Price Neil, Hawkins Kirstan
Centre for Development Studies, University of Wales, Swansea SA2 8PP, UK.
Soc Sci Med. 2002 Oct;55(8):1325-36. doi: 10.1016/s0277-9536(01)00277-5.
In recent years, ethnographic research has challenged the notion within demography that fertility-related behaviour is the outcome of individualistic calculations of the costs and benefits of having children. Anthropology has further criticised the abstraction in demographic analysis of sexual behaviour and fertility decision-making from the socio-cultural and political context in which the individual or couple is located. Within demography itself, institutional and political-economic analyses have argued strongly that sexual and reproductive behaviour must be understood within locally specific social, cultural, economic and political contexts. Positivist and empiricist research methods, such as the sample survey and focus groups, which continue to dominate demographic inquiry and applied research into sexual and reproductive behaviour, have been shown to be limited in their ability to inform about the process of behaviour change and contexts within which different behaviours occur. The article introduces a new methodology for researching sexual and reproductive behaviour, called the peer ethnographic approach, which the authors have developed in an attempt to address some of the limitations of the methods which currently dominate research into sexual and reproductive behaviour. The peer ethnographic methodology is discussed in detail and the results of recent field-testing are reported, which show that, although the approach has limitations, it also has the potential to make a significant contribution to our understanding of sexual and reproductive behaviour.
近年来，人种志研究对人口统计学中的一种观念提出了挑战，即与生育相关的行为是个人对生育成本和收益进行利己计算的结果。人类学进一步批评了人口统计学分析中，将性行为和生育决策从个人或夫妇所处的社会文化和政治背景中抽象出来的做法。在人口统计学领域内部，制度分析和政治经济分析有力地表明，性与生殖行为必须在当地特定的社会、文化、经济和政治背景中去理解。实证主义和经验主义的研究方法，如样本调查和焦点小组，仍然主导着人口统计学调查以及对性与生殖行为的应用研究，但事实证明，这些方法在揭示行为变化过程以及不同行为发生的背景方面能力有限。本文介绍了一种研究性与生殖行为的新方法，称为同伴人种志方法，这是作者为解决当前主导性与生殖行为研究的方法的一些局限性而开发的。文中详细讨论了同伴人种志方法，并报告了最近实地测试的结果，结果表明，尽管该方法有局限性，但它也有可能为我们理解性与生殖行为做出重大贡献。
