Wittgenstein's Beetle Eats Ethnography

   

Wittgenstein's Beetle is an analogy about the nature of language. Suppose we all had a box and we're told there's a beetle inside each one. However, we can't see each other's boxes and the term 'beetle' eventually refers to the contents of all the boxes. It is, in other words, a misnomer that attaches a common label to different things.

This has implications on the veracity of ethnography in sociology, anthropology and other similar social sciences. For example, sociological inquiry involves understanding the value system prevalent in a given society because human actions are in large part value-driven. The problem arises because the survey/interview questions often used in such research is vague. "I put my familial responsibilities above work commitments" is a possible ethnographic question but the terms 'responsibility', 'commitment' and 'above' are relative to an individual's definition. The statistical compilation of such responses to may thus refer to different things altogether and the data collected becomes a meaningless indicator that sheds little light on the subject.

Perhaps the problem lies in the nature of human inquiry. It would be impractical to reconstruct individuals' belief systems, complete with mitigating factors and contingent conditions, because the voluminous data collected would be extremely unwieldy. It could also be argued that society is built upon shared values rather than individual ones and the latter category is of secondary importance. Indeed, the norms of many social institutions are directed top-down where 'top' refers to an individual (e.g. the Queen), collective body (e.g. Parliament) or convention (e.g. trade). Their functions proceed upon clear definitions of acceptability and procedure whether explicit (e.g. the law) or otherwise (e.g. buying and selling) but these definitions are external to the individual. Perhaps individual beliefs are indeed beside the point in 'macro' ethnography.

What do you think? Does Wittgenstein's Beetle really rob ethnography of its research value? Or is the Beetle completely irrelevant to the study of the human species?

10th December 2009


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