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Abstract：
In their classic accounts, anthropological ethnographers developed causal arguments for how specific sociocultural structures and processes shaped human thought, behavior, and experience in particular settings. Despite this history, many contemporary ethnographers avoid establishing in their work direct causal relationships between key variables in the way that, for example, quantitative research relying on experimental or longitudinal data might. As a result, ethnographers in anthropology and other fields have not advanced understandings of how to derive causal explanations from their data, which contrasts with a vibrant \"causal revolution\" unfolding in the broader social and behavioral sciences. Given this gap in understanding, we aim in the current article to clarify the potential ethnography has for illuminating causal processes related to the cultural influence on human knowledge and practice. We do so by drawing on our ongoing mixed methods ethnographic study of games, play, and avatar identities. In our ethnographic illustrations, we clarify points often left unsaid in both classic anthropological ethnographies and in more contemporary interdisciplinary theorizing on qualitative research methodologies. More specifically, we argue that for ethnographic studies to illuminate causal processes, it is helpful, first, to state the implicit strengths and logic of ethnography and, second, to connect ethnographic practice more fully to now well-developed interdisciplinary approaches to causal inference. In relation to the first point, we highlight the abductive inferential logic of ethnography. Regarding the second point, we connect the ethnographic logic of abduction to what Judea Pearl has called the ladder of causality, where moving from association to intervention to what he calls counterfactual reasoning produces stronger evidence for causal processes. Further, we show how graphical modeling approaches to causal explanation can help ethnographers clarify their thinking. Overall, we offer an alternative vision of ethnography, which contrasts, but nevertheless remains consistent with, currently more dominant interpretive approaches.
摘要：
在他们的经典账户中，人类学人种学家提出了关于特定社会文化结构和过程如何塑造人类思想的因果论据，行为，和特定设置的经验。尽管有这样的历史,许多当代人种学家避免在他们的工作中建立关键变量之间的直接因果关系，例如,依赖于实验或纵向数据的定量研究可能。因此,人类学和其他领域的人种学家还没有深入理解如何从他们的数据中得出因果解释，这与更广泛的社会科学和行为科学中充满活力的“因果革命”形成鲜明对比。鉴于这种理解上的差距，在本文中，我们旨在阐明潜在的人种学对阐明与文化对人类知识和实践的影响有关的因果过程。我们通过利用我们正在进行的游戏的混合方法人种学研究来做到这一点，玩,和化身身份。在我们的人种学插图中，我们澄清了在经典人类学人种学和更当代的关于定性研究方法的跨学科理论中经常没有提到的观点。更具体地说,我们认为，对于人种学研究来阐明因果过程，它是有帮助的，首先,陈述民族志的内在优势和逻辑，第二,将人种学实践更充分地连接到现在发达的跨学科因果推理方法。关于第一点，我们强调了人种学的归纳推理逻辑。关于第二点,我们将绑架的人种学逻辑与JudeaPearl所谓的因果关系阶梯联系起来，从关联到干预，再到他所谓的反事实推理，为因果过程提供了更有力的证据。Further,我们展示了因果解释的图形建模方法如何帮助人种学家澄清他们的想法。总的来说,我们提供了另一种人种学的视野，这形成了对比，但尽管如此，目前更占主导地位的解释性方法。
