What we call our data are really our own constructions of other peopleβs constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to.
Clifford GeertzRead
I've often been accused of making anthropology into literature, but anthropology is also field research. Writing is central to it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Anthropology blends literary expression with empirical research, highlighting the importance of writing in this field.
In this quote, Geertz addresses the intersection of anthropology and literature, suggesting that while some may see his style as overly literary, the essence of anthropology lies in both the narrative and the research that informs it. He emphasizes that writing is not just a presentation of data, but a critical component of making sense of cultural experiences through the lens of field research.
Themes
AnthropologyWritingField ResearchLiteratureCulture
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in an academic setting to discuss the role of writing in social sciences.
More from Clifford Geertz
All quotes βThe point of literary criticism in anthropology is not to replace research, but to find out how it is that we are persuasive.
Clifford GeertzRead
[Culture] denotes an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms, by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.
Clifford GeertzRead
It may be in the cultural particularities of people β in their oddities β that some of the most instructive revelations of what it is to be generically human are to be found.
Clifford GeertzRead
To see ourselves as others see us can be eye-opening. To see others as sharing a nature with ourselves is the merest decency. 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.
Clifford GeertzRead
Culture is public, because meaning is
Clifford GeertzRead
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