ANTH10001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Cockfight, Ethnic Group, Thick Description
28 Jul 2018
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Document Summary
Learning the language is necessary - reality reveals itself through language (winch 1964). Culture: whatever it is one has to know or believe in order to operate in a manner acceptable to the members of the group who share that culture. Geertz (1973): the analogy of the beethoven string quartet. Not simply a musical score operationalised by skilled musicians, but a form that can be improvised upon. Geertz (1973) semiotic" notion of culture: man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun . i take culture to be those webs . Understanding culture involves appreciating it not as an unchanging thing, but as a form that is constantly subject to human modification and transformation. Therefore also, the analysis of culture is not an experimental science in search of a law. rather, it is concerned with elucidating meaning. Firstly, through observation and detailed description of what we observe.
