the interpretation of cultures clifford geertz summary

76) Primarily, thinking is social and overt, requiring objective (in sense of Mead) things. 49) The anthropological take on cognition: Overt, public thought vs internal thought.

Without men, no culture, certainly but equally, and more significantly, without culture, no men.” (p. Such symbols are thus not mere expressions, instrumentalities, or correlates of our biological, psychological, and social existence they are prerequisites of it. “To supply the additional information necessary to be able to act, we were forced, in turn, to rely more and more heavily on cultural sources– the accumulated fund of significant symbols. Some evolutionary emergence of cultural rituals and meanings: Man as evolved is “unfinished”. No true universal generalizations are possible. 26) The matter of generalizing: in trying to find a universal theory of culture in frame of specific cultures. This model is EXTREMELY similar to analysis of simulatable models. Analyze signifiers, predict outcomes, etcetera. This uses clinical inference to deduct cultural model. The goal of generalization in cultural interpretation: it is not to generalize across boundaries, but within them. This is true, but culture is a public meaning and a common interpretation of relevant symbols. Culture and understanding (or a lack thereof): Wittgenstein claims that we cannot totally understand one another. 9) Anthropological understanding of a culture “consists of whatever it is that one has to know or believe to in order to operate in a manner acceptable to its members.” The issue is to bridge cultures identify the causes of conflict and integration. Explicating events is to interpret them, but analysis is an interpretation of the signs, codes, and meaning. 5) Ethnography is “thick description”, an accounting of facts.

Geertz opens with the claim that the interpretation of culture is semiotic in nature. Geertz concludes that semiotics and symbolic action is the means for interpreting cultures effectively, since cultures are symbol systems, and actions are symbolic in of themselves. This book is a collection of various essays attempting to find a more universal understanding of human culture and nature.

Geertz approaches culture from an anthropological perspective.

Procedural abstraction and representation.

The interpretation of cultures clifford geertz summary