Meaning vs. Power: Are Thick Description and Power Analysis intrinsically at odds? Response to Interpretation, Explanation, and Clifford Geertz

Religion Compass 6 (12):534-542 (2012)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

This essay clarifies and defends the methodological multidimensionality and improvisational character of Clifford Geertz’s account of interpretation and explanation. In contrast to accounts of power analysis offered by Michel Foucault and Talal Asad, I argue that Geertz’s work can simultaneously attend to meaning, power, identity, and experience in understanding and assessing religious practices and cultural formations.

Categories

Keywords

Reprint years

Links

PhilArchive

External links

  • This entry has no external links. Add one.
Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

My notes

Similar books and articles

What Cultural Theorists of Religion have to learn from Wittgenstein, or, How to Read Geertz as a Practice Theorist.Jason A. Springs - 2008 - Journal of the American Academy of Religion 76 (4).
Thick Description: Towards an Interpretive Theory of Culture.Clifford Geertz - 1973 - In The Interpretation of Cultures. Basic Books.
Handlung, Text, Kultur. Überlegungen zur hermeneutischen Anthropologie zwischen Clifford Geertz und Paul Ricoeur.Thiemo Breyer - 2013 - Meta: Research in Hermeneutics, Phenomenology, and Practical Philosophy 5 (1):107-129.
Clifford Geertz: Culture Custom and Ethics.Fred Inglis - 2000 - Polity Press.
Il filosofo e il confessore: antropologia e ermeneutica in Clifford Geertz.Roberto Malighetti - 1991
Antropologie tussen wetenschap en kunst: essays over Clifford Geertz.J. W. Bakker, Y. Kuiper & Jelle Miedema - 1987
Verschriebene Fremdheit: die Ethnographie kultureller Brüche bei Clifford Geertz und Stephen Greenblatt.Lutz Ellrich - 1999 - Campus Verlag.
Stir Crazy: Review of Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, by Michel Foucault. [REVIEW]Clifford Geertz - 1994 - In Barry Smart (ed.), Michel Foucault: Critical Assessments. Routledge. pp. 300.
Defending scientific study of the social: Against Clifford Geertz (and his critics).Kei Yoshida - 2007 - Philosophy of the Social Sciences 37 (3):289-314.
Ideology, semiotics, and Clifford Geertz: Some Russian reflections.Andrey Zorin - 2001 - History and Theory 40 (1):57–73.
Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics.Clifford Geertz - 2000 - Princeton University Press.
The Fate of "culture": Geertz and Beyond.Sherry B. Ortner - 1999 - Univ of California Press.
Art as a Cultural System.Clifford Geertz, Daniil Aronson & Andrei Korbut - 2010 - Russian Sociological Review 9 (2):31-54.
Review symposium on Clifford Geertz (continued : Life Understood Backward: Geertz's Pessimism in After the Fact.M. Carrithers - 1996 - History of the Human Sciences 9 (4):167-173.
Doing the Right Thing in Cross-Cultural Representation:The Predicament of Culture. James Clifford; Writing Culture. James Clifford, George E. Marcus; Works and Lives. Clifford Geertz; Anthropology as Cultural Critique. George E. Marcus, Michael M. J. Fischer. [REVIEW]Thomas McCarthy - 1992 - Ethics 102 (3):635-.

Analytics

Added to PP
2016-05-27

Downloads
1,263 (#8,904)

6 months
78 (#53,450)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Jason Springs
University of Notre Dame

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

The Concept of Mind.Gilbert Ryle - 1949 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 141:125-126.
The Concept of Mind.Gilbert Ryle - 1950 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 1 (4):328-332.
On the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme.Donald Davidson - 1973 - Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 47:5-20.
[Letter from Gilbert Ryle].Gilbert Ryle - 1932 - Philosophy 7 (26):250 -.

View all 10 references / Add more references