kvmwoman.blogg.se - The Interpretation of Cultures by Clifford Geertz

An analysis is meant to pick out the critical structures and established codes. To Geertz, analysis separated observation from interpretative methodologies. Thick description emphasized a more analytical approach, whereas previously observation alone was the primary approach. His 1973 article, "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture", synthesizes his approach. He was against comprehensive theories of human behavior rather, he advocated methodologies that highlight culture from the perspective of how people looked at and experienced life. Known for his symbolic and interpretive anthropological work, Geertz's methods were in response to his critique of existing anthropological methods that searched for universal truths and theories.

Malinowski felt that an anthropologist should try to understand the perspectives of ethnographic subjects in relation to their own world.įollowing Ryle's work, the American anthropologist Clifford Geertz re-popularized the concept. Similarly Bronisław Malinowski put forth the concept of a native point of view in his 1922 work, Argonauts of the Western Pacific. The school of ethnography thought seemingly arbitrary events could convey important notions of understanding that could be lost at a first glance. This method emerged at a time when the ethnographic school was pushing for an ethnographic approach that paid particular attention to everyday events. To explain such context required grasping individuals' motivations for their behaviors and how these behaviors were understood by other observers of the community as well.

thick, which adds context to such behaviour.

thin, which includes surface-level observations of behaviour and.

Thick description was first introduced by the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle in 1968 in "The Thinking of Thoughts: What is 'Le Penseur' Doing?" and "Thinking and Reflecting". Since then, the term and the methodology it represents has gained widespread currency, not only in the social sciences but also, for example, in the type of literary criticism known as New Historicism. However, the predominant sense in which it is used today was developed by anthropologist Clifford Geertz in his book The Interpretation of Cultures (1973) to characterise his own method of doing ethnography. The term was first introduced by 20th-century philosopher Gilbert Ryle. A thick description typically adds a record of subjective explanations and meanings provided by the people engaged in the behaviors, making the collected data of greater value for studies by other social scientists. In the social sciences and related fields, a thick description is a description of human social action that describes not just physical behaviors, but their context as interpreted by the actors as well, so that it can be better understood by an outsider.