HIST 2C Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: White Bread, Thick Description, Sharecropping
Document Summary
Opening article on the interpretation of culture. About defining culture; not particularly art and music culture, but our language, gestures forms of eating, etc. This is a culture that is not universal, it is regional. Gurtz argues that there are no universal values, there are only values that are grounded on specific cultures. And we are prisoners of those webs of existence. Subjectively we can only approximate, we think we know something but we can never fully capture what people feel because we are not them and we don"t feel things the exact same way they do. All knowledge is embedded in language, language is embedded in cultures, therefore knowledge is lucid. Thin description: teo goes to betty and winks, betty would say teo wink he may have a nervous tick or something. Thick description: in different cultures a wink can have all different kinds of meanings and can only be read by people who understand that culture.
