Clifford Geertz - The Interpretation of Cultures

Disparate schools of thought attempt to formulate important questions based on static foundations and accepted assumptions. With the introduction of each new theory of thought, Sussane Langer notes, "…all sensitive and active minds turn at once to exploiting it. We try it in every connection, for every purpose, experiment with possible stretches of its strict meaning, with generalizations and derivatives" (Langer 1957: 23). These questions, and sometimes answers, collectively emphasize their seminal paradigmic premise. At various times throughout human history, founding fathers of "thought" (Plato, Aristotle, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Smith, Marx, Darwin, Freud, Weber) emerge onto the scene.

[ENTER GEERTZ 1973 - The Interpretation of Cultures]

- Theory’s “besetting sin” is that it… “tends to resist, or to be permitted to resist, conceptual articulation and thus to escape systematic modes of assessment” (Geertz 1973).

- "The aim of anthropology is the enlargement of the universe of human discourse…" "…it is an aim to which a semiotic concept of culture is peculiarly well adapted…" (Geertz 1973).

Geertz brings to light the importance of viewing human behavior as symbolic action. It's the job of the ethnographer to capture the microscopic details "in transient examples of shaped behavior". Our ability to interpret signs and capability for abstract reasoning allows us to do this. Langer notes, "Abstractive seeing is the foundation of our rationality, and is its definite guarantee long before the dawn of any conscious generalization or syllogism" (Langer 1957: 72). Geertz's metaphorical approach affords the ethnographer a way of contextualizing "Culture, this acted document". His approach is interpretive, adaptable, and human.

Commenting on the characteristics of ethnographic description, Geertz notes, "what it is interpretive of is the flow of social discourse; and the interpreting involved consist in trying to rescue the "said" of such discourse from its perishing occasions and fix it in perusable terms". "Perishing occasions" of human behavior evaporate as soon as they occur unless otherwise documented i.e. Socrates Dialogues were captured by Plato's written word. Geertz continues, "The enthnographer "inscribes" social discourse; he writes it down. In so doing, he turns it from a passing event, which exists only in its own moment of occurrence, into an account, which exists in its inscriptions and can be reconsulted" (Geertz 1973). The difficulty, however, lies in transcribing meaning. We can understand communication and its mode of transportation, uniquely, through each of our senses; however, different societies place weight, and varying degrees, on different senses (Ong). Geertz recognizes "Cultural analysis is guessing at meanings, assessing the guesses, and drawing explanatory conclusions from the better guesses" (Geertz 1973).

Geertz, therefore, formulates his interpretations of culture from "thick" ethnographic descriptions. He starts with the microscopic details of human behavior, the "complex specificness, their circumstantiality" and expands outward. An adaptable, flexible theory grows out this thickness. Geertz notes, "the anthropologist characteristically approaches such broader interpretations and more abstract analyses from the direction of exceedingly extended acquaintances with extremely small matters" (Geertz 1973).

[EXIT GEERTZ 10/30/06[Death]]

[ENTER GEERTZ INTERPRETATIONS{Written & Oral}]