What does Clifford Geertz argue?
What does Clifford Geertz argue?
He argued that culture is made up of the meanings people find to make sense of their lives and to guide their actions. Interpretive social science is an attempt to engage those meanings. Unlike other anthropological scholars, Geertz did not focus on so-called primitive groups.
What are the three characteristics of ethnographic description outlined by Geertz?
Section VI: Geertz defines three (four) characteristics of ethnographic description, three important aspects of understanding otherness: (1) it is interpretative, (2) it is about the social discourse, (3) it is about the meaning for the people in that discourse and (4) it is microscopic.
What is Geertz theory?
GEERTZ ON RELIGION: THE THEORY. AND THE PRACTICE. Henry Munson, Jr. INTRODUCTION In his influential essay `Religion as a Cultural System’, which was first published in 1966, Clifford Geertz argues that religion should be studied as a symbolic system in terms of which believers interpret the world and live their lives.
What is the contribution of Clifford Geertz in anthropology?
Geertz contributed to social and cultural theory and is still influential in turning anthropology toward a concern with the frames of meaning within which various peoples live their lives. He reflected on the basic core notions of anthropology, such as culture and ethnography.
What does Geertz mean by deep play?
Deep Play is a study of the Balinese tradition of cockfighting, based on a year of anthropological research conducted by Geertz at the end of the 1950s, when he and his wife lived in Bali, attending the illegal but very popular cockfights and interviewing people involved in them.
How did Clifford Geertz define culture?
Culture, according to Geertz, is “a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.” The function of culture is to impose meaning on the world and make it understandable.
What is Clifford Geertz famous for?
The American cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz (born 1926) did ethnographic field work in Indonesia and Morocco, wrote influential essays on central theoretical issues in the social sciences, and advocated a distinctive “interpretive” approach to anthropology.
Which of the following people most influenced Geertz’s theory of culture?
Geertz was influenced largely by the sociologist Max Weber, and was concerned with the operations of “culture” rather than the ways in which symbols influence the social process.
How does Clifford Geertz define culture?
Symbols guide action. Culture, according to Geertz, is “a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.” The function of culture is to impose meaning on the world and make it understandable.
Why read Geertz’s “Negara”?
Geertz argued more forcefully in Negara than in any of his other books for the fundamental importance of the culture of politics to a society. Much of Geertz’s previous work — including his world-famous essay on the Balinese cockfight — can be seen as leading up to the full portrait of the “poetics of power” that Negara so vividly depicts.
What is the significance of the book Negara?
His 1980 book Negara analyzed the social organization of Bali before it was colonized by the Dutch in 1906. Here Geertz applied his widely influential method of cultural interpretation to the myths, ceremonies, rituals, and symbols of a precolonial state.
Is Negara a theatre state?
In Bali Geertz found negara to be a “theatre state,” governed by rituals and symbols rather than by force. The Balinese state did not specialize in tyranny, conquest, or effective administration. Instead, it emphasized spectacle.
What is Geertz’s cultural interpretation?
Here Geertz applied his widely influential method of cultural interpretation to the myths, ceremonies, rituals, and symbols of a precolonial state. He found that the nineteenth-century Balinese state defied easy conceptualization by the familiar models of political theory and the standard Western approaches to understanding politics.