Local Knowledge: Further Essays In Interpretive AnthropologyFrom the preeminent anthropologist, a landmark exploration of how culture shapes human society “Shrewd and often illuminating."—New York Times Over his storied career, Clifford Geertz pioneered ground-breaking approaches to anthropology, arguing that interpreting and analyzing cultural symbols was central to understanding a wide range of societies. In Local Knowledge, he revisits and expands the core ideas that reshaped an entire field. In chapters covering everything from art in Renaissance Italy to political pageantry in Java, Geertz deepens our understanding of human societies though the intimacies of “local knowledge.” Geertz explores the very meaning of culture and the importance of shared symbolism as a means of understanding the world. Through his signature analysis and undeniable, intellectual rigor, this foundational text invites readers to better understand how culture produces the ideas and systems that populate our everyday lives. |
Contents
| 3 | |
The Refiguration of Social | 19 |
On the Social History | 36 |
On | 55 |
Chapter 4 Common Sense as a Cultural System | 73 |
Chapter 5 Art as a Cultural System | 94 |
Reflections | 121 |
Toward | 147 |
Fact and Law | 167 |
Acknowledgments | 235 |
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Common terms and phrases
Abelam adat Adat Law adatrecht adjudication aesthetic analogy analysis anthropology anyway Bali Balinese behavior Buddhist called charisma classical common sense conception concerned connection context course court critical cultural dharma discourse epistemology essay ethnographic experience fact Geertz genre going haqq Hindu human ibid ideas imagination India individuals Indonesia institutions interpretive intersexuality Islamic Law issue Java Javanese justice king least Legal Pluralism legal sensibility less Lingat literary lives look Majapahit matter means Minangkabau mind modern moral Moroccan Morocco Mulay Muslim natural Nelson Goodman nisba normative notion Pageantry painting particular perhaps person philosophical poet Pokot political practical problem Quran realm religion religious ritual royal rules šarica seems Sefrou semiotic social sciences society sort Southeast Asia structure symbolic Tafilalt talk theory things thought tion traditional translation truth turn village whole witness word Yoruba
Popular passages
Page 15 - But it is from the far more difficult achievement of seeing ourselves amongst others, as a local example of the forms human life has locally taken, a case among cases, a world among worlds, that the largeness of mind, without which objectivity is self-congratulation and tolerance a sham, comes.
Page 9 - Translation," here, is not a simple recasting of others' ways of putting things in terms of our own ways of putting them (that is the kind in which things get lost), but displaying the logic of their ways of putting them in the locutions of ours...