddown by its radical forebears-scholars like Berreman(1974[1972]) and especially Scholte (1971, 1974[1972]).These rigorous and persuasive critiques of "scientific"anthropology deployed positivism only incidentally andinnocuously; scientism was their explicit target, and theirobject was not to reject a science of society but to placeit within a humane rather than a scientistic framework(e.g., Berreman 1974[1972]:88-90, 92-94 and Scholte1971:782,784, 801). Almost certainly, their use of the termscientism--etymologically derived from science butnonetheless clearly differentiated from it-helped pre-vent the intellectual legerdemain of rejecting sciencealong with scientism. Unfortunately, in the discourse ofmany subsequent critics, scientism got folded into 'posi-tivism', thereby blurring the etymological distinction andallowing the image of positivism to drive a wedge betweencultural anthropology and the possibility of a science ofsociety.

Anthropology's image of positivism, then, has servedto camouflage significant faults in the grounding of recentanthropology. Toward reconstruction, I think, a reassess-ment of the status of a natural science of culture andsociety is long overdue. At the very least, those whoadvocate the methodological distinctiveness of naturaland social science need to specify in more sophisticatedterms than they have to date wherein the differences lie.To this end, detailed comparisons of the practice of natu-ral science and ethnography will be invaluable, thoughthis task must await accounts of the latter equivalent tothe detailed examinations already undertaken of the for-mer. Postmodernists have furnished us with many auto-biographical accounts of fieldwork, but their repre-sentational monopoly makes these superficiallyself-critical works poor substitutes for the kind of bio-graphical accounts of natural science typified by Latourand Woolgar's Laboratory Life (1986) (Rubinstein1991:20-22). In the meantime, reflexivists and postmod-ernists might reconsider their grounds in light of thedifferential distribution of observational and repre-sentational authority in ethnography and physical sci-ence. And the discipline as a whole might begin to discusspragmatic ways to destabilize the self-confirming, self-serving, authorial monopoly that most ethnographers stillenjoy over their subject matter.

NotesAcknowledgments. An early version of this paper was pre-sented at the 89th Annual Meeting of the American Anthropo-

logical Association in the session "Scientific and HumanisticWays of Understanding in Anthropology," organized by J. TimO'Mearaand chaired by RichardShweder and MelfordSpiro.Forcomments and criticisms on that and otherversions, Iam deeplygrateful to Robert Borofsky, Johannes Fabian, Terry Hays, AliceKehoe, Bruce Knauft, Cindy Mahmood, Henry Munson, TimO'Meara, Don Pollock, Paul Roth, Ray Scupin, and StephenTyler, none of whom bears any culpability for my viewpoints ormistakes.

1. Works by sociologists and economists on positivism in-clude Adorno et al. 1976[1969]; P. Cohen 1980; Giddens 1974,1977:28-89; Giedymin 1975;and Habermas 1971[1968].2. Archaeology has gone through wrangles of its own overpositivism. Without reluctance, I restrict this examination tosocial and cultural anthropology, since the growing intellectualand social separation of the two subdisciplines has producedsignificantly different images of positivism. Archaeological posi-tivism, it is my impression, has received greater exposition andmore rigorous critique than in cultural anthropology, and it ismore tightly integrated with logical than Comtean positivism(Kelley and Hanen 1988:5 and Watson et al. 1984:3).3. P. Cohen 1980:141;Giddens 1977:29;and Giedymin 1975.4. Defining a cultural anthropological source is as problem-atic as defining cultural anthropology itself. Here, I take such asource to be one written by a cultural anthropologist or clearlyintended to include cultural anthropologists as a major compo-nent of its audience.

5. Diamond 1974:330; Dumont 1978:45; Paluch 1988:80;Sahlins 1976:128, 146; and Shalvey 1979:97-98 identify thesewritings as positivistic. Ardener 1971:460;Jerschina 1988:145;Leacock 1981:214; and Rigby 1985:49-50 identify them as non-or antipostivistic.

