Interpretation of Culture by Clifford Geertz

Culture, Clifford Geertz said, is not a force, but a causal implication of social activities, behaviors, institutions, and processes. Culture does not determine human behavior. It does not reduce statutes, systematic guidelines, or conscious or unconscious patterns of behavior. According to Geertz, culture is the context in which social events, behaviors, institutions, or processes can be characterized in an understandable way, giving meaning to individual behavior and providing measures to derive and measure them. From now on, practice of cultural anthropology, the assessment of culture, is not investigational science in pursuit of bylaw but an interpretative searching the meaning.

Geertz makes exemption to the people who find culture in the heads and hearts of the people. Whereas deliberating occurs in the mind and entails the entire human psychology, he nonetheless asserts that human deliberation is exceptionally societal: social in its roots, in the functioning, forms, as well as applications (Geertz 1974, p.30). Man thoughts as a biased marvel, is not perceived; however, its kinds and functions in a social settings may be perceived. Cultural anthropology, according to Geertz, starts inductively with the scrutiny and depiction of societal patterns (Geertz 1994, p.215). However, as Geertz recognizes, the perception and portrayal, in and of themselves, are not enough to characterize the culture. He states that culture cannot be moderated to certain behavior forms, that is, rituals, utilizations, norms and habits. In contrast, culture is regarded asa set of guidelines that function to direct behavior.

In Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture (1973), Geertz perceives the culture in semiotic manner, a public action that individuals express themselves by means of numerous signs and symbols which possess ascribed cultural implication. According to Geertz, culture is a personified in the person who conducts themselves out of and in particular context and the culture is seen in this individuals acts and his elucidation of their implication. Culture in this manner is solid and public and in not a thing that is in individuals heads.

Among the main phrases in Geertz’s anthropological hypothesis is thick description which he borrows from Gilbert Ryle. Geertz believes that anthropology’s role is that of elucidating culture via thick description which talks of numerous facts, theoretical systems and implications which is in contrast with the thin description, which is an accurate version with no elucidation. Thin description is not sufficient in explanation often culture and additionally misleading (Geertz 1994, p.216). According to Geertz, an ethnographer ought to express thick description which comprises of not just facts but also commentary, clarification and translations of the comments and the elucidations. His roles is to excerpt meaning frameworks that comprises of culture and for this Geertz thinks that an accurate account shall not serve for these meaning structures as arranged one over another and into one another so every fact may be subject to intercrossing translations which ethnography must investigate.

Ryle’s depiction of thick description is done by use of two boys, who contract their right eye eyelids. One is not voluntary twitch while the other is conspiratorial gesture to a companion. The movement is similar; a phenomenalistic perception of them, an outsider might not recognize which one is a twitch or a wink. The difference, however, is huge. The winker does communicate something in a deliberate, to somebody specifically, to convey a message, in regards to a certain established social code and lastly with no cognizance of the general public (Geertz 1994, p.225). Twitcher did contract his eyelids only. Contraction of eyelids whenthereis presenceof societal ideals in which doing it is seen as a conspiratorial sign is winking, that is, an iota of behavior, a culture and hence a signal. Supposedly, there is another boy who is offering malicious delight to his companions, and mocks the first boy wink as sloppy. He does it insimilar manner as the two boys winked and twitched, the difference is only that he is mocking somebody else’s (Geertz 1994, p.221). Here a societal set code is there (he wink strenuously) and conveys the message even though in actual sense he is imitating.

The first winker may have been winking likely to deceive the outsiders into believing that there exists a conspiracy when there is none, therefore the depiction of what the parodist is imitating. Ryle explains that thin description is what the twitcher, winker and parodist are doing, whereas thick description is what the imitating the friend and lying to the outsiders into believing there is a conspiracy in place. There exists the aspect of ethnography: a stratified order of meaningful systems where twitches, winks, fakewinks, parodies, rehearsals of parodies are generated, viewed and translated without which they could neverberegardless of how many winks and twitches, whetherreal or imitated, are done.

