INTERPRETIVE ANTHROPOLOGY OR SCIENTIFIC ANTHROPOLOGY?

Interpretive anthropology or scientific anthropology? This is a question which has been argued by many scholars for many decades. Scholars for many years have tried to come up with a conclusion in determining which discipline cultural anthropology should take account in and whether is should be identified symbolically or scientifically. To this present day this question is left unanswered. Cultural anthropology is referred to as the type of anthropology which deals with a variety of different human cultures, and states their differences symbolically. The subject of anthropology generally has two comparable perspectives which are often argued by numerous anthropologists. Anthropology is often regarded as being a scientific discipline while the opposing perspective argues that it is an interpretive discipline because of the way in which individuals and events are defined symbolically. Although each group consists of its own individual groups, the majority of anthropologists have taken a more diverse approach and combined the two disciplines with one another. Anthropologist Eric Wolf concluded a remark which states that anthropology is both the most scientific of the humanities and the most humanistic of the sciences. Wolf argues that the interpretive and scientific perspectives are significantly different from one another and thus this illustrates that cultural anthropology has had difficulty trying to incorporate the two disciplines with one another into one symbolic discipline.

To conclude this comparison; interpretive anthropologists employ intuitive insight and creative imagination in the attempt to evoke and interpret cultural variability. However, the opposing side; scientific anthropologists create logical analysis and empirical investigation in the effort to describe and explain cultural occurrences. The goal of interpretive analysis is to produce relative interpretations which are informative, while the goal of scientific analysis is to produce causal explanations which are analytical. In this paper I would like to examine and observe the comparison between scientific and interpretive anthropology and state the symbolic differences between the two and thus examine Clifford Geertz’s perspective which states that interpretive anthropology is a science in terms of the