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COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY
Sociologyindex, Sociology Books 2011
COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY which is also known as ‘ethnoscience’, examines
the ways that peoples of different cultures classify or categorize items of the everyday
world. Has some connection to ethnomethodology.
COGNITIVE ANTHROPOLOGY INTRODUCTION
Introduction from: as.ua.edu/ant/Faculty/murphy/436/coganth.htm
TARA ROBERTSON, tara.robertson@mail.ua.edu
DUKE BEASLEY
Cognitive anthropology is an idealist approach to studying the human condition. The field
of cognitive anthropology focuses on the study of the relation between human culture and
human thought. In contrast with some earlier anthropological approaches to culture,
cultures are not regarded as material phenomena, but rather cognitive organizations of
material phenomena (Tyler 1969:3). Cognitive anthropologists study how people understand
and organize the material objects, events, and experiences that make up their world as the
people they study perceive it. It is an approach that stresses how people make sense of
reality according to their own indigenous cognitive categories, not those of the
anthropologist. Cognitive anthropology posits that each culture orders events, material
life and ideas, to its own criteria. The fundamental aim of cognitive anthropology is to
reliably represent the logical systems of thought of other people according to criteria,
which can be discovered and replicated through analysis.
The methodology, theoretical underpinnings, and subjects of cognitive anthropology have
been diverse. The field can be divided into three phases: (1) an early formative period in
the 1950’s called ethnoscience; (2) the middle period during the 1960’s and
1970’s, commonly identified with the study of folk models; and (3) the most recent
period beginning in the 1980’s with the growth of schema theory and the development
of consensus theory. Cognitive anthropology is closely aligned with psychology, because
both explore the nature of cognitive processes (D'Andrade 1995:1). It has also adopted
theoretical elements and methodological techniques from structuralism and linguistics.
Cognitive anthropology is a broad field of inquiry; for example, studies have examined how
people arrange colors and plants into categories as well how people conceptualize disease
in terms of symptoms, cause, and appropriate treatment. Cognitive anthropology not only
focuses on discovering how different peoples organize culture but also how they utilize
culture. Contemporary cognitive anthropology attempts to access the organizing principles
that underlie and motivate human behavior. Though the scope of cognitive anthropology is
expansive its methodology continues to depend strongly on a long-standing tradition of
fieldwork and structured interviews.
Cognitive anthropologists regard anthropology as a formal science. They maintain that
culture is composed of logical rules that are based on ideas that can be accessed in the
mind. Cognitive anthropology emphasizes the rules of behavior, not behavior itself. It
does not claim that it can predict human behavior but delineates what is socially and
culturally expected or appropriate in given situations, circumstances, and contexts. It is
not concerned with describing events in order to explain or discover processes of change.
Furthermore, this approach declares that every culture embodies its own unique
organizational system for understanding things, events, and behavior. Some scholars
contend that it is necessary to develop several theories of cultures before striving for
could eventually lead to a grand theory of Culture (Applebaum, 1987:409). In other words,
researchers contend that studies should be aimed at understanding particular cultures in
forming theoretical explanations. Once this has been achieved then valid and reliable
cross-cultural comparisons become possible enabling a general theory of all Culture.
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