Clifford Geertz1926-2006

1926 Born San Francisco

1950 BA Antioch College Ohio studying English and Philosophy

1950 Meets Margaret Mead and decides enrolls in anthropology at Harvard

1956 PhD. on religion and social change in Java

Thick Description Toward and Interpretive Theory of Culture

“The concept of culture I espouse…is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take cultures to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law, but an interpretive one in search of meaning”. (Geertz 1973:5)

CLIFFORD GEERTZ’SIDEALIST INTERPRETATION

Geertz: The Concept of Culture I Espouse is a Semiotic One…

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Se∙mi∙ot∙ics

•The study of signs and symbols as elements of communicative behavior

• The analysis of systems of communication, as language, gestures, or clothing.

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 an interpretive one in search of meaning”

GEERTZ’ INTERPRETIVE ANTHROPOLOGY

Culture does not exist in some superorganic realm subject to forces and objectives of its own

Culture cannot be reified.

Culture is neither “brute behaviour” nor a “mental construct”.

What Culture is Not

Culture consists of socially established structures of meaning,

With which people communicate;

It is inseparable 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

What Culture is

WHAT CULTURE IS

Culture is Symbolic

Culture is Communication

Meaning is Contextual

Culture is Complex

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 different abstractions from the same phenomena.

WHAT CULTURE IS

The method of the “interpretive anthropologist” (who accepts a semiotic view of culture) is similar to the method of literary critique analyzing a text

http://vimeo.com/22232565

THICK DESCRIPTION

A thick description of a human behavior Explains not just the behavior, But its context as well, So that the behavior becomes meaningful to an outsider.

THICK DESCRIPTION

Origins of “Thick Description” Many researchers cite anthropologist Clifford Geertz’sGeertz attributes the term toGilbert Ryle, a British philosopher at the University of Oxford.

THICK DESCRIPTION

The first presentation of the actual term, “thick” description, appears to come from two of Ryle’s lectures published in the mid 1960s titled Thinking and Reflecting and The Thinking of Thoughts

For Ryle (1971) “thick” description involved ascribing intentionality to one’s behavior. He used the following example:

THICK DESCRIPTION

A single golfer, with six golf balls in front of him, hitting each of them, one after another, towards one and the same green. He then goes and collects the balls, comes back to where he was before, and does it again. What is he doing?

“THIN” VS “THICK” DESCRIPTION

The golfer is repeatedly hitting a little round white object with a club like device toward a green.

“THIN” VS “THICK” DESCRIPTION

The “thick" description interprets the behavior within the context of:The golf course The game of golf And ascribes thinking and intentionality to the observed behavior.

“THIN” VS “THICK” DESCRIPTION

In this case, the golfer is practicing approach shots on the green in anticipation of a future real golf match (which usually includes two or four players) with the hope that the practicing of approach shots at the present time will improve his approach shot skill in a real match at some time in the future.

THICK DESCRIPTION & ETHNOGRAPHY

The term “thick” description became part of the qualitative researcher’s vocabulary when Geertz borrowed Ryle’s (1971) philosophical term to describe the work of ethnography.

THICK DESCRIPTION & ETHNOGRAPHY

From one point of view doing ethnography is:

Establishing rapportSelecting informantsTranscribing textsTaking genealogies,Keeping a diary, and so on

THICK DESCRIPTION & ETHNOGRAPHY

It is not techniques and procedures that define ethnography.

It is the intellectual effortIt is: “thick description”

ETHNOGRAPHY

Geertz (1973) believed that the dataof anthropological writing was:

“really our own constructions of other people’s constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to”

ETHNOGRAPHY

Therefore, for a reader of anthropological work to gauge for herself or himself the credibility of the author’s interpretations, the context under which these interpretations were made must be richly and thickly described.

THICK DESCRIPTION

A thick description … does more than record what a person is doing. It goes beyond mere fact and surface appearances. It presents detail, context, emotion, and the webs of social relationships that join persons to one another.

THICK DESCRIPTION

Thick description evokes emotionality & self-feelings. It inserts history into experience. It establishes the significance of an experience, or the sequence of events, for the person or persons in question. In thick description, the voices, feelings, actions, and meanings of interacting individuals are heard. (Denzin, 1989, p. 83)

THICK DESCRIPTIONDenzin’s (1989) elaboration of “thick description” introduced Geertz’s anthropological term and Ryle’s philosophical concept to the disciplines of sociology, communications, and humanities. Denzin extended the utility of “thick description” as an anthropological construct used in ethnography, and particularly in participant observation, to the wider audience of qualitative researchers (e.g., in sociology, psychology, education)