ANTHROP 2F03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Clifford Geertz, Alterity, Thick Description
11 Jul 2014
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What is culture again: shared, socially learned, knowledge, and, patterns of behaviour. Objects of anthropological analysis: practices, relations/relationships, meanings, value. Aspects of meaning: components of cultural knowledge: norms: standards of propriety and appropriateness, values: about desirability and worthwhileness, symbols: objects and behaviours with conventional meanings, construction: divisions of reality into categories/classifications, worldviews: interpretations of events, experiences. Terms for symbolic or semiotic analysis: sign: anything can be sign as long as someone interprets it as signifying something: referring to or standing for something other than itself. Index a mode in which the signifier is not arbitrary but is directly connected in some way to (physically or causally) to the signified (pointing to, indicate) Icon: stands for, based upon resemblance, similarity analogy. (vs points to ); christ on the cross stands for or is iconic of the suffering of christ. What is in a term: alterity, categories.
