ANTH 303 Anthropological Theory Fall 2017
Oct. 19: Balinese Cockfight X 2 READ: Geertz, Clifford (2005)“Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.” Daedalus. 134(4): 56-86 .URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20028014

PROPOSALS DUE

The following questions will help guide our discussion as we try to make sense of this, and other, theories. In addition, we will apply the theory to the video shown in the first day of class:

How can this theory be seen as a product of the historical period in which it was created?
What questions does this theory ask?
What information does this theory see as important?
What are other relevant assumptions made by the theory?
How does the theory analyse this information to answer the questions it sees as important?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of this approach?

Some key concepts from Geertz:
- interpretive anthropology
- culture as text: as “a story they tell themselves about themselves” (Geertz 2005: 84)
- or, culture as “webs of significance” (Geertz, cited in Roseberry 1982: 1016).
- culture as “assemblage of texts”
- influence of Weber, structural functionalism (via Parsons)
- influence of Wittgenstein and philosophical interpretation of language/“reality”
- social status and status markers
- link between “Culture” (i.e. as literature, art, etc.) and “culture” in the more anthropological sense
- deep play
- the importance of writing:
- thick description
- “experience near” versus “experience distant” – what do“natives” think they are up to versus how the researcher describes events
- influence on "writing culture" anthropologists, part of the post-modern turn that questions "meta-narratives" and perspectives
- among earlier work, Agricultural Involution, was influential; (but see critics, e.g. Benjamin White (1983) Agricultural Involution and its Critics. Working Paper Series, No. 6. The Hague: Institute of Social Studies. repub.eur.nl/pub/18760/wp6.pdf.

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