Explanation of culture

Author: Clifford Geertz
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1999-11-01
Features: This groundbreaking work by Clifford Geertz, winner of the 1974 Sorokin Award from the American Sociological Association, helped define the ultimate purpose of the field for an entire generation of anthropologists. Faced with choices, I decided to include only those papers that had a direct and obvious relationship to cultural concepts. In fact, most of these papers are not theoretical inquiries but empirical studies, because I feel uncomfortable when I am too far removed from direct experience of social life. However, all the papers are fundamentally based on one example after another to propose a unique—perhaps even strange to others—view on what culture is, what role it plays in social life, and how it should be appropriately studied. Although redefining culture has been my enduring interest as an anthropologist, I have also done some extensions in the fields of economic development, social organization, comparative history, and cultural ecology. To avoid digressing too far, this book does not reflect these concerns. Thus, I hope that this collection of papers appears as one that has been derived through a series of specific analyses, rather than merely a review of a somewhat wandering career with the phrase "and then I wrote." This book is meant to make an argument.