The epistemic value of participant observation

Although participant observation is considered to be the hallmark of cultural anthropology, the epistemic value of this method has not been sufficiently spelled out. One of the most important and influential descriptions of participant observation is given by Clifford Geertz who argues that the epistemic value of participant observation is in interpreting human actions and recovering their meaning, and thus, enabling “thick descriptions”. How does participation contribute to the production of valid interpretation? I argue that doing participant observation involves taking a position from which one can observe the “micro-context” of action. This type of observation and the consequent knowledge acquired enables producing reliable interpretations. However, this production also relies on mind-reading, that is, the psychological capacity to ascribe mental states to others. I argue that first participant observation enables to better “mind-read” the members of the community studied, and second, recruiting mind-reading in participant observation enables the ethnographer to recover the meaning of human actions in terms of their mental causes. Subsequently, I argue that the epistemic value of participant observation is in producing interpretations of human actions that can be integrated into causal explanations of cultural phenomena. I conclude that participant observation is compatible with naturalism in the social sciences.