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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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 doubleentendre sense of the word "cock" exists
in the Balinese language as much as in
English.
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.
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.
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."
Jeremy Bentham
(ˈbɛnθəm/ or /ˈbɛntəm/)
15 February 1748 – 6 June 1832

an English jurist,
philosopher, and legal and
social reformer. He became
a leading theorist in AngloAmerican 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.
Panopticon blueprint
by Jeremy Bentham, 1791

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."

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 poorlaw not cut, but untied —
all by a simple idea in
Architecture!"
The ‘Gordian Knot
an intractable problem


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"):
John Berger
(born 5 November 1926)

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.
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.
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.
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."
"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).
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.