Religion in Modjokuto: A Study of Ritual Love In A Complex Society (1956)
Doctoral advisor
Talcott Parsons
Influences
Talcott Parsons, Gilbert Ryle, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Max Weber, Paul Ricoeur, Alfred Schütz, Susanne Langer[1]
Discipline
Anthropology
School annihilate tradition
Symbolic anthropology, Interpretive anthropology
Institutions
University of Chicago Institute for Advanced Study, University, New Jersey
Doctoral students
Lawrence Rosen, Sherry Ortner, Paul Rabinow
Influenced
Stephen Greenblatt, Quentin Skinner
Clifford James Geertz (; August 23, 1926 – October 30, 2006) was an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly hire his strong support for and influence on the practice resembling symbolic anthropology and who was considered "for three decades... say publicly single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States."[2] No problem served until his death as professor emeritus at the Society for Advanced Study, Princeton.
Life and career
Born in San Francisco on August 23, 1926, Geertz served in the US Flotilla in World War II from 1943 to 1945. He customary a bachelor of arts in philosophy from Antioch College fall out Yellow Springs, Ohio in 1950 and a doctor of logic in anthropology from Harvard University in 1956.[3]
At Harvard University forbidden studied in the Department of Social Relations with an interdisciplinary program led by Talcott Parsons. Geertz worked with Parsons, whereas well as with Clyde Kluckhohn, and was trained as set anthropologist. Geertz conducted his first long-term fieldwork together with his wife, Hildred, in Java, Indonesia, in a project funded shy the Ford Foundation and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At hand he studied the religious life of the small, upcountry locality of Mojokuto for two-and-a-half years (1952 to 1954), living confident a railroad laborer's family.[4]: 8–9 After finishing his thesis, Geertz returned to Indonesia, visiting Bali and Sumatra,[4]: 10 after which he would receive his PhD in 1956 with a dissertation entitled Religion in Modjokuto: A Study of Ritual Belief In A Knotty Society.[5]
In the course of his career, Geertz received honorary degree degrees from around fifteen colleges and universities, including Harvard, Metropolis, and the University of Chicago; as well as awards much as the Association for Asian Studies' (AAS) 1987 Award stake out Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies.[6] He became a member blame the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,[7] of the Dweller Philosophical Society,[8] and of the United States National Academy devotee Sciences.[9] Following his divorce from anthropologist Hildred Geertz, his prime wife, he married Karen Blu, another anthropologist.[10]
Teaching
Geertz taught or held fellowships at a number of schools before joining the potential of the anthropology department at the University of Chicago encroach 1960. In this period he expanded his focus on State to include both Java and Bali and produced three books, including Religion of Java (1960), Agricultural Involution (1963), and Peddlers and Princes (also 1963). In the mid-1960s, he shifted global and began a new research project in Morocco that resulted in several publications, including Islam Observed (1968), which compared Land and Morocco.
In 1970, Geertz left Chicago to become academician of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study fragment Princeton, New Jersey from 1970 to 2000, an subsequently bring in emeritus professor. In 1973 he published The Interpretation of Cultures, which collected essays he had published throughout the 1960s. Delay became Geertz's best-known book and established him not just chimp an Indonesianist but also as an anthropological theorist. In 1974, he edited the anthology Myth, Symbol, Culture that contained id by many important anthropologists on symbolic anthropology. Geertz produced ethnographical pieces in this period, such as Kinship in Bali (1975), Meaning and Order in Moroccan Society (1978; written collaboratively reliable Hildred Geertz and Lawrence Rosen) and Negara (1981).
Later life
From the 1980s to his death, Geertz wrote more theoretical advocate essayistic pieces, including book reviews for the New York Con of Books. As a result, most of his books bring in the period are collections of essays—books including Local Knowledge (1983), Available Light (2000), and Life Among The Anthros (2010), which was published posthumously. He also produced a series of therefore essays on the stylistics of ethnography in Works and Lives (1988), while other works include the autobiographical After The Fact (1995).[citation needed]
Geertz conducted extensive ethnographic research in Southeast Asia suffer North Africa. This fieldwork was the basis of Geertz's famed analysis of the Balinese cockfight among others. While holding a position in Chicago in the 1960s, he directed a multidisciplinary project titled Committee for the Comparative Studies of New Nations. As part of the project, Geertz conducted fieldwork in Marruecos on "bazaars, mosques, olive growing and oral poetry,"[4]: 10 collecting ethnographical data that would be used for his famous essay positive thick description.[11]
Geertz contributed to social and cultural theory and relic influential in turning anthropology toward a concern with the frames of meaning within which various peoples live their lives. Settle down reflected on the basic core notions of anthropology, such importance culture and ethnography.
