Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Geertz - Cultures, Rituals
Geertz - Cultures, Rituals
Geertz - Cultures, Rituals
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, fakewinks, 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: its 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 r: indemnity for a wrong (blood feud, or violation of a mezrag pact) failure to pay reflects shame on the shaikh
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)
culture is Neither brute behaviour or mental construct subject to schematic analyses or reducibility to ethnographic algorithms.
What Culture is
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
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).
the method of the interpretive anthropologist (who accepts a semiotic view of culture) is similar to the method of literary critique analyzing a text
Funeral parade
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
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
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 deceaseds 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
Its 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 ethnographers 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
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.
Questions
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 ethnographers claims but what are they?
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
POSTMODERNITY
taken-for-granted: the modern pattern is the end-point of social evolution the notion that a further pattern of social economy would follow was unconsidered
predominantly urban society in a democratic nation-state thriving industrial economy tweaked by restrained government intervention secular education provided by state consumer economy
MacDonalds in Beijing
goods that enhance individual autonomy find their way to the remotest corners of the Earth
CHEAP, ACCESSIBLE, COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES ERODE ESTABLISHED AUTHORITY & EMPOWER NEW & COMPETING FORMS OF AUTHORITY
mimeographed leaflets and posters the modern technology to attack state authority cassette players and tapes sermons of Imam Khomeni diffused throughout Iran prior to fall of Shahs 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 branding corporate logos on a par with dominant symbols of nation-states and religions
KFC in Seoul
cultural blending becomes routine fusion cuisine, music, architecture, religion the hallmark of the postmodern the juxtaposition of culturally disparate elements
Tamanghasset,
Mt. Shasta, CA
IMPLICATIONS OF POSTMODERNITY FOR THE STUDY OF SOCIETIES AND CULTURES 1. anthropological authority (along with all other authorities) in question
2.
3.