Culture, therefore, from the example aboveis public, like a wink. Although ideational, it never exists in one’s mind (Geertz 1973, p.9). The perpetual debate in anthropology of if culture is biased or impartial along with common exchange of intelligent insults which comes with it is generally misconstrued. When human conduct is viewed as a figurative act such as line in lining, pigment in paints, the issue to if culture is decorated behavior or a state of mind, or the two are blended together, misses meaning. The issue to inquire about wink is that what exactly is it, mockery or challenge, satire or rage, arrogance or egotism, that in their existence and via their entity is being said. It might seem like the truth hover there are many ways of obscuring it (Geertz 1994, p. 223). First is imagining that culture is a self-contained super-organic reality with its power and intents. A second way is claiming that it comprises of pattern of behavioral incidents which can be perceived to take place in distinguishable community or minimize it.

Although there are still confusions that are present, the key source of speculative muddlement in modern anthropology is a viewpoint which established the response to them and is currently broadly upheld, the ethnographical perspective. Culture is situated in the hearts and heads of humans.

Ethnoscience asserts that culture is comprised of psychological frameworks through which people or groups of people govern their conduct. Beethoven quartet perfectly is used to explain the culture as an illustrative sample nobody would identifies with its scores, the expertise and comprehension required to use it with the understanding of it owned by its performers nor look out, by the viewpoint of reductionists and reifiers, with a specific performance of it or with some cryptic entity exceeding material presence (Geertz 1994, p.224). Beethoven quartet is temporarily established tonal framework, a coherent cycle of musical sound and not anyone’s understanding or conviction on anything, entailing how to play it, is a proposal to which majority of individuals are upon consideration, probable to agree. To play violin, it is important to have certain expertise, norms, understanding and talents, to be able to play it and have a violin (Geertz 2000, p.185). However, playing violin is not the habits or expertise nor the mood or violin.To carry out a trade pact in a country like morocco, one has to do things in particular manner along with some cultural practices, however, trade pact is neither of these practices and processes.

Culture is public since its implication is. One cannot wink with any knowledge of what it means or how to carry out the winking itself. Additionally, one cannot carry out a sheep raid with no knowledge of what stealing a sheep entails and how to proceed (Clifford 1986, p. 3). However, drawing from such truths, the conclusion that having understanding of how to wink is winking and realizing how to take a sheep is sheep looting is to simply confusing thin descriptions for thick that is simply connecting winking with battling of eye lids and sheep raiding as driving sheep out of fields. Culture is a not simple thing that can be assessed with normal simple methods.

The objective of anthropology is the broadening of the world of human dialogue. That is not its only goal – teaching, enjoyment, guidance, moral progress and detection of natural order in man behaviors among other things, nor is anthropology, the sole discipline which oversees this. However, it is goal in which a semiotic facet of culture is unusually properly adapted (Geertz 2000, p.180). As interlinked structures of construable symbols, culture is not power which social occurrences, conduct, norms are alluded to, and it is a scope in which they can be characterized. The renowned anthropological absorption, Jewish merchants, French people is a tool for removing a dulling sense of understanding with which the strangeness of one’s own capability to interact with others is hidden from them. Comprehending individuals’ culture reveals their normalness without lessening their meticulousness. Looking at the Moroccan’s way of doing things, they seem more reasonable and more distinctive, they seem. It makes them reachable, setting them in the scope of their own trivialities, it softens their opaqueness.

Culture is efficiently regarded as a symbolic framework by separating its components, stipulating the internal correlations amongst the components and the portraying the entire system in some common manner, according to the main representations on which it is consolidated the fundamental systems of which it is a superficial manifestation or the philosophical guidelines on which it is founded on. Although, a distinctive enhancement over educated conduct and psychological criterion ideals of what culture is and the origin of some of the most authoritative hypothetical concepts in modern anthropology, this hermetical methodology to issues, according to Geertz (1994, p.225), has the threat of locking cultural scrutiny from its suitable objective, the casual rationality of real life.

