Clifford Geertz purveyor of small things

In a 1995 article in The New Statesman, the anthropologist Jonathan Benthall wrote, "Clifford Geertz disappoints some colleagues because he comes up with no overarching theories." Benthall was right or at least partly so Geertz deliberately chose not to expound universal theories, seeking instead to find meaning in small-scale observations of simple human interaction -- what he called "local knowledge", the title of one of his 17 books. This insistence on comparativism disappointed a fair number of scholars, but Geertz's work has also cast the most influence on modern anthropology.

Clifford Geertz is no more he passed away on October 30, 2006, in Philadelphia, usa, from complications of heart surgery. He was 80.

"Stories we tell ourselves about ourselves" -- this is how Geertz defined culture. This was also an admonition of social science's tendency to be like natural sciences objective, numerical, factual and positive.Anthropologists were hardly passive, objective observers, but rather individual creators of narratives, with their own voice, he noted.

Geertz's search for stories took him to cultures as diverse as Indonesia and Morrocco. In his 1968 book, Islam Observed, he described the cultural influences of Islam on economics, shopping, politics and family structures in those cultures. He went to Bali in 1957 and attended the Balinese cockfight; the result was arguably the most influential single essay in anthropology, 'Deep Play notes on the Balinese cockfight'. Published later in The Interpretation of Cultures, the essay is a remarkable example of how to understand highly peculiar but everyday life as "a constellation of enshrined ideas". His aim was to persuade his readers that cockfight was not just a cheap, low-life blood sport on which foolish young men wagered far more money than they could sensibly afford. It was an "art form" of monumental proportions, through which the Balinese caught themes as diverse as "[d]eath, masculinity, rage, pride, loss, beneficence, chance and ordered them into an encompassing structure".

In justifying this approach, Geertz claimed to be demonstrating how closely the work of the anthropologist resembles that of the literary critic. In particular, he wanted to show how cultural interpretation resembled a critic's reading of a poem. The distinct literary sensibility had perhaps something to do with his early ambition of being a novelist. But it is also clear that his agenda was to persuade his readers to take a different attitude to behaviour to which most Westerners would normally react with disgust. By portraying cockfighting as a noble art, he was engaged in the same exploit as his precursor and teacher Margaret Mead using the "bizarre and the exotic" to destabilise Western cultural assumptions.

The tactic worked. In the 19^th century, Western imperial powers used the anarchy of rituals such as the cockfight as a rationale for imposing their own rule of law over states where it was practised. But by the second half of the 20^th century, anthropologists were making a case for ceremonies of this kind not as instances of exoticism or barbarism but as authentic expressions of particular cultures.

The approach had its critics as well. In an obvious reference to Geertz, the anthropologist Robert Edgerton wrote, "For these relativists, not only is each culture unique unto itself, but people's thoughts, feelings and motivations are radically different from one culture to another. In this perspective, a person from another culture remains the 'Other, forever incomprehensible'. The literary critic Keith Windschuttle was more trenchant. "Cultural anthropologists have endorsed an ideological package that has flattered third-world rulers, indigenous elites, and the bureaucracies of international organisations, but at considerable cost to ordinary people in the countries they have influenced," he wrote.

Geertz answered many of these criticisms, patiently, with characteristic wit and self-deprecating modesty, very often presenting his critics' strongest case. In his 1983 essay, 'Anti Anti-Relativism', he claimed his use of the title was necessitated by a desire to not "give the topic a positive endorsement". Nevertheless the conclusion of that essay endorsed relativism's central position there can never be any morality or knowledge that is trans-cultural or beyond culture.

The position also led to him being labelled a post-modernist -- an association he consistently denied, claiming that his politics was that of a social liberal. The biggest influence on his career was the later work of the philosopher Ludwig von Wittgenstein, especially his arguments about the impossibility of a private language, he said.

In his later years Geertz seems to have revised some of his earlier positions. In one of his last essays, 'The World in Piece', he commends "that the world is still our common home...that it is the duty of scholars and intellectuals to keep up good hope".

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