ANTHROPOLOGICAL METHOD OF FIELD RESEARCH
Intensive field work is a method of social anthropological research. The social anthropologists were the first to use intensive fieldwork as a method of inquiry in their attempts to understand human society and culture. They have been using this method since the beginning of the 20th century. Today this method is also used by the scholars of a wide range of disciplines.
Anthropologists in their attempts to study human society and culture are more and more concentrating on the collection and analysis of ethnographic data. Ethnography is the description of the culture of a people. It means the understanding of the culture of a people from their point of view.
Ethnography is a report and interpretation of events that never again will be repeated, that occurred in a time forever gone. But the classes of events, the categories of behavior, are repeated endlessly. By moving through the events assembled for us in ethnographies to the ethnographer and his experience and back to the assembled events, we can gain some insight into the nature of those categories. When we do this, we find the personal adaptation and involvements of the anthropologists in the field to be significant influences on not only the reporting and interpretation of events but upon the events, themselves.
Anthropologists have been investigating into the society and culture of their own people and also the society and culture of the so-called backward people (alien to them). Because anthropology is no longer limited to the study of so called primitive people or isolated tribal communities, it is no longer considered as the study of alien culture only. It has today lost its colonial definition.
Anthropologists today study their own culture and anthropology today can practically study any aspect of the contemporary society and culture. It has now been possible to gain a deep insight into many aspects of human society and culture of the contemporary of the contemporary world as a result of the anthropologist's investigation following the method of intensive fieldwork.
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