Actions, Norms and Representations

The verbal statements of the actors and the researchers' own observations of their behaviour constitute two basic kinds of data which every anthropologist collects during his or her fieldwork. Yet the nature of social reality, and its availability to the observer, remains a fundamental methodological problem for the social anthropologist. In this book the authors argue that the difference between these two kinds of data is not merely a casual difference in the way in which the information comes to the anthropologist. Rather, it connotes the difference between the areas or domains of the social reality under study. One of these domains is formed by the notions or ideas people hold (i.e. their norms and their representations of the world and the existing state of affairs) and the other by the actions which they actually perform.