Clifford Geertz 1926- 1926 Born San Francisco

1950 BA Antioch College Ohio studying English and Philosophy

1950 Meets Margaret Mead and decides enrolls in anthropology at Harvard

1952-54 to Java as part of a research team with the explicit goal of improving economic growth

1956 PhD. on religion and social change in Java

1960 The Religion of Java

1963 Peddlers and Princes•a study in how religion plays a role in adopting to economic change

1963 Agricultural Involution •a macro-economic examination of Indonesia’s economic problems

1965 The Social History of an Indonesian Town

•A synthesis of political and economic development in the community from its mid 19tyh century establishment to the late 1950s.

1960-70, the University of Chicago

1965 until the early 1970s, periodic fieldwork in Sefrou Morocco.

1968 Islam Observed

1973 The Interpretation of Cultures

1983 Local Knowledge: Further essays in interpretive anthropology

1988 Works and lives: The anthropologist as author.

Thick Description Toward and Interpretive Theory of Culture

“The concept of culture I espouse…is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take cultures to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law, but an interpretive one in search of meaning”. (Geertz 1973:5)

Geertz’ Interpretive Anthropology:

PREMISE: “man is an animal suspended in webs of

significance he himself has spun” and our name for

those webs is culture

CONCLUSION: “the analysis of it therefore is not an

experimental science in search of law but an

interpretive one in search of meaning”

THICK DESCRIPTION

A wink or a twitch

“between what Ryle calls the "thin description" of what the rehearser (parodist, winker, twitcher . . .) is doing (“rapidly contracting his right eyelids”) and The "thick description" of what he is doing ("practicing a burlesque of a friend faking a wink to deceive an innocent into thinking a conspiracy is in motion") lies the object of ethnography: a stratified hierarchy of meaningful structures in terms of which twitches, winks, fake-winks, parodies, rehearsals of parodies are produced, perceived, and interpreted

Unraveling and identifying those context and meanings requires “thick description:.

Geertz argues that this is precisely what ethnographic writing does

Unlike many postmodernists (for whom there can be no theory), Geertz seeks to situate interpretive or semiotic anthropology in an historical matrix (harking back to Weber and Sapir)...

“Anthropological writings are themselves interpretations, and second and third-order ones to boot. (By definition, only a ‘native’ makes first-order ones: it’s his culture). They are, thus, fictions; fictions in the sense that they are ‘something made’, ‘something fashioned... not that they are false...”

Case example: the story of Cohen, as

recounted by Cohen in 1965.

PLAYERS & CULTURAL CONCEPTS 1. Cohen — Jewish trader (spoke Thamazighth [Berber], Arabic and French) with a shop near Sefru 2. Capitaine Dumari — French commander of the town of Sefru and its environs 3. Marmusha (Imarmushen) — Transhumant Berber tribe of the Middle Atlas, in 1912 unpacified by the French * * *mezrag: pact in an inter-tribal code of trading honor, in areas of siba (highland Berber tribes, beyond government control) — those linked by such a pact can move and trade unmolested and their deals will be enforced by the shaikhs of the tribes

‘ār: indemnity for a wrong (blood feud, or violation of a mezrag pact) — failure to pay reflects shame on the shaikh

THE STORY OF COHEN Date: 1912. French control lowland Morocco. Seek to pacify

Berber tribes of the Middle Atlas. To this end, prohibit mezrag.

Cohen’s shop near Sefru robbed. Cohen is injured, robbed, & 2 guests killed by a raiding party of Marmusha tribesmen

Cohen asks Dumari’s permission to go to Marmusha shaikh & claim the ‘ār. Dumari can’t give written permission but gives verbal permission: “If you get killed, it’s your problem.”

Marmusha chief agrees Cohen has ‘ār coming to him; goes with Cohen & group of henchmen & collects an indemnity of 500 sheep from the clan of the thieves/murderers

Cohen passes by a French fort on Marmusha border with his 500 sheep and is stopped by the commandant. When asked what his sheep are, he says “they’re my ‘ār.” Commandant concludes he is a spy and imprisons him.

Ait Mgild tents, Middle Atlas

Geertz’ anthropological interpretation of this story = the “sorting out of the structure[s] of signification... distinguishing three unlike frames of interpretation (Jewish, Berber, French)... and why in a particular circumstance “their copresence produced a situation in which systematic misunderstanding reduced traditional form to social farce... i.e. what tripped Cohen up.

“...ethnography is thick description. What the ethnographer is in fact faced with — except when (as of course, he must do) he is pursuing the more automatized routines of data collection — is a multiplicity of complex conceptual structures, many of them superimposed upon or knotted into one another, which are at once strange, irregular, and inexplicit, and which he must contrive somehow first to grasp and then to render...

