Clifford Geertz
(1926-Present, United States)
Clifford Geertz is credited as one of the principal Symbolic Anthropologists. He researched and examined the meaning of cultural behaviors by his interpretations. Geertz viewed culture as an organized collection of symbolic system. He saw people’s cultural behaviors based on these signs and symbols. With a reference to socially established signs and symbols, people shape the patterns of their behaviors and give meanings to their experiences. In other words, people rely on meanings in order to sustain their social life. According to Geertz, “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs.” (1973:5)
Geertz believed that each culture is unique and refused to seek universal
laws among different cultures. Therefore the task of anthropology is to
figure out signs and symbols in a specific society and to sort them out
according to their significance. This method requires anthropologists to
read meanings not only as the native people do but also beyond that level.
The goal of this method is to determine the patterns of meanings in the
society and make people’s behaviors interpretable to outsiders. This method
implies that anthropologists are intercultural translators who use ethnography
to convey the meanings of different cultures.
One example of Geertz’s work is his analysis of a funeral in Java, the main island of Indonesia. Geertz dealt with religious and political symbols, and depicted their clash caused by a recent social change. He focused on a specific funeral case, where shifting political divisions and their symbolic expressions were affecting the ritual and emotions related to death.
Sources:
- Barfield, Thomas. 1996 The Dictionary of Anthropology. Malden: Blackwell.
- Geertz, Clifford. 1973 The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books.
- Moore, Jerry D. 1997 Visions of Culture : An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.