Posted by Damon O'Hanlon
Born: 1926
Died: 2006
Area of Expertise: Cultural anthropology
Influenced by: Max Weber, Friedrich Nietzsche
Concepts and Terms: Interpretive method, symbolism, symbolic system, cultural relativism, semiotics, thick description, verstehen, ethos, world view
Adjective: Geertzian
Clifford Geertz (pronunciation) was a cultural anthropologist and theorist, probably the most important and influential of the 20th century. In particular, he was instrumental in the rise of what is called the “interpretive method” in anthropology.
Geertz was born in San Francisco, and began college after serving in the US Navy during World War II. He first got a B.A. in philosophy from Antioch College, then went on to get his PhD in social anthropology at Harvard. It should be noted that, at Harvard, Geertz was part of the highly interdisciplinary Department of Social Relations, which closely linked cultural anthropology, psychology, and sociology. His teaching career was spent mostly at the University of Chicago, where he taught from 1960-1970, and then at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton where he remained emeritus until his death in 2006.
Geertz did most of his fieldwork in Java, Bali and Morocco. One of his most important works is The Interpretation of Cultures, published in 1973. The volume is a collection of Geertz’s writing on various social topics, notably the essay Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight, often considered a seminal piece.
Geertz had arrived in Bali in 1958, and (after a rocky start) he stumbled upon something very interesting. Cockfights were constantly being held, despite their officially illegal status. The Balinese gambled upon these cockfights, watched them for sport, even used them as fundraisers (in Geertz’s example, to help build a local school). But Geertz noticed that more was going on than just spectating, fundraising, or even gambling.
The cocks in the fight were almost always from two different social groups, such as different families, different clans, or different villages. Groups which were also competitive in actual daily life. Through his fieldwork, Geertz concluded that these cockfights were really a mirror of the Balinese internal aggression towards one another, “a simulation of the social matrix” (Geertz, 1973, p. 436). It was natural and expected that a person would always bet on a family member or other ally’s cock, as a sign of solidarity. Geertz also observed that two people in a real-life feud would often bet maniacally against one another as a kind of insult, a challenge to the other’s masculinity. In many cases, people quickly forgot the amounts of money they won in so-and-such fight, but what they never forgot was the story of the time thier own cock vanquished their enemy’s best cock, or the time they humiliated their an enemy through a good bet.
Geertz explained that, though the cockfight was essentially a reflection of Balinese society, it was not one to be taken too seriously. Losses did sting bitterly, but statuses were never permanently improved nor tarnished through a cockfight. The humiliations felt real, but they were only temporary. It was a social drama, acted out and performed by a few and watched closely by everyone else—a gaudy, playful affair, where the winner one day might be a loser the next.
And yet the Balinese were captivated. Even though it was just a story, it was a story the Balinese told about themselves. Geertz’s key assertion is that, if you could come to understand the cockfight, you would understand something very important about the Balinese and how they see the world.
So why do the Balinese, or does any other culture, tell such stories? According to Geertz, the stories are used to give the world shape and meaning. He believed that without cultural systems, life is formless and overwhelming, and humans become utterly helpless. Culture is a system of symbols, whose interactions tell a story, which establishes people’s motivations and explains events around us. For Geertz, establishing this understanding of the world, making it make sense, is as important as eating. We must have it, we cannot live without it.
“...the imposition of meaning on life is the major end and primary condition of human existence...” (Geertz, 1973, p. 434)
So what is the proper way to study a culture? Geertz encouraged ethnography in a mostly traditional sense, but with an emphasis on what he called ‘thick description’. Basically, this meant anthropologists should not just describe what foreign peoples do. They also should describe the meaning behind it.
The distinction may sound strange, but it was not uncommon for early anthropologists to go somewhere and be quite detailed about what someone did, without ever talking about what it meant. For instance, they might painstakingly describe a rain dance - each step, each gesture - and never describe what any of it meant to the person doing it, or to someone watching, or to anyone else. Geertz called this ‘thin description’, and he did not find it to be particularly useful or interesting.
Instead, Geertz suggested turning our attention towards meaning. Luckily for the anthropologist, Geertz believed cultures and their meanings were embodied through their symbols. Thus things like plays, movies, paintings, books, and the words we use are all direct expressions of our thoughts. Because these symbols form the basis of our social interactions, they exist in public, 'out there', where everyone—including the anthropologist—can see them. An anthropologist may have to ask questions, but if they are a keen observer they will be able to locate the symbols and find their meanings. So broadly, an anthropologist’s job is to examine a culture, learn the story, find the meaning, and then be able to explain it to the persons who read their work.
"Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretative one in search of meaning." (Geertz, 1973, p. 5)
The ramifications of Geertzian theory were huge. Culture had already been theorized as something handed down from one generation to the next, but Geertz's contributions gave this concept more texture. Culture was not just 'ideas' being handed down, it was an entire system of symbols. Every person is born into and matures in an environment already saturated with the symbols, and the act of growing up is the process of learning and internalizing those symbols.
Another important aspect of Geertzian theory is that, eventually, the symbols become inseparable from our thinking. One explanation for why this might happen is because, when we teach a child what something is, it inevitably becomes wrapped up in what that something "ought". For instance, you might tell a child, "Here is a pencil. You write with it." Do you pause to answer the riddle of what exactly is a pencil that doesn't write? If you're anything like the whole world, of course you don't, and we do this kind of teaching all the time. ‘This is a kitty. Pet it softly.’ ‘This is your brother. Love him and take care of him.’
Though Geertz’s ideas have been very influential in anthropology (most anthropology departments, especially in America, are now engaged in interpretive anthropology), other schools of anthropology have survived at the fringes, and from these schools the criticisms of Geertz are pointed. For the most part, these critics feel that Geertz’s model is too public, placing too much emphasis on meaning, symbolism, and the interpersonal. All this leads to a neglect of the individual, downplaying our importance as separate people, or worse, erasing us entirely. In their book, Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts, Nigel Rapport and Joanna Overing pointed out that Geertz’s framework “appears to deny any inner, private life" if it is not shared with others (Rapport & Overing, 2007, p. 240). Gananath Obeysekere, a Princeton anthropologist interested in the relationship between personal and religious symbolism, opined that, "in reading Geertz, I see webs [of meaning] everywhere, but never the spiders at work." (1990, p. 285)
At Geertz's funeral, he was called, ‘perhaps the most important American anthropologist of all time’. Even among his critics, there is little argument that Geertz’s work and writing fundamentally altered the landscape of anthropology. Before Geertz, anthropologists were mostly engaged in a project of describing action or measuring social structure. After Geertz, a legion of anthropologists have turned their attention to the question: What does it all mean?
Related links:
Follow us on Twitter