“Doing ethnography is like trying to read (in the sense of constructing a reading of) a manuscript-foreign, faded, full of ellipses, incoherencies, suspicious emendations, and tendentious commentaries, but written not in conventional graphs of sound but in transient examples of shaped behaviour”. (1973:10)”

A semiotic emphasis does not give priority to technology or to any other conception of the nature/culture interface

culture does not exist in some superorganic realm subject to forces and objectives of its own

culture cannot be reified.

culture is Neither “brute behaviour” or “mental construct” subject to schematic analyses or reducibility to ethnographic algorithms.

.

What Culture is Not

Culture consists of socially established structures of meaning, with which people communicate; it is inseparable from symbolic social discourse

Culture is Public because “meaning is,” and systems of meanings are what produce culture, they are the collective property of a particular people

Culture is Symbolic

Culture is Communication

Meaning is contextual

Culture is Complex

Culture is an assemblage of texts

What Culture is

the method of the “interpretive anthropologist” (who accepts a semiotic view of culture) is similar to the method of literary critique analyzing a text

Culture is the fabric of meaning in terms of which human beings interpret their experience and guide their action; social structure is the form that action takes, the actually existing network of social relations. Culture and social structure are then but different abstraction from the same phenomena. (Geertz 1973:145).

Funeral parade

Javanese Funeral.“Ritual and Social Change : A Javanese Example (1957)

This balance has been upset increasingly during the 20th century as conservative Islamic religious nationalism crystallized in opposition to a secular, Marxist nationalism which appealed to pre-Islamic, Hinduist-animist “indigenous” religions

religion in Java is a syncretic mix of Islam and Hinduism overlain on an indigenous SE Asian animism

Hindu gods and goddesses, Moslem prophets and saints, and local spirits and demons all found a proper place

In post-independence Indonesia, political parties formed along these dividing lines:

Masjumi became the conservative Islamic party and Permai, the anti-Islamic mix of Marxism and nativism.

The mood of a Javanese funeral is not one of hysterical bereavement, unrestrained sobbing, or even of formalized cries of grief for the deceased’s departure (1973:154).

Rather, it is a calm, undemonstrative, almost languid letting go, a brief ritualized relinquishment of a relationship no longer possible

This willed serenity and detachment depends on the smooth execution of a proper ceremony that seamlessly combines Islamic, Hindu and indigenous beliefs and rituals. Javanese believe that it is the suddenness of emotional turmoil that causes damage

But in this particular case, the dead boy was from a household loosely affiliated with the Permai party, and when the Islamic village religious leader was called to direct the ceremony, he refused citing the presence of a Permai political poster on the door and arguing that it was inappropriate for him to perform the ceremony of “another” religion.

At that moment the self-willed and culturally defined composure surrounding the death-unraveled

Geertz describes the emotional chaos that ensued, tracing its roots to a central ambiguity: religious symbols had become political symbols and vice-versa, which combined sacred and profane and created “an incongruity between the cultural framework of meaning and the patterning of social interaction

It’s an example of thick description

Nothing about this case, its selection, its historical background, the political dimensions, the cultural expectations, the motives of distraught family and neighbors, none can be explained except by exposing “… a multiplicity of conceptual structures, many of them superimposed upon or knotted into one another, which are at once strange irregular, and inexplicit, and which the anthropologists must contrive to somehow first to grasp and then to render” (1973:10).

Geertz distinguishes the experiences –nearer native point of view from the experience-distant realm of social theorists and argues that the ethnographer’s task is to explicate the links between the two.

The presentation of ethnographic interpretations as observed facts simply reflects the selection of a genre, not an epistemological reality

His method involves a case study ( a better sense than ethnography which implies a traditionally formatted overview of a culture) of an extrapolation of meaning system ie. Culture, from a localized place or event, usually in essay format

Deep Play: The Balinese Cockfight

It is not just cocks that are fighting but men

Cocks are masculine symbols

The word cock is used metaphorically to mean bachelor, lady-killer, tough guy etc

The Balinese cockfight, is fundamentally a dramatization of status concerns.

nothing really happens at a cockfight.

The conflicts, alliances, wins and losses are all symbolic of things that happen elsewhere.

In the cockfight all action is symbolic.

The real causes lie elsewhere, presumably in material circumstances.

If cultural knowledge is inherently interpretive, how can we invalidate the truth of an interpretation since there are potentially as many true interpretations as there are members of a culture?

I.e. If ethnography is interpretation how can we know that interpretation is correct.

Most of us cannot go to Bali or northern Morocco and check the interpretation

We need some other ways to evaluate the ethnographer’s claims but what are they?

Questions

In traditional ethnographies we could search for various validation points:

is the ethnographer fluent in the local language,

did she live in the culture for an extended period

was he or she methodical or biased in their observations?

Were the informants representative of a larger culture?

if all such claims are equally valid, then the most anthropology can hope for is to create a rich documentary of multiple interpretations, none denied and none privileged.

This means that it cannot be a science since it cannot generalize from truth statements or tests the statements against empirical data; the nature of culture precludes this

Geertz triggered a profound rethinking of the anthropological enterprise

forced anthropologists to become aware of the cultural contexts they interpret and the ethnographic texts they create.

He is also touched off a major debate in about the fundamental nature of anthropology

The Interpretation of Cultures was catalyst for a debate in anthropology

What is the nature of culture?How is it distinct from social structure?How is culture understood?What is the relationship between observer and observed?how are interpretations constructed by the anthropologist who works in turn from the interpretations of his informants

These Issues arose against a backdrop of a changing world and world view

new Third World nations that emerged after WWII

interconnected world in which there were no uncontacted societies living in Eden-like isolation

As independence movements transformed former colonial subjects into new national citizens, intergroup conflicts intensified as power was reconfigured and new governments exerted their control

In the face of such change, the idea of functionally integrated societies was difficult to maintain since there were no isolated societies and little evidence of equilibrium

The anthropologist’s role had changed as well

Instead of studying an isolated society for a year or two and returning to be the expert on their people, anthropologists were working in communities and institutions in the US, Europe and developing countries among people who had their own story to tell and means to tell the,

The relationships between anthropologists and informants also changed, sparking a self-examination of the nature of anthropological inquiry

POSTMODERNITY

THE ITERATION OF ANERA AFTER THE MODERN

Anthropological theory largely developed on the assumption that the ‘Modern’ paradigm of society

mass, industrial societies± democratic and pluralistic

was the evolutionary end-point of all social change

But by the mid ’80s many social theorists began to posit a post-modern era

MODERNIZATION THEORYIN SOCIOLOGY & ECONOMICS

traditionalpre-

modern modernprimitive

• predominantly urban society in a democratic nation-state

• thriving industrial economy tweaked by restrained government intervention

• secular education provided by state

• consumer economy

taken-for-granted: the ‘modern’ pattern

is the end-point of social evolution the notion that a

further pattern ofsocial economy

would follow wasunconsidered

THE POSTMODERN ECONOMYfootloose capital — ability of corporations to relocate manufacturing facilities rapidly andcheaply

Volkswagen assembly plant, Cuernavaca, Mexico

THE POSTMODERN ECONOMYglobal reach of capital — multinational corporations diffuse similar goods and tastes worldwide

MacDonald’s in Beijing

relative cheapness of transport of goods makes distance increasingly irrelevant

Container port, Kobe, Japan

THE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

world transport networks erode political barriers

THE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

Convoys trucking goods to Baghdad at height of UN embargo

THE POSTMODERN ECONOMYTHE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

goods that enhance individual autonomy find their way to the remotest corners

of the Earth

worldwide shift from heavy industrial

economy to service and information

economy

in information economy, jobs can ‘come

to people’ (reversal of pattern of the

industrial age)

THE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

inexpensive communications equipment enable people to bypass governments’ control over information

THE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

inexpensive travel allows global contact on a regular basis

THE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

CHEAP, ACCESSIBLE, COMMUNI-CATIONS TECHNOLOGIES ERODE

ESTABLISHED AUTHORITY & EMPOWERNEW & COMPETING FORMS OF AUTHORITY

mimeographed leaflets and posters — the ‘modern’ technology to attack state authoritycassette players and tapes — sermons of Imam Khomeni diffused throughout Iran prior to fall of Shah’s regime videocams — crucial in filming repressions during collapse of USSR & DDR, Tienamin Square crackdown, Rodney King beating

computers — major source of communication for all

counter-cultural and revolutionary movements in the world

worldwide diffusion & marketing of commodities

THE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

Street market, Kumasi, Ghana

THE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

worldwide diffusion & marketing of commodities

THE POSTMODERN ECONOMYTHE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

worldwide ‘branding’ — corporate logos on a par with ‘dominant symbols’ of nation-states and religions

KFC in Seoul

THE POSTMODERN PATTERN

• breakdown of the exclusive authority of centralized institutions (state, church, universities)

coexistence of multiple authorities, each vying for the assent of the individual

• cultural blending becomes routine — ‘fusion’ cuisine, music, architecture, religion

the hallmark of the postmodern — the juxtaposition of culturally disparate elements

THE POSTMODERN PATTERN

globalization — awareness everywhere ofother societies and countries

international patterns of migration transformFirst World societies

THE POSTMODERN PATTERN

THE POSTMODERN PATTERN

new lines of diffusion change traditionalcultures

THE POSTMODERN PATTERN

new lines of diffusion transform ‘modern’cultures

THE POSTMODERN PATTERN

Post- industrial Cleveland, Ohio

new lines of diffusion transform ‘modern’cultures

THE POSTMODERN PATTERN

juxtaposition of disparate cultural elements

Young Twareg nobles, Algeria

Taman-ghasset,

THE POSTMODERN PATTERNreinterpretation of old elements within new patterns

Mt. Shasta, CA

IMPLICATIONS OF POSTMODERNITY FOR THE STUDY OF SOCIETIES AND

CULTURES

1. anthropological authority (along with all other authorities) in question

2. shift to ‘interpretive’ schemas, situated-knowledge paradigms

3. what’s left of the concept of culture?