The ethnographer “records” social talk: he records it as Geertz states. In so doing, he changes it from a short-lived occasion, which is present just in its own snapshot of event, into a record, which exists in its engravings and could be re-accessed. The sheik passed on, murdered during the time spent being, as the French named it, “assuaged”: “captain Dumari”, his pacifier, lives, resigned to his trinkets, in the southern France; and Cohen travelled half displaced person, half traveler, half biting the dust patriarch, “residence” to Israel. However, what they, in Geertz broadened sense, “told” each other on an Atlas level 60 years back is – extremely distant from consummately – protected for exploration (Geertz 2000, p.188). Paul Ricoeur, from whom this entire thought of the engraving of activity is obtained and to some degree contorted, asks, “What does writing solve?”

There exist three features of ethnographic characterization: it is interpretative; what is informatory of is the course of societal discussion as well as the translating comprises in attempting to safeguard the “stated” of the talks from its diminishing events and repair it in readable expressions. Up to now as it underpinned the anthropologist’s compulsion to involve himself with his informers as people instead of objects, the concept of participant perception was a valued one (Geertz 1973, p.256). However, to the extent it has caused the anthropologist to safeguard from his perspective the distinct, culturally connected nature of his obligation and to think of himself as a thing beyond a fascinated traveler, it was the most authoritative origin of bad faith. Western pacific stays, however, there are additionally, fourth features of the said depiction, as Geertz says to be practicing it, it is microscopic.

It is not necessarily the case that there are no substantial scale anthropological understandings of entire social orders, civilizations, and world occasions, among others. Without a doubt, it is such augmentation of human examinations to more extensive scopes that, alongside their hypothetical ramifications, prescribes them to general consideration and legitimizes man developing them. Nobody truly minds any longer, not by any means Cohen, about those sheep in that capacity.

Geertz seems to be very critical of Lévi-Strauss due to their difference in the interpretations of anthropological concepts of thin and thick descriptions. Strauss was known for his comprehension of anthropology as a profoundly personal pursuit as well as his comprehension of anthropology as a positive science (Geertz 1973, p.250). Geertz thinks that Strauss’s work exposes the dual quality of procedure and epistemology – as a method of dealing with the mankind and means of revealing official correlations among empirical facts and causes them to clash with each other.

This class, as Geertz states, elucidates Strauss’s prominence amongst non-specialists but has additionally caused some discourses in professional arenas that what is represented, as high science might be an inventive and somewhat indirect effort to support metaphysical standing (Geertz 1973, p.253). Lévi-Strauss thought that anthropology is the study of human thought rather than customs or practices. Lévi-Strauss’s presumption of the essential similarity of rationality, the presence of a mind hearkens back, as Geertz says to the universal rationalism of the French enlightenment. Simply, Geertz asserts that very little isolates Levi-Strauss from Rousseau, a Lévi-Strauss’s most loved thinker.

Conclusion

Geertz position therefore in the interpretation of culture has been to avoid biasedness and cabbalism on the other and attempt to retain the exploration of figurative forms as diligently linked so as to focus of societal activities and occurrences, the communal arena of shared life and to classify it in a manner that links between hypothetical inventions along with expressive elucidations were not obscured by charms of dark science.

References

Geertz, C. (1973). The Cerebral Sauvage: On the Work of Claude Lévi-Strauss. (Ch 13) In The Interpretation of Cultures (pp. 345-359). London: Fontana Press.

Geertz, C. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected essays. New York: Basic books.

Geertz, C. (1974). “From the native’s point of view”: On the nature of anthropological understanding. Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 28(1): 26-45.

Geertz, C. (1994). Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture. In M. Martin and C. McIntyre (eds), Readings in the philosophy of social science (pp. 213-231), Cambridge: MIT Press.

Geertz, C. (2000). Deep play: Notes on the Balinese cockfight. (Ch15) In The Interpretation of Cultures (pp. 412-453). London: Fontana Press.

Clifford, J. (1986). Introduction: Partial Truths. In J. Clifford and G.E. Marcus (eds), Readings for a History of Anthropological Theory (pp. 1-26). California: University of California Press.