Compare methods
Review your selected methods side by side; rows that differ are highlighted.
| Life-History Interview× | Genealogical Method× | |
|---|---|---|
| Field | Anthropology | Anthropology |
| Family | Process / pipeline | Process / pipeline |
| Year of origin≠ | 2017 | 1910 |
| Originator≠ | Ethnographic interviewing tradition (codified by Bernard) | W. H. R. Rivers |
| Type≠ | In-depth, often multi-session chronological interview eliciting one person's whole life | Systematic field procedure for collecting and reconstructing kinship genealogies |
| Seminal source≠ | Bernard, H. R. (2017). Research Methods in Anthropology: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (6th ed.). Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN: 9780759112421 | Rivers, W. H. R. (1910). The genealogical method of anthropological inquiry. The Sociological Review, 3(1), 1–12. DOI ↗ |
| Aliases | Life Story Interview, Biographical Interview, Personal Narrative Interview, Life-Course Interview | Genealogical Method of Inquiry, Pedigree Method, Kinship Genealogy Collection, Rivers Method |
| Related | 4 | 4 |
| Summary≠ | The life-history interview is an ethnographic interviewing technique in which the researcher elicits one person's whole life, told chronologically, usually across several extended sessions. The narrator recounts childhood, family, work, migration, turning points, and old age in their own words, and the resulting narrative is treated as both ethnographic and historical data. Analysis proceeds thematically — coding recurring topics and meanings — and narratively — attending to how the story is constructed, sequenced, and given significance by the teller. | The genealogical method is W. H. R. Rivers' systematic procedure for collecting kinship genealogies in the field using a small, fixed set of questions and the community's own kin terms. By asking each informant a standard sequence — who are your parents, your siblings, your spouse, your children, and so on — and recording named individuals together with the relationship terms applied to them, the ethnographer accumulates concrete pedigrees. These pedigrees are then assembled to reconstruct descent, marriage, residence, and the broader principles of social organization. |
| ScholarGateDataset ↗ |
|
|