Mad Dogs Englishmen And The Errant Anthropologist Summary

In Mad Dogs, Englishmen, and the Errant Anthropologist, Raybeck’s approach to ethnography has been very similar to what is described in chapter 5 of Essentials of Cultural Anthropology. The postmodernism theory is that it emphasizes the non-material knowledge. Materialism emphasizes on the material system of behavior. Most Anthropologist are somewhere in the middle of these two or lean one way a little bit more because these are such extreme theory’s. Raybeck seems to view his research from the postmodernism theory more than the materialism theory. In Raybeck’s book he does a lot of looking at the culture, beliefs, and ideas of the Kelantanese but he also looks at the behaviors and scientific reasoning’s behind them. He looks at the†¦show more content†¦The main difference over all is that if the research was not done the way Raybeck had originally conducted it, the book would have been a lot more formal with its scientific reasoning’s. While reading in both books about ethnography I was shocked to learn that there was a ton of different theoretical perspectives. I was also shocked at how the theories are so different from one another. For some the only similarity is that it is the study of humans. Before the class I thought that there was a set way on how anthropology was studied but I very quickly found out that is not the case. Anthropology is very broad and is open to tons of different interpretations. There is no set way on how we must go about researching and studying. I believe that Raybeck chose appropriate field methods during his field work. During his field work Raybeck made decisions on how to answer his questions based on what methods would give him the most insight. He chose not to do a lot of surveys because he knew what kind of responses he would get. By doing surveys the information he would have gotten would have been wide rather than deep. An example on a time where the survey was not a good chose was when he was learning about how the Villagers view Chinese people. He would not have learned about how complex the matter truly is by just putting a survey out to the community. Interviews can be a better chose to get more detailed information. Interviews can be