02371nam a2200205Ia 450000500170000000800410001702000180005808200160007610000170009224500650010925000100017426000370018430000100022152017380023165000190196965000170198894200080200599900170201395201350203020261007121803.0260608s9999||||xx |||||||||||||| ||und||  a9780745621586  223a306 ING  aInglis,Fred  0aClifford Geertzb: Culture, Custom and Ethicsc/ Fred Inglis  aFirst  aCambridgeb: Polity Pressc,2000  a207p.  aThis is the first full-scale study of the work of Clifford Geertz, who is one of the best-known anthropologists in the world today. In a lively and accessible introduction to his work, Fred Inglis situates Geertz's thought in the context of his life and times, reviewing its forty-year range.
The book begins with a chapter-long biography, and places Geertz in the anthropological tradition from which he broke so decisively. This break was inspired by the work of Wittgenstein and Kenneth Burke, who provided Geertz with the lead to construct his theory of symbolic action. This theory was vigorously at odds with the dominant idiom of scientistic inquiry in the human sciences, and since then Geertz has led the practice of these sciences in quite a different direction. Geertz's progress is charted in detail by his field work in Java, Bali and Morocco, as well as his work in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His two remarkable collections of essays, the Interpretation of Cultures and Local Knowledge, are enthusiastically summarized and criticized. The celebrated and controversial essay on the Balinese cock fight is defended against its critics, and in an extended conclusion, his account of the Balinese Theatre-State is, as Geertz suggests, proposed as a more adequate method for the combined study of culture and politics than the professionals' routine application of heavy-handed concepts such as 'power' and 'status'. This book provides a comprehensive overview of one of the most gripping, lucid and entertaining of contemporary thinkers, and in so doing, makes anthropology once again the popular science. It will be of great interest to anthropologists and to students and scholars of cultural studies.  aSocial Science  aAnthropology  cRBK  c69135d69135  00102ddc4071aSNULbSNULd2026-06-08l0o306 INGpG8012r2026-06-08 15:45:18w2026-06-08yRBKzProf. Romila Thapar's Collection