ANT 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 13: Clifford Geertz, Symbolic Anthropology, Thick Description
Document Summary
Ethnography - recording/analysis of culture/society involving in-depth interviews and participant observation. Known for its ability to include a lot of detail and context in a study including behavior, patterns, clothing choices, environment. Leads reader to be able to see below the surface. Serves to make sense out of chaos. Symbolic anthropology: interpreting signs of a culture and what it means in that specific culture. Ritual: social behavior, actions with a symbolic meaning. Believed the function of culture is to impose meaning on the world and make it understandable. Wanted to interpret symbols of other cultures. Talks about how roosters and fighting symbolically and are stand ins for their trainers; cocks are extension of the men themselves, embodying animal nature of the human spirit. Noted how men fought for status rankings. Some form of cockfighting present in all cultures. Focuses primarily on his own personal perspective. Ignores different pieces of the cockfight like inequality, focuses on men mostly.
