THE SELF AS

EMBEDDED IN
CULTURE
Contributed by: Trisha Mae M. Paular
CLIFFORD GEERTZ (1973)

■ An American anthropologist who offers a reformulation of

the concept of culture which favors a symbolic interpretative
model of culture.
■ Defines culture as a system of inherited conceptions
expressed in symbolic forms by means of which people
communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge
about and attitudes toward life.
■ He proposes that it is necessary that humans give meanings
to their experiences so that order in the world can be
established.
■ Geertz agrees with Max Weber, that “man is an animal
suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun,” in
which those webs are perceived to be symbolic of culture.
■ Geertz attempt to illustrate an accurate image of man so he
suggested these two important ideas:
– 1. culture should not be perceived only as “complexes of
concrete behavior patterns – customs, usages,
traditions, habit clusters – as has, by and large, been
the case up to now, but as a set of control mechanisms
– plans, recipes, rules, instructions – for the governing
behavior; and
– 2. man is precisely the animal most desperately
dependent upon such extragenetic, outside-the-skin
control mechanisms, such cultural programs, for
ordering his behavior.
Therefore, man is defined by his genetic potentials
shaped into actual accomplishments which is made
possible by culture.
 Geertz also emphasizes that human nature is
interdependent with culture: “Without men, no culture,
certainly; but equally, and more significally, without
culture, no men.”
 Robbins (2012) considered human beings as cultural
animals as they create the meanings of objects, persons,
behaviors, emotions and events, and behave in accordance
with meanings they assume to be true.
 Every aspect of their lives is filled with meaning, and if they
share the meanings they impose on their experiences, they
are operating within the same culture.
 Cultural differences exist when groups of people assign
different meanings to different life events and things.
Hence, the self is embedded in culture.