Quantification and Statistics in Six Anthropology Journals

Abstract

The prominence of interpretive, literary, self-reflexive, and hermeneutic approaches in sociocultural anthropology in recent years has led some commentators to argue that the field has taken a humanistic turn. This article examines quantification and statistics in articles about sociocultural anthropology over the past several decades in six U.S. journals, assuming that the proportion of articles using these methods at any given time is a rough indicator of the balance between humanistic and scientific approaches. Although there has been a reduction in recent years in the proportion of articles using quantification and statistics in these journals, the overall drop has not been nearly as marked as many writers suggest. A notable shift away from quantification has occurred in the American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, and Ethnology. The proportion of articles using quantification and statistics, however, has increased greatly in the Journal of Anthropological Research and remained about the same in Current Anthropology and Human Organization.