Sustainability Studies Methods Field Journal
Mary Kate Rigney
Annotation 12
5 November 2012
1. Geertz, Clifford. Chapter 1/Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of
Culture. NY Basic Books. New York: 1973.
2. Clifford Geertz is an American anthropologist who taught at the University of
Chicago and Princeton, where he made significant contributions to the field of
symbolic anthropology through a method known as thick description. Geertz
published The Interpretations of Cultures, Kinship in Bali and Local Knowledge:
Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, in addition to numerous other works
and publications.
3. Topics Include:
a. The notion that ethnography is what the practitioners of anthropology do, and
while it is a method, what is important about it is the aspect of thick
description.
b. Thick description relies on the ethnographer to pick up on subtleties and make
inferences on behavior.
c. Ethnography data as constructions of another person’s constructions of their
own actions.
d. The idea that culture is public—that you can’t reduce culture or reify it—
instead it should be that human behavior is seen as symbolic action.
e. Ethnographic research consists of speaking and interactions with the natives,
it is not contingent upon trying to mimic or become them.
f. Anthropological writings are themselves interpretations—there is no division
between mode of representation and substantive content.
g. By writing down events, the ethnographer turns a passive experience into an
account.
h. Ethnographer’s findings are specific and particular because of the
circumstances they are reported in—this is the microscopic nature of
ethnography, and while it presents methodological problems, it is about
realizing they can be applied elsewhere.
i. Concept of theory building—drawing conclusions from the observational
level.
4. Main Point:
a. Geertz’s argument is that the study of culture should be done through an
interpretive approach, with the ethnographer writing thick descriptions from
being in the field in an active manner, and then building theories based off of
those observations.
5. Supported by:
a. Discrediting other approaches to studying culture and highlighting why his
approach is superior.
b. Evaluating the three conditions of cultural theory and demonstrating why and
how his approach yields better insights and applications.
c. Breaking down the theories behind the methods and how they contribute to a
more revealing and accurate analysis of culture.
6. Quotes:
a. “The concept of culture I espouse, and whose utility the essays below attempt
to demonstrate, is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that
man is an animal suspended in webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not
an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of
meaning.”
b. “In finished anthropological writings, including those collected here, this
fact—that what we call our data are really our own constructions of other
people’s constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to—is
obscured because most of what we need to comprehend a particular event,
ritual, custom, idea, or whatever is insinuated as background information
before the thing itself is directly examined.”
c. “Looking at the ordinary in places where it takes unaccustomed forms brings
out not, as has so often been claimed, the arbitrariness of human behavior
(there is nothing especially arbitrary about taking sheep theft for insolence in
Morocco), but the degree to which its meaning varies according to the pattern
of life by which it is informed. Understanding a people’s culture exposes their
normalness without reducing their particularity.”
7. Questions About Methods:
a. I had a particularly hard time digesting the material from this piece, but I was
unsure of what he meant by analyzing the structures of signification?
b. Defining symbols is mentioned as being crucial to constructing thick
description, are there any specific methods that allow the ethnographer to first
acknowledge the presence of, and then analyze the meaning of symbols in a
culture of study?
c. When building off someone else’s study to examine more deeply a culture,
what sort of questions would the ethnographer ask to attain a deeper
understanding?
8. Further Research:
a. I would like to look into some of Geertz’s own writings of thick description to
get a better sense of his theory put into action.
b. The variations between different types or levels of thick description and if the
complexity of the culture correlates with the complexity of the thick
description.
c. It would also be interesting to look into anthropologists who advocate a
different approach to examining and then inscribing observations, other than
thick description.