Clifford Geertz - Fred Inglis

This is the first full-scale study of the work of Clifford Geertz,who is one of the best-known anthropologists in the world today. Ina lively and accessible introduction to his work, Fred Inglissituates Geertz's thought in the context of his life and times,reviewing its forty-year range.


The book begins with a chapter-long biography, and places Geertz inthe anthropological tradition from which he broke so decisively.This break was inspired by the work of Wittgenstein and KennethBurke, who provided Geertz with the lead to construct his theory ofsymbolic action. This theory was vigorously at odds with thedominant idiom of scientistic inquiry in the human sciences, andsince then Geertz has led the practice of these sciences in quite adifferent direction.

Geertz's progress is charted in detail by his field work in Java,Bali and Morocco, as well as his work in the Institute for AdvancedStudy in Princeton. His two remarkable collections of essays, theInterpretation of Cultures and Local Knowledge, areenthusiastically summarized and criticized. The celebrated andcontroversial essay on the Balinese cock fight is defended againstits critics, and in an extended conclusion, his account of theBalinese Theatre-State is, as Geertz suggests, proposed as a moreadequate method for the combined study of culture and politics thanthe professionals' routine application of heavy-handed conceptssuch as 'power' and 'status'.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of one of the mostgripping, lucid and entertaining of contemporary thinkers, and inso doing, makes anthropology once again the popular science. Itwill be of great interest to anthropologists and to students andscholars of cultural studies.