6. Berreman 1974[1972]:93;Dienerand Robkin 1978:505-506;Ellen 1982:16; Fetterman 1989:16; Friedrich 1992:211; Ham-mersley and Atkinson 1983:4-5; Harkin 1988:100; McGrane1989:3-4; Peacock 1986:68,86, 101;Samuel 1990:20;and Schultzand Lavenda 1990:50-51.7. Ardener 1971:460;Bidney 1967:264,429; Borofsky 1994:24;R. Cohen 1981:206; de Waal Maleflt 1974:331; De Zengotita1989:103; Ellen 1982:3; Fettennan 1989:16;Friedrich 1992:211;Hammersley and Atkinson 1983:4, 12;Harkin 1988:100;Marcusand Fischer 1986:179; Peacock 1986:69, 86, 95, 101; Samuel1990:20;Schultz and Lavenda 1990:50,51;Stocking 1987:323;andUlin 1984:65.8. Bernard 1994:169; Bidney 1967:89; Borofsky 1994:24; deWaal Malefijt 1974:108-113; and Harris 1968:60-63. Acton

(1989:253-254), however, makes a persuasive case for Bacon'sprimacy in furnishing not only the philosophy but also its name(see Bacon 1864[1623-24]:345).9. Bernard 1994:169;De Zengotita 1989:107;Gellner 1985:4-67; Hammersley and Atkinson 1983:3; Marcus and Fischer1986:179;and Rabinow and Sullivan 1987:10-11.

10. Diener and Robkin 1978:505; Geertz 1973:199; Holy1987:2, 15; M. Jackson 1989:180; Karp and Maynard 1983:484;Marcus and Fischer 1986:179;Murphy1971:14;Paluch 1988:80;



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Sahlins 1972:154; Service 1985:3, 241, 259; and Stocking1987:190.11. Ellen 1984:20-21; Hanson 1975:x; Holy 1987:5; Peel

1971:238, 249; Schultz and Lavenda 1990:50;and Ulin 1984:65.12. Holy 1987:6; Murphy 1971:106; Rabinow and Sullivan1987:9-10; Schultz and Lavenda 1990:50-52; Service 1985:259;and Shalvey 1979:97.13. Kolakowski 1968;Adorno etal. 1976[1969];and Radnitsky1968.

14. Ellen 1984:28-29; see also Diener and Robkin 1978:506and Rigby 1985:30.15. Feyerabend 1978:31, 69-80; Hesse 1980:63-86, 172; Pop-per 1959[1935]:59, 79-81, 93-95, 107; and Quine 1966:208-214,233-241.

16. See also Jarvie 1975:258 and Peacock 1986:68-69. Somecritics appear to make a similar but subtly different point: posi-tivism fails to recognize that values, interests, and epistemologi-cal, theoretical, and pretheoretical conceptions frame the act ofselecting observations or facts (Rigby 1985:30 and Schulz andLavenda 1990:53-54). While this is indubitably true, it overlooksthe point that the observations or facts selected are themselvesinterpretive constructions.17. Carrithers 1990; Giddens 1979:258; and Rubinstein1991:19-20. Some scholars progress partially toward this con-clusion. Hammersly and Atkinson (1983:17), for example, "viewsocial science as sharing much in common with natural sciencewhile yet treating both as merely the advance guard of common-sense knowledge." While rightly grounding both physical andsocial science in commonsense reasoning, they draw back fromasserting their complete identity and pursuing the ramificationsof their point (see also Hanson 1975:86 and Peacock 1986:101-102).18. Campbell 1986:128;J. Jackson 1990:8-10, 22;and Salzman1994:35.19. De Zengotita 1989:112; Murphy 1971:85, 101; Sahlins1976:206; Sangren 1988:409; Schultz and Lavenda 1990:50, 52;Service 1985:133;and Shalvey 1979:97.20. Giddens 1976:84-85,1977:80-89,1979:242-245,1984:334-347, and I. Cohen 1989:24-25.

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