Key Points of Geertz

Editor's Notes

• #2: We will be presenting on Clifford Geertz and his paper “Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture”. We will be discussing his ideas on Anthropology, Culture and Semiotics
• #3: Slide 2 Clifford Geertz was born August 1926 and passed October 2006 at the age of 80. He was an American anthropologist and was one of the most influential in his field. He attended college and graduated in 1950 from Harvard University and received a PhD in Anthropology after finding his first major in English too constraining. His primary focus in study is on the nature of culture and ethnography. The aim of most of his work is to provide an understanding and acknowledgement of “thick description” that exists within cultures; understandings other peoples understandings of things. His methodology includes examining meanings of symbols, which are culture specific.
• #4: Slide 3 His major themes in his work are ethnography, culture, thin and thick description and semiotics
• #5: Slide 4 Major influences in his studies included Ludwig Wittgenstein, Max Weber and Gilbert Ryle. He draws from Weber’s ideas in interpretive social science and his use of culture and religion to offer explanation of modernization. Geertz is also impacted by Wittgenstein’s ideas on language as he believes that culture does not simply occur in the heads of humans but outside them “culture is public because meaning is”- one cannot wink without knowing what counts as winking. Humans for the most part all think alike however it is the symbols they use that tend to communicate variably. Gilbert Ryle is where Geertz borrows the idea of “thick description” outlined in the action of winking and various meanings attached. He specifies that the purpose of studying these symbols is not to open the open the doors to peoples’ minds but “as formulations of social phenomena”. A theorist name Kluckhohn also influenced his work, by having 11 definitions of what culture was
• #6: Slide 5 Anthropology is an interpretive science that is observational and searches for meaning. The anthropologist's job is to collect data on observable phenomena quote “Anthropologists dont study villages, they study in them”. However, when they collect data, the information that is reported is the anthropologist’s “constructions of other peoples constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to” is obscured. They have to disentangle all of the complex structures and underlying meanings to really understand the root of behaviour. Once they see behaviour and culture come together, gesture is created. Geertz says that an ethnographer has an important job and “he observes, he records, he analyzes”. The ethnographer “inscribes” social discourse- Turning it from a passing event to inscriptions that can be reconsulted 
• #7: Slide 6 There are 3 characteristics for ethnography, and he personally added a fourth one. The first characteristic is that it must be an interpretive study, because they need to trace the manner in how meaning is ascribed, and ethnographers need to collect thick descriptions during their observations. The second characteristic is the subject of interpretation is the flow of social discourse, which means that ethnography needs to be able to decipher social phenomena. The third characteristic states that we as ethnographers are limited in what we know because our source of information is what people say. The final characteristic was added by Geertz, and states that the data found by ethnographers contains information about social events and that the observed actions are merely microscopic and don’t “ determine where it can be impelled to go”.  
• #8:   Slide 7 Thin description is only about the action or behaviour and doesn’t involve interpretation. In the paper, Geertz uses the example of boys winking to explain the concept of thin description. He talks about two boys who are contracting their right eyelids. For one of the boys, he is twitching involuntarily and in the other boy, his winking is a signal to a friend. In this scenario it would be impossible for someone observing to decipher if the boys contracting their eyelids was due to an involuntary twitch or a wink. The thin description is the winking, and the thick description is what he is communicating through winking
• #9: . Slide 8 Thick description includes behavior with interpretation, it is a semiotic term and can be applied to public acts in culture. Ethnography, is considered to be a form of thick description. The object of ethnography is between the thin and thick description.
• #10: Slide 9 Thick description is “the meaning of actions” and “explains the behaviour and also its context, so that behaviour becomes meaningful to an outsider”. An example for Geertz’s thick description is the action of crossing ones finger. In our society it can mean two different things. One can mean a symbol for good luck or it can mean that the individual isn’t telling the truth. Between the thin and thick description lies the object of ethnography which is “a stratified hierarchy of meaningful structures in terms of which twitches, winks, fake-winks… are produced, perceived, and interpreted “ and without them, they would cease to exist.
• #11: Slide 10 For Geertz culture is defined as “a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which people communicate, perpetuate and develop their knowledge about and their attitudes towards life.” Culture is made up of “psychological structures by means of which individuals or groups guide their behavior”. Culture is not a force of the world but a context in which people experience their lives and which events can be “thickly” described. He explains that with culture there is no standard and suggests a “semiotic concept of nature”. Anthropologists also see it as a type of context, where the behavior that makes up that culture can be described thickly. You cannot shake hands, or wave to someone without knowing how to shake someone’s hand or wave to someone.  
• #12: Slide 11 The debate on whether culture is subjective or objective Geertz believes is misconceived, he draws on the quote from Ward Goodenough, “culture is in the minds of hearts of men” …...and the theoretical idea that “a specific society’s culture is formed on what is necessary to know or believe in order for its members to perform acceptably”. This suggests that culture includes quote“the writing of systematic rules, an ethnographic algorithm”endquote which would cause those who participate to pass as natives. culture is a psychological phenomenon with socially established structures of meaning-many different symbols with various communicative power. Wittgenstein is quoted “finding our feet” meaning we do not understand other people. Geertz explains that finding our feet is what ethnographers perform in their research through personal experience by trying to “form the basis on which one imagines”. However it is not his aim to become a native or copy them but instead to converse with them, the aim of these anthropologists is to expand the universe of human discourse. Geertz wants people to see that social actions within culture are very important 
• #13: Slide 12 His semiotic approach strives to be able to connect and gain access into other cultures. His theory’s aim is to try and make thick description possible.
• #14: Slide 13 Geertz said that in order to interpret culture’s symbols, we need to isolate the elements, find the relationships between them and then finally categorize the whole system in a general way. Geertz stresses that one of the sins in interpretive approaches is the tendency to present studies as self-validating by the researchers. The entire aim of the semiotic approach in culture is to aid in gaining access “to the conceptual world so that we can converse with them”. When studying a case using a semiotic concept of culture and an interpretive approach it is necessary to take on a view of “ethnographic assertation as ‘essentially contestable’”. When investigating, Geertz noted that one must put in effort to try and keep the concrete social events and analysis of symbolic forms in a tight web and organize it so that “connections between theoretical formulations and descriptive interpretations were unobscured by appeals to dark sciences”.
• #15: Slide 14 Geertz says culture is a context, it is the location for things to be thickly described. There also exists a degree of variability “according to the pattern of life by which it is informed.” After discovering how these signs and symbols communicate, the door to understanding different cultures is opened and “exposes their normalness without reducing their particularity”.
• #16: Slide 15 How many of you have ever visited a foreign country and received or witnessed an unexpected reaction to some action or gesture? Some examples of symbols and signs around the world can possess drastically different meanings depending on the culture they belong to.
• #17: Slide 16 So to test your knowledge, we want to test you with a few examples to help you understand and connect with what Geertz was trying to do.   Doing a thumbs up in Canada is a sign for a good job, however, what do you think it means in The Middle East?  it is rude gesture to tell someone off Doing the “long horn ” sign in North America is a symbol for the Texas Football Team. This sign is wildly acted on by Presidents and Celebrities. However, what do you think this means?  This sign is actually considered a curse or a symbol for telling someone that they are being cheated on This is what Geertz seeks to abolish in his research as a social anthropologist, opening the door for people to converse more easily by “setting them in the frame of their own banalities, it dissolves their opacity.”
• #18: Slide 17 This misinterpretation and is what Geertz seeks to abolish in his research as a social anthropologist, opening the door for people to converse more easily by “setting them in the frame of their own banalities, it dissolves their opacity.” That concludes our presentation, thanks for listening. Any questions at all?