geertz - cultures, rituals

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    Clifford Geertz 1926- 1926 Born San Francisco

    1950 BA Antioch College

    Ohio studying English andPhilosophy

    1950 Meets Margaret

    Mead and decides enrolls inanthropology at Harvard

    1952-54 to Java as part of a

    research team with theexplicit goal of improving

    economic growth

    1956 PhD. on religion and

    social change in Java

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    1960 The Religion of Java

    1963 Peddlers and Pr inces

    a study in how religion playsa role in adopting to economic

    change

    1963 Agricultural I nvolution

    a macro-economicexamination of Indonesias

    economic problems

    1965 The Social H istory of an

    I ndonesian Town

    A synthesis of political andeconomic development in the

    community from its mid

    19tyh century establishment

    to the late 1950s.

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    Thick Description Toward and

    Interpretive Theory of Culture

    The concept of culture I espouseis

    essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with

    Max Weber, that man is an animalsuspended in webs of signif icance he

    himself has spun, I take cul tures to be those

    webs, and the analysis of it to be thereforenot an exper imental science in search of

    law, but an interpretive one in search of

    meaning. (Geertz 1973:5)

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    Geertz Interpretive Anthropology:

    PREMISE: man is an animal suspended in webs of

    significance he himself has spun and our name for

    those webs is culture

    CONCLUSION: the analysis of it therefore is not an

    experimental science in search of law but aninterpretive one in search of meaning

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    THICK DESCRIPTION

    A wink or a twitch

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    between what Ryle calls the "thin description"

    of what the rehearser (parodist, winker, twitcher .

    . .) is doing (rapidly contracting his righteyelids) and The "thick description" of what he

    is doing (" practicing a bur lesque of a fr iend

    faking a wink to deceive an innocent into thinkinga conspiracy is in motion" ) l ies the object of

    ethnography: a strati f ied hierarchy of meaningful

    structures in terms of which twi tches, winks, fake-winks, parodies, rehearsals of parodies are

    produced, perceived, and interpreted

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    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 beno theory), Geertz seeks to situate

    interpretive or semiotic anthropology in an

    historical matrix (harking back to Weber andSapir)...

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    Anthropological writings are themselvesinterpretations, and second and third-order

    ones to boot. (By definition, only a native

    makes first-order ones: its hisculture).

    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.

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    PLAYERS & CULTURAL CONCEPTS

    1. CohenJewish trader (spoke Thamazighth [Berber],

    Arabic and French) with a shop near Sefru

    2. Capitaine DumariFrench 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

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    Ait Mgild tents, Middle Atlas

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    Geertz anthropological interpretation of this story = thesorting 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 inwhich systematic misunderstanding reduced traditional

    form to social farce... i.e. what tripped Cohen up.

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    ...ethnography is thick descr iption. Whatthe ethnographer is in fact faced withexcept when (as of course, he must do) he is

    pursuing the more automatized routines of

    data collectionis a mul tipl icity of

    complex conceptual structures, many ofthem super imposed upon or knotted into one

    another, which are at once strange,

    ir regular, and inexplici t, and which he mustcontr ive somehow first to grasp and then to

    render...

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    Doing ethnography is like trying to

    read (in the sense of constructing a

    reading of) a manuscr ipt-foreign,

    faded, ful l of el l ipses, incoherencies,

    suspicious emendations, andtendentious commentar ies, but written

    not in conventional graphs of sound

    but in transient examples of shaped

    behaviour.(1973:10)

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    A semiotic emphasis does not give priority totechnology or to any other conception of the

    nature/culture interface

    culture does not exist in some superorganic realmsubject to forces and objectives of its own

    culture cannot be reified.

    culture is Neither brute behaviour or mental

    construct subject to schematic analyses or

    reducibility to ethnographic algorithms.

    What Culture is Not

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    Culture consists of socially established structures of

    meaning, with which people communicate; it isinseparable 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 CommunicationMeaning is contextual

    Culture is Complex

    Culture is an assemblage of texts

    What Culture is

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    the method of the interpretiveanthropologist (who accepts a semiotic view

    of culture) is similar to the method of literary

    critique analyzing a text

    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).

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    20/64Funeral parade

    Javanese Funeral.

    Ritual and Social Change : A Javanese Example (1957)

    li i i J i ti i f I l d Hi d i

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    This balance has been

    upset increasingly during

    the 20th century as

    conservative Islamicreligious nationalism

    crystallized in opposition

    to a secular, Marxist

    nationalism whichappealed to pre-Islamic,

    Hinduist-animist

    indigenous religions

    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

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    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.

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    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 andrituals. Javanese believe that it is the suddenness of

    emotional turmoil that causes damage

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    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 definedcomposure 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

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    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 byexposing 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 mustcontrive to somehow first to grasp and then to

    render (1973:10).

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    Geertz distinguishes the experiencesnearer native

    point of view from the experience-distant realm of

    social theorists and argues that the ethnographerstask 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 extrapolationof meaning system ie. Culture, from a localized place

    or event, usually in essay format

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    Deep Play: The Balinese Cockfight

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    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

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    The Balinesecockfight, is

    fundamentally a

    dramatization

    of status

    concerns.

    nothing really

    happens at acockfight.

