I'm studying sociology of religion and even though the approach of a great deal of sociologists of religion have usually been quantitative to a certain extent, I have always found that using works of anthropologists has been the most interesting approach.
I know that this is sociologically.net, but still: what are your thoughts on distinguishing between qualitative sociology and anthropology and does it make sense to talk about a difference between the two at all?

I often ask myself the same questions: what are the differences and is it necessary to make a comparison between these disciplines? I'm a sociology student at the University of Amsterdam and not thoroughly familiar with Anthropological work. My recent focus is on ethnographers such as Loïc Wacquant, Matthew Desmond and also the ethnographical work of Pierre Bourdieu (all three considered sociologists?).

When reading their work it really makes me wonder how this qualitative sociology differs from Anthropology. Could it be that, for instance in the work of Bourdieu and Wacquant, that they use their empirical findings to support their meso/macro theories? I have no idea whether Anthropologists have this urge to do such a thing. But then, maybe the above mentioned authors could be considered Anthropologists?

I know that at the UvA the two disciplines grew towards each other during the last couple of years, after being quite separate institutes for decades.

In LatinAmerica, especially Argentina, the Bourdieu´s approach it is wide used in sociology, political science and further, many times without this predicaments, I do not say this is quite precisely critical thinking but illustrates how many times the existence of borders there are merely good excuses to ignore them and do our work through them. Once i head a small conflict between a pair of university mates: one of them said something like the best sociologist was an anthopologist, the french one mencioned above. What a time and energy waste.
My adviced, if I can say one, is that we can start eliminating the "vs" word in this discussions and search for the brigde.

I agree with H Botia; the two fields are more than sufficiently overlapping that a 'vs' seems inappropriate.

I would recommed Douglas & Isherwood's The world of goods: towards an anthropology of consumption as a key 'bridging' work that it would be easy to go from sociology to anthropology with.

p.s. Ethnography would - in the 'Anglo Saxon' linguistic space - , I think, be seen as a branch of anthropology.

Yes, there is significant enough overlap between the fields that they are hard to distinguish in a rigorous way. I think anthropology is a very different discipline in different countries, even more so than sociology is. In the States, the biggest difference is that cultural anthropologists are generally not trained with any quantitative methodologies at all, and are not expected to engage with work produced statistically--while in sociology the quantitative and qualitative work is always in a close conversation, and mixed-methods research is increasingly popular. Cultural anthro used to be in a much closer conversation with biology, and the interdisciplinary field of cognitive anthropology is the recent product of this. However, with the rise of postmodernism inside cultural anthro, this conversation has turned sour, and a number of major anthro departments are breaking up into two along the cultural/biological line (e.g., Harvard's anthro dept just split into two last year; Stanford's briefly split a few years ago). On the other hand, postmodernism (& poststructuralism, etc) here is very much on the wane in sociology--major sociology departments no longer tenure people doing "discursive" work. So, though it's too early to tell, the current trend points towards this as the emerging difference: anthro is on its way to becoming entirely postmodern, and qualitative sociology is becoming more mixed-methods and (post)positivist.

I should also note that, in the states, Anthro is in a pretty bad shape as far as jobs, funding, etc. The major departments splitting into two can't be good news either. Check out the theme of their last annual conference: http://www.aaanet.org/meetings/presenters/Meeting-Theme.cfm Some pretty serious soul searching.

There are definitely some very obvious similarities between sociology's qualitative methods and the dittos of anthropology. To ridicule the difference a bit though, qualitative sociology might (sometimes) lean a bit more towards systematic methods (positivism in disguise), whereas anthropology might (sometimes) lean a bit more towards a just go out in the field and use your senses (relativism in disguise).

I used to teach as an instructor in the course "advanced qualitative methods" at the Sociology Department, University of Copenhagen. At this place, an anthropologist is actually in charge of the whole course and one of the main books for the course was an anthropological anthology, describing fieldwork, participant observation and so on. So at least in Copenhagen, qualitative sociology or qualitative methods within sociology comes very, very close to anthropological methods, both from an institutional perspective and a substantial perspective.

Personally, I find this to be great. I mean, after all, more often than not, we are aiming at the same things in terms of research topics, so why not take the best from each discipline and see how far we can get?

I find it interesting that in the golden years of sociology at Columbia, Lazarsfeld and Merton worked hard on the "codification" of qualitative research. I believe, however, that the postmodern wave has washed away much of this quite rigorous work. That may be a significant (historical) reason for the close relationship between anthropology and qualitative methods in sociology (where the latter is well-connected with cultural sociology and its paradigm). Moreover, it explains why the codification work done by Lazarsfeld and Merton is more or less absent in today's "qualitative sociology" (as far as I know).

But I am not sure about that, since I am not at all into qualitative methods!! ;)

Kristian

When I started studying social anthropology, we were told that the difference was that 'sociologists study Islam, anthropologists study Muslims'. One thing is for sure though, as mentioned above, the two disciplines shouldn't be separated by a vs. Bourdieu was a sociologist for sociology students and an anthropologist for anthropology students. It how you read him, reference him, and which of his texts that stimulate your practice. Ethnography is the main source for all anthropological writings, and quantitative methods equals zilch.