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Right from the start of the twentieth century, the status of anthropology as a science (even when qualified as a “social” science) was a topic of debate. Both Boas and Malinowski had pursued advanced degrees in the physical sciences before becoming anthropologists and undertaking ethnographic fieldwork and, therefore, brought an element of scientific inquiry to their fieldwork. Meanwhile, Boas’ student, Alfred Kroeber, characterized anthropology as “the most humanistic of the sciences and the most scientific of the humanities,” which was his way of softening the sense that ethnographic inquiry was a scientific endeavor akin to physics or chemistry, yet it was still a science.

We commonly call the methods of physical scientists, such as Galileo and Newton, “reductionist” because they take the complexity of observable reality and reduce all the details to simple principles that ultimately govern the seemingly endless details. The observer stands outside of what is being observed in order to uncover its mysteries. The philosopher Wilhelm Windelband (1848–1915) called this approach “nomothetic” and contrasted it with the “idiographic” approach of the humanities. The humanistic approach is the diametric opposite of reductionism because it is interested in exploring the rich contexts and diversity of cultural phenomena, rather than stripping them away in order to hypothesize simple, unifying principles.

For example, if you like romantic comedies, you will not be stopped from watching a new Netflix release by a friend telling you that the main characters in the movie fall in love near the beginning, face a difficulty that pulls them apart, but then find a way, by some twist of fate or other plot device, to be together in the end. You know this structure: you like it. You take this structure as a given, and you go to the movie because you want to see the specifics: the exact character of the principles, the jokes, the absurd misunderstandings, and so forth. It is the particulars that attract you, not the generalities (which you assume). We call the focus on the particulars of a situation, over the desire to reduce its specifics to general rules, an idiographic approach, and it is the hallmark of interpretive analysis in ethnography. This book takes the position that ethnographic analysis sits somewhere between the nomothetic and the idiographic. Through the projects in this book you will have ample opportunity to explore both approaches.