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Clifford Geetze (August 23, 1926, San Francisco – October 30, 2006, Philadelphia)

a highly influential American anthropologist known mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology. He served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey.

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Clifford Geetze (August 23, 1926, San Francisco – October 30, 2006, Philadelphia)

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  1. a highly influential American anthropologist known mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology. He served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. Clifford Geetze(August 23, 1926, San Francisco – October 30, 2006, Philadelphia)

  2. His Life • Clifford Geertz was born in San Francisco, California on August 23, 1926. After service in the U.S. Navy in World War II (1943–45), Geertz received his B.A. in Philosophy from Antioch College in Yellow Springs, OH in 1950, and his Ph.D. at Harvard University in 1956, where he had studied social anthropology in the Department of Social Relations. He taught or held fellowships at a number of schools before joining the anthropology staff of the University of Chicago (1960–70). He then became professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1970 to 2000, then emeritus professor. Geertz received Honorary Doctorate Degrees from some fifteen colleges and universities, including Harvard University, the University of Chicago and the University of Cambridge. He was married first to the anthropologist Hildred Geertz. After their divorce he married Karen Blu, also an anthropologist. Clifford Geertz died of complications following heart surgery on October 30, 2006.

  3. symbolic anthropology • At the University 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 Interpretation of Cultures (1973), Geertz outlined culture as "a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which people communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life" (1973:89).

  4. An In’terpretative Model • Geertz believed the role of anthropologists was to try to interpret the guiding symbols of each culture. He was considered quite innovative in this regard, as he was one of the earliest scholars to see that the insights provided by common language, philosophy and literary analysis could have major explanatory force in the social sciences.

  5. Deep Play • His oft-cited essay, "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight," is the classic example of thick description. • During Geertz's long career, he worked through a variety of theoretical phases and schools of thought. In 1957, Geertz wrote that "The drive to make sense out of experience, to give it form and order, is evidently as real and pressing as the more familiar biological needs...", a statement which reflects an early leaning toward functionalism.

  6. Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight (1973) • "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" is an essay included in the book The Interpretation of Cultures by anthropologist Clifford Geertz. Considered the most seminal work of Geertz, the essay addresses the meaning of cockfighting in Balinese culture. • Cockfights were generally illegal in Indonesia when Geertz was doing his fieldwork there in the 1950s. The first cockfight that he and his wife viewed was broken up by the police. The experience of hiding from the police in the courtyard of a local couple allowed Geertz to break the tension between himself and the villagers, and perform all of the interviews and observation which make up The Interpretation of Cultures.

  7. Symbolic Meaning of Cockfight • The essay describes how cocks are taken to stand in for powerful men in the villages, and notes that even the double-entendre sense of the word "cock" exists in the Balinese language as much as in English.

  8. Social Status • The last half of the essay describes the rituals of betting and concludes that the cockfight is the Balinese comment on themselves, as it embodies the network of social relationships in kin and village that govern traditional Balinese life. • The title of the essay is explained as a concept of Jeremy Bentham, who defines "deep play" as a game with stakes so high that no rational person would engage in it. The amounts of money and status involved in the very brief cockfights make Balinese cockfighting "deep play." The problem of explaining why the activity prevails is what Geertz sets out to solve in the essay.

  9. Anthropology: Science or Fiction? • Accordingly, in his early career Geertz considered anthropology a kind of science. This is in contrast to Geertz's later enthusiasm for an interpretive approach. In his later work, Geertz spoke particularly of the difficulties of ethnographic research has in getting at an adequate description of objective reality. Geertz attributed this to the fact that people tell ethnographers what they believe to be their own motivations, but those people's actions then often seem to contradict their statements to the researcher. Geertz believed this effect occurred partly due to the problems that people have in verbalizing aspects of their life that they usually take for granted, partly due to how ethnographers structure their research approaches and frameworks, and partly due to the inherent complexity of the social order.

  10. His Legacy • Geertz's ideas had a strong influence on 20th century academia. Aside from his influence on anthropology, Geertz landmark contributions to social and cultural theory were also influential for geographers, ecologists, political scientists, humanists, and historians. University of Miami Professor Daniel Pals wrote of Geertz in 1996, "His critics are few; his admirers legion."

  11. an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism. He is best known for his advocacy of utilitarianism and animal rights, and the idea of the panopticon. Jeremy Bentham(ˈbɛnθəm/ or /ˈbɛntəm/)15 February 1748 – 6 June 1832

  12. The Panopticon is a type of prison building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in 1785. The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (-opticon) all (pan-) prisoners without the in’carcerated (imprisoned) being able to tell whether they are being watched, thereby conveying what one architect has called the "sentiment of an invisible omniscience." Panopticon blueprint by Jeremy Bentham, 1791

  13. Bentham himself described the Panopticon as "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example." "Morals reformed— health preserved — industry invigorated — instruction diffused — public burthens lightened — Economy seated, as it were, upon a rock — the ‘gordian knot of the poor-law not cut, but untied — all by a simple idea in Architecture!"

  14. The ‘Gordian Knot is a legend of P(h)rygian Gordium (the capital city of ancient Phrygia) associated with Alexander the Great. It is often used as a metaphor for an intractable problem, solved by a bold stroke ("cutting the Gordian knot"): The ‘Gordian Knotan intractable problem

  15. John Peter Berger is an English art critic, novelist, painter and author. His novel . won the 1972 Booker Prize, and his essay on art criticism Ways of Seeing, written as an accompaniment to a BBC series, is often used as a college text. John Berger(born 5 November 1926)

  16. Ways of Seeing (1972) • Ways of Seeing is a 1972 BBC four-part television series of 30 minute films created chiefly by writer John Berger and producer Mike Dibb. Berger's scripts were adapted into a book of the same name. The series and book criticize traditional Western cultural aesthetics by raising questions about hidden ideologies in visual images. The series is partially a response to Kenneth Clark's Civilisation series, which represents a more traditionalist view of the Western artistic and cultural canon.

  17. a seminal text • The book has contributed to feminist readings of popular culture, through essays that focus particularly on depictions of women in advertisements and oil paintings. Ways of Seeing is considered to be a seminal text for current studies of visual culture and art history.

  18. Walker Percy(May 28, 1916 – May 10, 1990) • was an American Southern author whose interests included philosophy and semiotics. Percy is best known for his philosophical novels set in and around New Orlean Louisiana, the first of which, The Moviegoer, won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1962. He devoted his literary life to the exploration of "the dislocation of man in the modern age."

  19. "The Loss of the Creature" • "The Loss of the Creature" is an exploration of the way the more or less objective reality of the individual is obscured in and ultimately lost to systems of education and classification. Percy begins by discussing the Grand Canyon--he says that, whereas García López de Cárdenas, who discovered the canyon, was amazed and awed by it, the modern-day sightseer can see it only through the lens of "the symbolic complex which has already been formed in the sightseer's mind" (47).

  20. A Postcard Experience • Because of this, the sightseer does not appreciate the Grand Canyon on its own merits; he appreciates it based on how well or poorly it conforms to his preexisting image of the Grand Canyon, formed by the mythology surrounding it. What is more, instead of approaching the site directly, he approaches it by taking photographs, which, Percy says, is not approaching it at all. By these two processes--judging the site on postcards and taking his own pictures of it instead of confronting it himself--the tourist subjugates the present to the past and to the future, respectively.

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