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7 - Methods in Cognitive Anthropology

from Part II - Methodological Innovations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  aN Invalid Date NaN

By
Victor C. de Munck
Edited by
Edward Lowe
Edward Lowe
Affiliation:
Soka University of America
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Summary

This chapter discusses the development of methods in cognitive anthropology. It documents how these methods developed from a focus on documenting shared cultural knowledge to a period where the person returned as a primary locus of cultural experience. The chapter’s discussion is organized into three overlapping historical periods. The ethnoscience period involved strategies for the elicitation of cultural domain taxonomies, componential analyses, and methods that allowed the identification of prototypical members of a category or subcategory. The cognitive schemas period used more structured data collection methods to document cultural schemas that organize items in a cognitive domain and statistical methods for modeling their interrelations. Cognitive anthropologists also developed ways to document cultural schemas in everyday talk, mainly using the method of semi- and unstructured extended interviews and life histories. The cultural models period used structured and unstructured data collection methods and quantitative and qualitative data analysis from the cultural schemas research period. These methods were used to connect culture to variations in individual experience.

Keywords

Cultural schemascultural modelsquantitative methodsqualitative methodscognitive anthropologycultural knowledgeindividual experience

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The Cambridge Handbook of Psychological Anthropology , pp. 177 - 200
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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