I wrote this essay for my midterm for a course I took on conducting program evaluation as an anthropologist taught by Dr. Michael Duke at the University of Memphis Anthropology Master’s program. In it, I synthesize Donna Mertens’s discussion of employing mixed methods research for program evaluation work in her book, Mixed Methods Design in Evaluation, as a way to present the need for what I call methodological complementarianism.
Methodological complementarianism involves complementing those on the team one is working with by advancing for the complementary perspectives that the team needs. When conducting transdisciplinary work as applied anthropologists, instead of explicitly or implicitly seeking to maintain a “pure” anthropological approach, I think we should have a greater willingness to produce something anew in that environment, even if it no longer fits the “pure” boundaries of proper anthropology or ethnography but rather some kind of hybrid emerging out of the needs of the situation. Methodological complementarianism is one practical way to do that I have been exploring.