Behavioral Anthropology

Reviews / Votes

I certainly agree with Graves on the need for a return to some sort of positivistic, scientific attitude in cultural anthropology, emphasizing evidence-based, and if possible, quantitative findings, with a research design that permits replication. -- Anthony F. C. Wallace, Professor Emeritus, University of Pennsylvania For those of us in anthropology committed to doing research that is both theoretically explicit and methodologically rigorous, the publication of Ted Graves' two volumes is a welcome event. These volumes bring together in one place some of the most interesting and innovative research that has been done in anthropology in the latter half of the 20th century. Students today need to study carefully his approach to integrating ethnography and quantitative methods, just as we did when these articles first appeared. All of us will profit from his summary and the extension of his thoughts on the topic of behavioral anthropology, spanning thirty years of work. -- William W. Dressler, University of Alabama As cultural anthropology emerges from an extended period of malaise-sterile debates over qualitative versus quantitative method; the nihilism of post-modernist indulgence-these volumes offer a fresh perspective for revitalized inquiry. Reflecting developments in the larger field of behavioral science, they illustrate how attention to behavior, as well as to context and meaning, can enrich understanding and, at the same time, bring scientific rigor to the discipline. Written as a personal-intellectual odyssey, the volumes are engaging and instructive; both faculty and graduate students, especially those seeking a new way forward and the methods with which to explore it, should find them attractive. -- Richard Jessor, University of Colorado at Boulder These two volumes are a must for students and teachers of research methods in cultural anthropology. From questionnaires to field experiments, and from simple percentage tables to multivariate models, Graves' body of work offers wonderful examples for teaching research methods in cultural anthropology. -- H. Russell Bernard, University of Florida, Director of the Institute of Social Science Research at the University of Arizona