Clifford Geertz (1 janv. 1926 – 1 janv. 2006)

Description:

About:
-American, PhD at Harvard, worked mostly at Princeton
-fieldwork in Indonesia and Morocco
-major critic of functionalist and structuralist viewpoints, and avid follower of Weber
-known for starting "interpretive anthropology" and, with Victor Turner, "symbolic anthropology"

Major works:
-Interpretation of Cultures (1973)
-Religion as a Cultural System
→ emphasized the importance of understanding the meanings that people attach to their religious beliefs and practices, rather than just the social functions of religion
-Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight
→ using "thick description" it interprets the cockfight as a metaphor for the social and political dynamics of Balinese society, where men use the event to assert status, masculinity, and power
→ popularized Bentham's term "deep play"--activities that involve high stakes and high emotional investment as symbols of social relationships and hierarchies

Major concepts:
-interpretive anthropology
→ views culture as a system of symbols and meaning that humans use to make sense of the world; anthropologists should not merely observe behavior but should interpret the meaning behind it
-thick description
→ an interpretive approach to writing that incorporates cultural meanings and not just descriptive narratives into ethnographic texts
+ must have significance within that culture (e.g., the "wink")

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