The Interpretation of Cultures

Gilbert Ryle (1900-1976) was a British philosopher whose theory of the human mind and his notion of thick description are key concepts in Geertz’s analyses and theoretical developments. 

Ryle is most popularly known for his 1949 publication, The Concept of Mind, which challenges traditional Cartesian mind-body dualism: 

Traditional Cartesian dualism, Ryle says, perpetrates a serious confusion when, looking beyond the human body (which exists in space and is subject to mechanical laws), it views the mind as an additional mysterious thing not subject to observation or to mechanical laws, rather than as the form or organizing principle of the body (“Gilbert Ryle.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, October 2, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Gilbert-Ryle.). 

Geertz’s analysis draws on Ryle’s concept that the mind is not a separate place and that thinking organizes human behavior; he cites Ryle extensively as he endeavors to show that culture is deeply intertwined with both the cognitive and affective aspects of human thought and the ordering of human behavior. 

From Ryle’s theory of human thought follows the notion of “thick description,” first coined in his lecture, “The Thinking of Thoughts: What is ‘Le Penseur’ Doing?” (1968). For Ryle, “Thinking can be saying things to oneself under a thin description. Under a thicker description it may be saying things to oneself with the specific heuristic intention of trying to open one’s eyes or consolidate one’s grasp” (Tanney, Julia. “Gilbert Ryle.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2021. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ryle/.). Geertz takes this notion and applies it to his conceptualization of ethnography: the description of cultural patterns and the interpretation of their meaning. Geertz’s development of the concept of thick description has had a lasting impact on the field of anthropology, making Ryle a key figure in The Interpretation of Cultures and the field of anthropology. 

Max Weber (1864-1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economist. He is considered “a principal architect of modern social science” (Kim, Sung Ho. “Max Weber.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2017. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/weber/.), and his theory plays a key role in Geertz’s discussion, particularly regarding rationalism/rationalization and Verstehen methodology. 

Although Weber’s idea of rationalization betrays a Western-centric bias in his work, it plays a key role in Geertz’s analysis of Balinese religion in Chapter 7. Weber saw rationalization as a historical drive towards mastery through calculability and predictability that increase knowledge, impersonalization, and control. Geertz uses the distinction that Weber draws between traditional religion and rationalized religion as the starting point for discussing the transformation of Balinese religion, although Geertz does not the find the distinction so polar or linear. 

Weber’s Verstehen methodology, the question of objective study of subjective dimensions of human society, also finds voice in Geertz’s work. According to Weber, scientific understanding (Verstehen) can indeed strive for objectivity by focusing on causality, but because the social scientist’s interpretation is inherently subjective, full objectivity is impossible. Although Geertz rejects the causal aspect of Verstehen, the interpretive aspect plays a key role in his conceptualization social science—specifically anthropology, where interpretation and discourse is the driving aim. This is most evident in Geertz’s assertion that the study of religion and ideology should not evaluate the content of either. The interpretive dimension allows the social scientist to at once approach objective understanding while acknowledging the self-reflexivity inherent to that understanding.

Finally, Weber’s distinction between the ethic of responsibility and the ethic of conviction, as well as his insistence that the gulf between the two should be closed, influences on Geertz’s discussion of new state politics—particularly, the ways that the establishment of a unified polity and its tension with “primordial conflict” play into one another in the process of integrative revolution.

Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) was an American sociologist credited with introducing Weber’s work to American sociology, and with drawing together clinical psychology, social anthropology, and sociology into a single theoretical framework (“Talcott Parsons.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, May 4, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Talcott-Parsons.). Geertz relies on the ideas and approaches espoused in Parsons’s The Social System (1951) for some of his own theoretical construction.

Parsons’s structural-functional analysis of social order, integration, and equilibrium forms the basis of Geertz’s conceptual revision of functionalism in Chapter 6. Parsons delineates “three aspects of the structuring of a completely concrete system of social action” (145): social system, personality system, and cultural system, all playing into the flow of behavior. For Geertz, however, these aspects must be distinguished and conceived not as mirrors of one another, but separate, mutually interdependent systems. Furthermore, Geertz’s consideration of nationalist ideology in new states in Chapter 9 includes an examination and revision of Parsons’ conceptions of culture and ideology.

Claude Levi-Strauss (1908-2009) was a French anthropologist and ethnologist. He is most known for being a leading advocate of structuralism, “the analysis of cultural systems […] in terms of the structural relations among their elements” (“Claude Levi-Strauss.” Encyclopaedia Britannica, March 16, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Claude-Levi-Strauss.). Geertz discusses Levi-Strauss’s weaving of spiritual pursuit and positive scientific extensively in Chapter 13, examining two of his anthropological works, Tristes Tropiques (1955) and La Pensée Sauvage (1962). That Geertz devotes an entire chapter to the examination of Levi-Strauss’s work demonstrates the influence of Weberian considerations on Geertz’s line of thinking, as well as his participation in the debates of his time about objectivity and subjectivity in the social sciences.