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The Father Of Participant Observation

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Furthermore, functionalist emphasized fieldwork much like historical particularism. The “father of participant observation” Malinowski was a psychological functionalist. His stay in the Trobriand Islands was not his choice due to war, however, his method of ethnography made him one of the greatest ethnographers known today (McGee & Warms 2012: 152). Compared to historical particularism, he reinforced that anthropologist should immerse themselves in the local culture. Malinowski describes ethnographic fieldwork as “where the most generalized inferences are obtained as the result of long inquiries and laborious inductions,” (Malinowski 2012: 157). The long inquiries he is referring to is the same design Boas and Radin were doing. All three men resided with the natives for extensive periods of time to collect a complete understanding of what culture is to another group of individuals.
In addition to the emphasis on fieldwork and learning the native language, functionalism and historical particularism also share concepts related to Kroeber as well as Radcliffe-Brown. Both anthropologists were interested in the roles and rules of societies and not the individual. They were stressing the super-organic nature of society. It is important to note that the idea that the individual is unimportant is not true for all advocates of historical particularism. Kroeber is the anthropologist that strays from his mentor Boas in this example. Kroeber’s idea is civilization is apart from the

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