Reexamining the scheme „means-as-aims“

Methodological potentials of socially engaged research

Abstract

In the study we explore the suggestion that one entire sub-disciplinary tradition within applied anthropology-action anthropology-used an entirely specific method „means-as aims“ derived from pragmatic logic of discovery and adapted to ethnographic research . Following the epigone of the interdisciplinary reflective methodology John Dewy, which, as its purpose had the aim of uniting the logic of scientific discovery, social criticism and pedagogic-activist oriented research, Sol Tax, had, intended to establish the tradition of action anthropology, which saw both its peak and ending in the illustrious The Fox Project. Our aim apart from the critical recapitulation of the methodology used in the Fox Project, logical-methodological analysis of Dewey’s logic of discovery applied to anthropology and reinterpretation of the general point of this episode from history, is to analyze the implications of this research option for future anthropologic research.