Clifford Geertz

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Clifford James Geertz (August 23, 1926, San Francisco – October 30, 2006, Philadelphia) was an American anthropologist and served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey.

Contents

[edit] Life

After service in the U.S. Navy in World War II (1943–45), Geertz received his B.A. in philosophy from Antioch College in 1950, and his Ph.D. in 1956 from Harvard, where he had studied social anthropology in the Department of Social Relations. He taught or held fellowships at a number of schools before joining the anthropology staff of the University of Chicago (1960–70); he then became professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1970–2000, then emeritus professor. Geertz received a L.H.D. from Bates College in 1980. Clifford Geertz died of complications following heart surgery on October 30, 2006.

[edit] Thought and works

At the University of Chicago, Geertz became a "champion of symbolic anthropology", which gives prime attention to the role of thought (of "symbols") in society. Symbols guide action. Culture, outlined by Geertz in his famous book The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), is "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" (1973:89). The function of culture is to impose meaning on the world and make it understandable. The role of anthropologists is to try (though complete success is not possible) to interpret the guiding symbols of each culture (see thick description). His oft-cited essay, "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight," included in The Interpretation of Cultures, is the classic of example of thick description at work. Geertz was quite innovative in this regard, as he was one of the first to see that the insights provided by common language philosophy and literary analysis could have major explanatory force in the social sciences.

He conducted extensive ethnographical research in Southeast Asia and North Africa. He also contributed to social and cultural theory and is still very influential in turning anthropology toward a concern with the frames of meaning within which various peoples live out their lives. He worked on religion, most particularly Islam, on bazaar trade, on economic development, on traditional political structures, and on village and family life. At the time of his death he was working on the general question of ethnic diversity and its implications in the modern world.

Geertz's career worked through, over time, a variety of phases and schools of thought. Gradually he came to see the limitations of each, and moved on. His final position was to take a strong view about objective reality of the complex social system of order. But he also recognised the difficulties that research has in getting at an adequate description of that objective reality: caused by the fact that people tell ethnographers what they believe to be their own motivations, but those people's actions then often seem to contradict their statements to the researcher. This effect is partly due to: the problems that ill-educated people have in verbalising aspects of their life that they usually take for granted; partly due to how ethnographers structure their research approaches and frameworks; and partly due to the inherent complexity of the social order.

Harvard professor and literary scholar Stephen Greenblatt identifies him as a strong influence, and Geertz acknowledged Greenblatt as a faithful interpreter of his work.

[edit] Interlocutors

[edit] Major publications

  • The Religion of Java (1960), University Of Chicago Press 1976 paperback: ISBN 0226285103
  • Peddlers and Princes: Social Development and Economic Change in Two Indonesian Towns (1963), University Of Chicago Press 1968 paperback: ISBN 0226285146
  • Agricultural Involution: the process of ecological change in Indonesia (1964)
  • Islam Observed, Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (1968), University Of Chicago Press 1971 paperback: ISBN 0226285111
  • The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), Basic Books 2000 paperback: ISBN 0465097197
  • Kinship in Bali (1975) coauthor: Hildred Geertz, University Of Chicago Press 1978 paperback: ISBN 0226285162
  • Negara: The Theater State in Nineteenth Century Bali (1980), Princeton University Press 2001 paperback: ISBN 0691007780
  • Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (1983), Basic Books 2000 paperback: ISBN 0465041620
  • Works and Lives: The Anthropologist As Author (1988), Stanford University Press 1990 paperback: ISBN 0804717478
  • After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist, Harvard University Press 1995 paperback: ISBN 0674008723
  • Availiable Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics, Princeton University Press 2000 paperback: ISBN 0691089566

[edit] External links

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