Cellphones Save The World « Neuroanthropology - The Diigo Meta page

• 12 Apr 08
  

  Jeremy Price

  anthropology research qualitative methods epistemology technology problematics social_science

  • Human-centered science is marked by both what it is and what it is not. It is: problem centered, people oriented, and ethically engaged. In other words, it looks more like our everyday lives, an interdisciplinary mish-mash that makes sense most of the time. It is not: disciplinary specific, overly reductive, or based on cause-effect explanation.
  • Those explanations come from people, and they rely on context. Chipchase makes this argument through his use of “identity,” which is not set by personality, nor determined by culture.
  • These emerging methods are based on two basic premises: good description and getting human feedback. Qualitative approaches based on these two premises can be as rigorous and scholarly as experiments and statistical science. And they connect to the real world a lot better, because that is where they are located.
  • However, we still live in a world largely set by yes/no. Yes/no hypotheses. Yes/no votes. It gave us a powerful start, I know, over the past couple centuries. But damn, I wish our politicians today would approach problems the way Chipchase does. Not top-down, policy-driven, and ideologically-determined. Imagine the torrent of creativity that could create.

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