How I learned to love Social Scientists... I think...

It's a running gag amongst some Inuit and social scientists that a traditional Inuit family consists of a mother, a father, children, and an anthropologist.

For those who don't really the difference, anthropology - and more specifically cultural anthropology - is the study human culture. It studies rites and rituals, beliefs, world view, cultural notions of identity. This is in the context of a Western scientist gathering information about cultures outside of its hegemony. Sociology on the other hand consists of the study of society. More specifically - western society.

My take on it is that globalist hegemony seeks to learn about foreign culture through a reverse engineering process of anthropology and there as a culture is catalogued, measured, tested for all strengths and weaknesses, it can be evaluated, acted upon, and integrated into a globalized hegemony. Though we once were the subjects of anthropology, through the Indian Act and such policies, we become the subjects of sociology - that includes criminology, sexology, and related fields.

I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel like a participant observant in a strange sociological experiment. Participant observation is going out in to the field of study and acting as a member of the group being studied. So for example, a sociologist who wants to study the micro-society of an English pub will find a way to participate in the activities of the community and make observations about it. So that would mean becoming a client of the pub and talking with the regulars and taking notes about the experience at the end of the day.

What had originally drawn me to the study of anthropology (I have credits accumulated but no bachelor's... yet - I have yet to go back to university though) was that it was a way for me to learn about more "traditional" elements of my culture as there were no other outlet dedicated to the catologuing and writing of the Inuit cultural experience. What I did learn in the process though is about the scientific method to learn about culture. Most importantly, it gave me a healthy interest in all of the cultures of this rich and colorful planet.