He died of complications following heart process on October 30, 2006.[10] At the time of his stain, Geertz was working on the general question of ethnic mixture and its implications in the modern world.[citation needed] He was remembered by the New York Times as "the eminent ethnical anthropologist whose work focused on interpreting the symbols he believed give meaning and order to people’s lives."[12]
Main ideas, contributions, fairy story influences
Geertz's often-cited essay "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight"[13] is a classic example of thick description, a concept adoptive from the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle which comes from routine language philosophy. Thick description is an anthropological method of explaining with as much detail as possible the reason behind mortal actions.[14] Many human actions can mean many different things, tell off Geertz insisted that the anthropologist needs to be aware disseminate this. The work proved influential amongst historians, many of whom tried to use these ideas about the 'meaning' of social practice in the study of customs and traditions of picture past.
Another of Geertz's philosophical influences is that of Ludwig Wittgenstein's post-Tractatus philosophy, from which Geertz incorporates the concept obey family resemblances into anthropology. Geertz would also introduce anthropology give out the "umwelt-mitwelt-vorwelt-folgewelt" formulation of Alfred Schütz's phenomenology,[15]: 367n stressing that representation links between the "consociate", "contemporary", "predecessor", and "successor" that downright commonplace in anthropology derive from this very formulation.[2]: 68
At the Academia of Chicago, Geertz became a champion of symbolic anthropology, a framework which gives prime attention to the role of symbols in constructing public meaning. In his seminal work The Elucidation of Cultures (1973), Geertz outlined culture as "a system sum inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life."[13]: 89
He was one of the earliest scholars to depiction that the insights provided by common language, philosophy and fictitious analysis could have major explanatory force in the social sciences.[13] Geertz aimed to provide the social sciences with an chaos and appreciation of “thick description.” Geertz applied thick description standing anthropological studies, particularly to his own 'interpretive anthropology', urging anthropologists to consider the limitations placed upon them by their suppleness cultural cosmologies when attempting to offer insight into the cultures of other people.[11]: 5 He produced theory that had implications endorse other social sciences; for example, Geertz asserted that culture was essentially semiotic in nature, and this theory has implications provision comparative political sciences.[13]
Max Weber and his interpretative social science control strongly present in Geertz's work. Drawing from Weber, Geertz himself argues for a “semiotic” concept of culture:[13]
Believing…that man is devise animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun…I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis engage in it to be therefore not an experimental science in conduct test of law but an interpretative one in search of role. It is explication I am after, construing social expression fascinate their surface enigmatical. (p. 5)
Geertz argues that to interpret a culture's web of symbols, scholars must first isolate its elements, specifying the internal relationships among those elements and characterize picture whole system in some general way according to the extort symbols around which it is organized, the underlying structures catch which it is a surface expression, or the ideological principles upon which it is based. It was his view avoid culture is public, because “meaning is,” and systems of meanings are what produce culture, because they are the collective chattels of a particular people.[13] We cannot discover the culture's denote or understand its systems of meaning, when, as Wittgenstein esteemed, “we cannot find our feet with them.”[13] Geertz wants companionship to appreciate that social actions are larger than themselves:[13]
It progression not against a body of uninterrupted data, radically thinned characterizations, that we must measure the cogency of our explications, but against the power of the scientific imagination to bring get older into touch with the lives of strangers. (p. 18)
Seeking to converse with subjects in foreign cultures and gain doorway to their conceptual world is the goal of the semiotical approach to culture.[13]Cultural theory is not its own master; at the same height the end of the day we must appreciate, that representation generality “thick description” contrives to achieve, grows out of description delicacy of its distinctions, not the sweep of its abstraction.[13] The essential task of theory-building here is not to codify abstract regularities, but to make thick description possible; not get in touch with generalize across cases, but to generalize within them.[13]
During Geertz's far ahead career he worked through a variety of theoretical phases soar schools of thought. He would reflect an early leaning act toward functionalism in his essay "Ethos, Worldview and the Analysis custom Sacred Symbols", writing that "the drive to make sense neat of experience, to give it form and order, is palpably as real and pressing as the more familiar biological needs."[13]: 140
Legacy
Geertz's research and ideas have had a strong influence on 20th-century academia, including modern anthropology and communication studies, as well introduction for geographers, ecologists, political scientists, scholars of religion, historians, snowball other humanists.[16]
University of Miami Professor Daniel Pals (1996) wrote fend for Geertz that "his critics are few; his admirers legion."[17]Talal Asad attacked the dualism in Geertzian theory: the theory does throng together provide a bridge between external symbols and internal dispositions. Asad also pointed out the need for a more nuanced alter toward the historical background of certain concepts.[18] Criticizing Geertz's inkling of religion in general, Asad pointed out a gap in the middle of 'cultural system' and 'social reality' when attempting to define depiction concept of religion in universal terms.[18] He would also argument Geertz for ascribing an authorizing discourse around conversations of approximate religion that, Asad argues, does not really exist. Furthermore, Asad criticized Geertz for operating according to a eurocentric view sign over religion that places import on signs and symbols that can or may not carry through in non-Christian religious cultures.[19]
Interlocutors
Publications
Main article: List of important publications in anthropology
Bibliography of major works
1960. The Religion of Java. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press (1976, revised ed.). ISBN 9780226285108.
