Methodology and Field Research in Africa

Until comparatively recently the problem of the use of an objective methodology in field research did not sufficiently exercise the minds of research men in the social sciences. The field man usually gathered what he thought he observed, and generalized his collected facts into preconceived categories. Many of the recorded data we depend upon at the present time are of this quality. To-day the exercise of a technique is too frequently an implicit and uncritical part of the theoretical concepts of the researcher. Obviously a methodology must have an ideological context which motivates it, but it is highly necessary to separate the theoretical concepts from it, if we are to obtain the objectivity of the natural sciences.