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    The conflicts, alliances, wins and losses are all symbolic of

    things that happen elsewhere.

    In the cockfight all action is symbolic.

    The real causes lie elsewhere, presumably in material

    circumstances.

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    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 thatinterpretation 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?

    Questions

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    In traditional ethnographies we could

    search for various validation points:is the ethnographer fluent in the local language,

    did she live in the culture for an extended period

    was he or she methodical or biased in their

    observations?

    Were the informants representative of a largerculture?

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    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; thenature of culture precludes this

    Geertz triggered a profound rethinking of the

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    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 inanthropology

    Whatis 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

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    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

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    The anthropologists role had

    changed as wellInstead of studying an isolated society for a year or

    two and returning to be the expert on their people,

    anthropologists were working in communities andinstitutions in the US, Europe and developing

    countries among people who had their own story to

    tell and means to tell the,

    The relationships between anthropologists and

    informants also changed, sparking a self-

    examination of the nature of anthropological inquiry

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    POSTMODERNITY

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    THE ITERATION OF AN

    ERA AFTER THE MODERN

    Anthropological theory largely developed on the

    assumption that the Modern paradigm of society

    mass, industrial societies

    democratic and pluralistic

    was the evolutionary end-point of all social change

    But by the mid 80s many social theorists began to posit

    a post-modern era

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    MODERNIZATION THEORY

    IN SOCIOLOGY & ECONOMICS

    traditionalpre-

    modern modernprimitive

    predominantly urban society in ademocratic nation-state

    thriving industrial economy tweaked by

    restrained government intervention

    secular education provided by state

    consumer economy

    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

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    THE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

    footloose capitalability of corporations to relocate manufacturing

    facilities rapidly andcheaply

    Volkswagen

    assembly plant,

    Cuernavaca,

    Mexico

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    THE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

    global reach of capitalmultinational corporations diffuse similar

    goods and tastes worldwide

    MacDonalds

    in Beijing

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    relative cheapness of transport of goods makes distance increasingly irrelevant

    Container

    port, Kobe,

    Japan

    THE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

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    world transport networks erode political barriers

    THE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

    Convoys trucking goods to Baghdad at height of UN embargo

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    THE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

    goods that

    enhance individual

    autonomy find

    their way to theremotest corners

    of the Earth

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    worldwide shift from heavy industrial

    economy to service and information

    economy

    in information economy, jobs can cometo people (reversal of pattern of the

    industrial age)

    THE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

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    inexpensive communications equipment enable people to bypassgovernments control over information

    THE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

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    inexpensive travel allows global contact on a regular basis

    THE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

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    CHEAP, ACCESSIBLE, COMMUNI-

    CATIONS TECHNOLOGIES ERODE

    ESTABLISHED AUTHORITY & EMPOWER

    NEW & COMPETING FORMS OF AUTHORITY

    mimeographed leaflets and postersthe modern

    technology to attack state authority

    cassette players and tapessermons of Imam Khomeni

    diffused throughout Iran prior to fall of Shahs regimevideocamscrucial in filming repressions during collapse

    of USSR & DDR, Tienamin Square crackdown, Rodney King

    beating

    computersmajor source of communication for all

    counter-cultural and revolutionary movements in the world

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    worldwide diffusion & marketing of commodities

    THE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

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    Street

    market,

    Kumasi,

    Ghana

    THE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

    worldwide diffusion & marketing of commodities

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    THE POSTMODERN ECONOMY

    worldwide branding corporate

    logos on a par with dominant

    symbols of nation-states andreligions

    KFC in Seoul

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    THE POSTMODERN PATTERN

    breakdown of the exclusive authority of centralized institutions(state, church, universities)

    coexistence of multiple authorities, each vying for the

    assent of the individual

    cultural blending becomes routinefusion cuisine, music,

    architecture, religion

    the hallmark of the postmodernthe juxtaposition of

    culturally disparate elements

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    THE POSTMODERN PATTERN

    globalizationawareness everywhere ofother societies and countries

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    international patterns of migration transformFirst World societies

    THE POSTMODERN PATTERN

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    THE POSTMODERN PATTERN

    new lines of diffusion transform modern

    cultures

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    THE POSTMODERN PATTERN

    Post-

    industrial

    Cleveland,

    Ohio

    new lines of diffusion transform modern

    cultures

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    THE POSTMODERN PATTERN

    juxtaposition of disparate cultural elements

    Young

    Twareg

    nobles,

    Algeria

    Taman-

    ghasset,

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    THE POSTMODERN PATTERNreinterpretation of old elements within new patterns

    Mt. Shasta,

    CA

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    IMPLICATIONS OF POSTMODERNITY

    FOR THE STUDY OF SOCIETIES AND

    CULTURES

    1. anthropological authority (along with all other

    authorities) in question2. shift to interpretive schemas, situated-knowledge

    paradigms

    3. whats left of the concept of culture?

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