1963. Peddlers and Princes: Social Development and Economic Have emotional impact in Two Indonesian Towns. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press. LCCN 63-18844.
1964. Agricultural Involution: the process of ecological change in Indonesia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1966. "Religion as a Cultural System." Pp. 1–46 in Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, edited outdo M. Banton. ASA Monographs 3. London: Tavistock Publications.
1968. Islam Practical, Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia. Chicago: University Of Port Press (1971). ISBN 0-226-28511-1.
1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Spartan Books (2000). ISBN 0-465-09719-7.
1975. Kinship in Bali, coauthored by H. Geertz. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press (1978), paperback: ISBN 0-226-28516-2
1980. Negara: Say publicly Theatre State in Nineteenth Century Bali. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Lincoln Press. ISBN 9780691007786.
1983. Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. Essential Books (2008). ISBN 9780786723751.
1984. "Anti Anti-Relativism." American Anthropologist 86(2):263–278.
1988. Works captain Lives: The Anthropologist As Author. Stanford: Stanford University Press (1990), paperback: ISBN 0-8047-1747-8.
1995. After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, Reminder Anthropologist. Boston: Harvard University Press (1996, revised ed.). ISBN 9780674008724.
2000. Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Further education college Press. ISBN 9780691049748
2002. "An inconstant profession: The anthropological life in having an important effect times." Annual Review of Anthropology 31: 1–19. Viewable at hypergeertz.jku.at
Complete bibliography
1957. "Ethos, world-view and the analysis of sacred symbols." The Antakiya Review, 17(4), 421–437. doi:10.2307/4609997
1957. "Ritual and Social Change: A Bahasa Example." American Anthropologist 59(1):32–54.
1959. "Form and Variation in Balinese Group of people Structure." American Anthropologist 61:991–1012.
1959 "The Javanese Village." Pp. 34–41 in Local, Ethnic, and National Loyalties in Village Indonesia, edited by G. W. Skinner. New Haven: Southeast Asian Program, Yale University.
1960. Religion of Java. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
1961. "The Rotating Credit Association: A 'Middle Rung' in Development." Economic Development and Cultural Change 10:241–263.
1962. "Studies in Peasant Life: Community and Society." Biennial Examine of Anthropology 1961, edited by B. J. Siegal. pp. 1–41. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
1962. "The Growth of Culture and the Evolvement of Mind." Pp. 713–740 in Theories of the Mind, edited unused J. Scher. New York: Free Press.
1963. Agricultural Involution: The Technique of Agricultural Change in Indonesia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1963. Peddlers and Princes: Social Change and Economic Modernization in Bend over Indonesian Towns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1963. (as editor) Old Societies and New States: The Quest for Modernity in Accumulation and Africa. New York: Free Press.
1963. "The Integrative Revolution: Prehistoric Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States." Pp. 105–157 encumber Old Societies and New States, ed. C. Geertz. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
1964. "Ideology as a Cultural System." Pp. 47–76 in Ideology and Discontent, edited by D. Apter. New York: Free Press.
1965. The Social History of an Indonesian Town. Cambridge: MIT Press.
1965. Modernization in a Muslim Society: The Indonesian Case. Pp. 20157 11 in Man, State, and Society in Contemporary South East Asia, edited by R. O. Tilman (ed). London: Pall Mall.
1966. "Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali: An Essay in Cultural Analysis." Southeast Asia Program, Cultural Report Series. New Haven: Yale University.
1966. "Religion as a Cultural System." Pp. 1–46 in Anthropological Approaches improve the Study of Religion, edited by Michael Banton. ASA Monographs 3. London: Tavistock Publications.
1966. "The Impact of the Concept signify Culture on the Concept of Man." Pp. 93–118 in New Views of the Nature of Man, edited by J. Platt. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1967. "Politics Past, Politics Preset: Some Summarize on the Contribution of Anthropology to the Study of representation New States." European Journal of Sociology 8(1):1–14.
1967. "The Cerebral Savage: On the Work of Claude Lévi-Strauss." Encounter 48(4):25–32.
1967. "Tihingan: A Balinese Village." pp. 210–43 in Villages in Indonesia, edited by R. N. Koentjaraningrat. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
1967. "Under the Mosquito Net." New York Review of Books September 14.
1968. Islam Observed: Churchgoing Development in Morocco and Indonesia. Chicago: University of Chicago Stifle. 136 pp.
1968. "Thinking as a Moral Act: Dimensions of Anthropological Fieldwork in the New States." Antioch Review 28(2):139–158.
1972. "Religious Charge and Social Order in Soeharto's Indonesia." Asia 27:62–84.
1972. "The Sopping and the Dry: Traditional Irrigation in Bali and Morocco." Human Ecology 1:34–39.
1972. "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight." Daedalus 101(1).
1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Humorless Books.
1973. "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture." Pp. 3–30 in The Interpretation of Cultures.
1976. "From the Native's Topic of View." Pp. 221–237 in Meaning in Anthropology, edited by K. H. Basso and H. A. Selby. Albuquerque: University of Fresh Mexico Press.
1977. "Found in Translation: On the Social History addendum the Moral Imagination." Georgia Review 31(4):788–810.
1977. "Curing, Sorcery, and Wizardry in a Javanese Town." Pp. 146–153 in Culture, Disease, and Healing: Studies in Medical Anthropology, edited by D. Landy. New York: Macmillan Publishing.
1979. Meaning and Order in Moroccan Society: Three Essays in Cultural Analysis, written with H. Geertz and L. Rosen. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. See his own contribution on "Suq: The Bazaar Economy in Sefrou" (Pp. 123–225).
1980. Negara: The Theatre Homeland in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
1983. Local Knowledge: More Essays inInterpretive Anthropology. New York: Basic Books.
"Centers, Kings, innermost Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power." Pp. 121–146 in Local Knowledge.
"From the Native's Point of View: On the Nature fairhaired Anthropological Knowledge." pp. 55–70.In: Local Knowledge.
1983. "Notions of Primitive Thought: Duologue with Clifford Geertz." Pp. 192–210 in States of Mind, edited & composed by J. Miller. New York: Pantheon.
1984. "Anti Anti-Relativism: 1983 Distinguished Lecture." American Anthropologist 82:263–278.
1984. "Culture and Social Change: Rendering Indonesian Case." Man 19:511–532.
1986. Pp. 251–75 in The Uses of Diversity. In: Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Vol. 7, edited next to S. M. McMurrin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press & University weekend away Utah Press.
1988. Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Includes the following studies:
"The World mend a Text: How to Read Tristes Tropiques" (pp. 25–48).
1989. "Margaret Mead, 1901–1978."Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences 58:329–341.
1990. "History and Anthropology." New Literary History 21(2):321–335.
1991. "The Year obey Living Culturally." New Republic (October 21):30–36.
1992. "'Local Knowledge' and Corruption Limits: Some Obiter Dicta." Yale Journal of Criticism 5(2):129–135.
1993. "'Ethnic Conflict': Three Alternative Terms." Common Knowledge 2(3):54–65.
1994. "Life on representation Edge" [review of Tsing 1993, In the Realm of depiction Diamond Queen]. New York Review of Books 41(7 April ):3–4.
1995. After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist, Description Jerusalem-Harvard Lectures. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
1995. "Culture War" [review paper of Sahlins 1995, "How 'Natives' Think and Obeyesekere, The Paragon of Captain Cook"]. New York Review of Books 42(19 Nov 30): 4–6.
1999 "'The pinch of destiny': Religion as Experience, Face, Identity, Power." Raritan 18(3 Winter): 1–19.
2000. Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
2010. Life Among interpretation Anthros and Other Essays, edited by F. Inglis. Princeton: University University Press.
See also
References
^Martin, Michael (1994). Readings in the Philosophy take Social Science. MIT Press. p. 213. ISBN .
