Culture
is the center of Clifford Geertz's discussion in "Thick Description:
Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture". Following Max Webber, Geertz
views people as being entangled in webs of meaning that are of their own
making. Geertz refutes previous anthropological perspectives which viewed
culture as a vast array of values, techniques, tradition and so for the in
favor of a more narrow definition of the term "culture".
In "Thick
Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture" Geertz views
culture in semiotic terms, a sort of public act in which people express
themselves using various signs and symbols which have pre-ascribed cultural meaning.
Culture for Geertz is far from an abstract psychological construct. On the
contrary, culture for Geertz is embodied in the person who acts out of and in a
certain context, and culture is revealed in this person's actions and his interpretation
of their meaning. Culture is in this sense concrete and public, and not something
which exists in people's individual minds.
Following
his perception of culture Geertz holds that the ethnographer's task is in fact
the same of someone who belongs to a certain culture – to have a deep and
rooted understanding of in the semiotics – symbols and meanings – of the
culture. This is the basis for Geertz's notion of "thick description".
Thick description is defined for Geertz as a methodological imperative which takes into
account the structure and nature of a culture's semiotic formations. Geertz distinguished
"thick description' from "thin description" which is a factual
account of a culture that does not include hermeneutic interpretation which is required
by the thick description. In "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive
Theory of Culture" Geertz uses the example of a wink which can be seen as
just a contraction of the eyelids or as sign which bears cultural as well as
contextual meanings.
Here you can find an extended summary of Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture
other summaries of articles by Clifford Geertz: