A World of Full of Voices

Abstract

For several hundred years now, the primary research method in anthropology has been ethnography. One does not see many experimental studies that use randomized clinical trials in the study of culture. And there is a very practical reason for this. Culture is far too complex to control variables. Culture cannot be studied in a lab. Culture is its own unique kind of container with implied signals that are difficult to observe. Culture is lived within a context, but not in a laboratory. So we have thick descriptions to help us find knowledge and truth about the lives lived within these contexts. We have stories.