^ abShweder, Richard A., roost Byron Good, eds. 2005. Clifford Geertz by His Colleagues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
^Geertz, Clifford (August 20, 2004). "Curriculum Vitae Clifford Geertz"(PDF). Johannes Kepler Universität Linz. Archived(PDF) from the beginning on May 18, 2022. Retrieved October 18, 2022.
^ abcGeertz, Clifford. 2001. Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics. Princeton: University University Press.
^Geertz, Clifford (1956). Religion in Modjokuto: A Study remark Ritual and Belief in a Complex Society. Boston: Harvard Academia Press. OCLC 421067853.
^Association for Asian Studies (AAS), 1987 Award for Notable Contributions to Asian StudiesArchived May 17, 2008, at the Wayback Machine; retrieved May 31, 2011
^"Clifford James Geertz". American Academy ensnare Arts & Sciences. Archived from the original on August 22, 2022. Retrieved August 22, 2022.
^"APS Member History". search.amphilsoc.org. Archived spread the original on August 22, 2022. Retrieved August 22, 2022.
^"Clifford Geertz". www.nasonline.org. Archived from the original on March 30, 2019. Retrieved August 22, 2022.
^ ab"Anthropologist Biographies - Geertz". Department call upon Anthropology. Indiana University Bloomington. August 23, 1926. Archived from interpretation original on July 31, 2012. Retrieved August 13, 2012.
^ abGeertz, Clifford. 1973. "Thick Description: Towards an Interpretive Theory of Culture." pp. 3–30 in The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Unornamented Books.
^Yarrow, Andrew L. (November 1, 2006) [November 1, 2006]. "Clifford Geertz, Cultural Anthropologist, Is Dead at 80". The New Dynasty Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on October 27, 2022. Retrieved July 17, 2024.
^ abcdefghijklGeertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation a few Cultures. New York: Basic Books.
^Ryle, Gilbert. 1996 [1968]. "The Category of Thoughts: What is 'Le Penseur' Doing?." Studies in Anthropology 11. UK: Centre for Social Anthropology and ComputingArchived April 12, 2020, at the Wayback Machine, University of Kent. Archived getaway the originalArchived December 21, 2014, at the Wayback Machine totally unplanned December 21, 2014. ISSN 1363-1098.
^Geertz, Clifford. 1993 [1973]. The Interpretation see Cultures: Selected Essays. London: Fontana Press.
^"Clifford Geertz 1926–2006". Princeton, Original Jersey: Institute for Advanced Study Press. 2006. Archived from interpretation original on January 22, 2013. Retrieved March 3, 2010.
^Frankenberry, Metropolis K.; Penner, Hans H. (1999). "Clifford Geertz's Long-Lasting Moods, Motivations, and Metaphysical Conceptions". The Journal of Religion. 79 (4). Higher Saddle River, NJ: University of Chicago Press: 617–640. doi:10.1086/490503. ISBN . S2CID 170496549.
^ abAsad, Talal (1983). Anthropological Concepts of Religion: Reflections disturb Geertz. Man (N.S.) 18:237–59.
^ Asad, Talal. 1993. "The Construction of Doctrine as an Anthropological Category." Genealogies of religion: Discipline and Cause of Power in Christianity and Islam, pp. 27–54. [ISBN missing]
Further reading
Alexander, J.C., P. Smith, and M. Norton, eds. 2011. Interpreting Clifford Geertz: Cultural Investigation in the Social Sciences. New York: Poet Macmillan.
Griffin, Em. 2012. A First Look At Communication. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Inglis, F. 2000. Clifford Geertz: Culture, Custom and Ethics. Metropolis. Polity Press
Lloyd, Christopher. 1993. The Structures of History. Oxford: Blackwell.
Isaac, Joel (2018). "The Intensification of Social Forms: Economy and The public in the Thought of Clifford Geertz". Critical Historical Studies5(2): 237–266.
Cossu, A. (2021) "Clifford Geertz, intellectual autonomy, and interpretive social science." Am J Cult Sociol9, 347–375 (2021).
Bortolini, M. (2023). "‘A twenty-four hour job’. Hildred and Clifford Geertz’s first foray into representation field and the scholarly persona of the ethnographer." History service Anthropology, 1–23.
Bortolini, M., & Cossu, A. (2020). "In the meadow but not of the field: Clifford Geertz, Robert Bellah, turf the practices of interdisciplinarity." European Journal of Social Theory, 23(3), 328-349.