In
"From the Native's Point of View: On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding"
(in: Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretative Anthropology") Clifford Geertz refines some of the main ideas presented in his previous
studies such as "thick description" and "cultural meaning".
Geertz views culture as embodies in public signs and symbols, as a web weaved
by man himself which makes the world understandable. Geertz also discussed the
anthropoligist's role in tracing and deciphering these meaning structures by
coinciding his own as well as the native's point of view.
In
"From the Native's Point of View: On the Nature of Anthropological
Understanding" Geertz deals with methodological and epistemological
question pertaining to the anthropological quest for an adequate representation
of another culture's experience of reality.
According
to Geertz the anthropologist's task in neither objective nor subjective, it is
both. He demonstrates this point by opposing "experience-near", which
is the spontaneous and unaware experience, with "experience-distant"
is the conceptualized account of reality. The anthropologist according to
Geertz always shifts back and forth between these two forms of experience.
Geertz
demonstrates his point through a comperative discussion of how deferent
cultures perceive the concept of "person". Geertz compare the
perceptions of "person" in Bali, Java and Morocco which are rather
different from the western perception of the self as unique, consistent and
whole.
In Java,
for example, Geertz finds that the notion of person is organized through two
sets of contradictions: inside/outside and refined/vulgar. The inside/outside
distinction refers to two distinct realms: personal and private emotions and
external behavior. The refined/vulgar distinction refer to a moral aspect in
which the person assumes his correct position in the word.
In Bali
Geertz shows how a rich and complex structure of personal denotations construct
the person and his place in the social order (see: "Person Time and Conduct in Bali").
In Morocco
the main principle according to Geertz is that of "nisba"
which denotes or interpolates the person's always relative social identity.
other summaries of articles by Clifford Geertz:
You should read:
