UC Berkeley

Economics and anthropology are often seen as extremes along the social science continuum, and the methodological differences between them have rendered interdisciplinary work especially challenging. Our goal in this chapter is not to ‘resolve’ these methodological divides, but to understand what is important to each discipline, and see the divides in the light of that understanding. There are some foundational dichotomies that broadly divide mainstream economists from mainstream social and cultural anthropologists, and in this chapter we explore the role of these dichotomies.