POLS 7040 Wednesday, February 15, 2012 READINGS

Cross-Cultural Interpretation [1]

Clifford Geertz, selections from The Interpretation of Cultures Peter Winch, selections from The Idea of a Social Science Peter Winch, Understanding a Primitive Society

OUTLINES Clifford Geertz, selections from The Interpretation of Cultures Chapter 1: Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture 1. Evolution of theoretical concepts, from du jour grande ide that is applied to everything possible to part of our general stock of theoretical concepts 1.1. Seems like new positive science at first 1.2. Fits the history of the concept of culture 1.3. Cutting of the culture concept down to size, which ensures its continual relevancy 1.4. Trend in conceptualization of culture in anthropology scattered so far 1.5. Geertzs definition of culture: a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. 2. Anthropology and ethnography 2.1. Difference in movements observed from phenomenalistic, I-am-a-camera approach versus an interpretive one 2.1.1. First is radically behavioristthin description 2.1.2. Second is thick description, the object of ethnography 2.1.2.1. A stratified hierarchy of meaningful structures in terms of [what is] produced, perceived, and interpreted without which [the movements] would note as a cultural category in fact exist 2.2. What we call data are really our own constructions of other peoples constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to 2.2.1. This view of data and what this information can do leads ups to think anthropology is less interpretive than it really is, but really the discipline is explicating explications 2.3. Ethnography is thick description 2.3.1. The ethnographer faces structures, at once strange, irregular, and inexplicit 3. Is culture subjective or objective? 3.1. Is culture patterned conduct or a frame of mind, or mixed? 3.1.1. Important question not what their ontological status is (its real in the sense of being in the world anyways) but what is getting said, i.e. Ricoeurs sagen 3.1.2. Geertz rejects that we can reduce culture to the brute patterns of behavioral events

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3.2. If describing culture is just writing out rules so that one can pass as a native, (Geertz calls this extreme subjectivism married to extreme formalism sets up the dichotomy between describing reality versus merely clever simulations, logically equivalent but substantively different from the experience of the native 3.3. Geertz proposed that culture is public: meaning can only be construed in a social context, in which one understands what one is doing 3.3.1. To equate know how to perform a cultural act with being part of the culture is taking thin description for thick and committing a cognitivist fallacy 3.3.1.1. Cant be analyzed by formal methods or logic 3.3.2. Thin description is counterproductive to an effective use of the concept as are the behaviorist and idealist fallacies to which it is a misdrawn correction 4. Ethnography is finding your feet 4.1. Geertz criticizes anthropologists who try to makes it a scientific endeavor as excessive: hes not seeking to mimic a native or become one through formalized rules 4.2. Opts for a semiotic concept of culture instead 4.2.1. Cultures are intertwined systems of construable signs not a power, something to which social events, behaviors, institutions, or process can be causally attributed; it is a context, something within which they can be intelligiblythat is, thickly described 4.2.2. This understanding exposes cultures normalness without reducing their particularity 4.2.3. Verstehen too bookish 4.2.4. Cultural descriptions should describe whats happening to people of a different culture in the way they describe what happens to them (all reflexive back to the native 4.3. Line between culture as a natural fact versus a theoretical entity is often blurred 4.4. Anthropological writings are themselves interpretations, and second and third order ones to boot, fictions, something made, created and not natural (naturally & phenomenologically observable) 4.4.1. Not social reality but scholarly artifice 4.5. Instead of verification, Geertz prefers appraisal

5. Extending the semiotic approach 5.1. Culture as symbolic system 5.1.1. Isolate elements 5.1.2. Specify internal relationships 5.1.3. Characterizing the whole system generallytheoretically (ideologically arranged?) 5.1.4. We gain empirical access to them [cultural systems] by inspecting events, not by arranging abstracted entities into unified patterns 5.2. Geertz: coherence cannot be the major test of validity for a cultural description 5.2.1. Link to Webers causal adequacy and not validity 5.2.2. Against divorcing it from reality and making it vacant

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Cross-Cultural Interpretation [3]

5.2.3. A good interpretation takes us into the heart of that of which it is the interpretation, which, according to Geertz, a perfectly formalized, rationalized confection cannot 5.3. Inscribing social discourse to turn it from sagen to aus-sage 5.4. Summary: theory purified of material complexities is to pretend a science that does not exist and imagine reality that cannot be found 6. Ethnography description 6.1. Interpretive of the flow of social discourse I order to rescue the said and fix it 6.2. Praises concreteness 6.3. Moving from local truths to general visions has been responsible for undermining the effort as its critics have been 6.4. Two models of criticism 6.4.1. Microcosmic model 6.4.1.1. The locus of study is not the object of study 6.4.1.2. Applied to political science? 6.4.2. Natural experiment model 7. Two characteristics of cultural interpretation that makes theorizing difficult 7.1. The need for theory to stay close to the ground 7.2. Cultural theory is not predictive: clinical inference does not apply 7.2.1. Problem of falsifiability in the social science (p. 27) 7.2.2. The aim is to draw large conclusions from small, but very densely textured facts 8. Recommends interpretation event to positivisms 8.1. Symbols using humans? 8.2. Beyond sociological aestheticism, focusing on realities

Chapter 2: The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man 1. Structural explanations does not equal scientific analysis 1.1. Social sciences consist of substituting complex pictures for simple ones while striving somehow to retain the persuasive clarity that went with the simple ones 2. Elegance as general scientific ideal 2.1. Contrast with social sciences: departures from ideal 2.2. The attempt to be clear and simple in reconstructing an intelligible account of man is expressed through scientific thinking about culture 3. Enlightenment view of man 3.1. Lawscapital ones 3.2. Still in contemporary anthropological thought 3.3. Has much less acceptable implications 3.4. Elimination of differencesillusion 4. Attempts to locate man amid the body of his customs 4.1. Layers that can be peeled back to a irreducible self 4.2. Whats at the center?

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Cross-Cultural Interpretation [4]

5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

4.3. Halfway house between the 18th and 20th centuries of part outward expression of inward motions and part emanations of those motions themselves All three approaches of consensus gentium fail Genuine danger of relativism: It can be warded off only by facing directly and fully the diversities of human culture While it is not that that to view institutions somewhat scientifically, it is very much more difficult to state this relationship (between man and its institutions) in unequivocal form The problem of bloodless universals 8.1. Fear of historicism and the slippery slope of cultural relativism 8.2. Argues for a synthetic conception of the biological, psychological, sociological, and cultural factors in which all these can be treated as variable in one, coherent system of analysis (system of manhumanistic, holistic) 8.2.1. Culture is best seen not as complexes od concrete behaviors but as a set of control mechanisms for governing of behavior 8.2.1.1. Social 8.2.1.2. Public 8.2.1.2.1. AKA symbolic things that impose meaning upon experience 8.2.2. Man is precisely the animal most desperately dependent upon such extragenetic, outside-the-skin control mechanisms for ordering his behavior 8.2.3. Man as unfinished creatures 8.3. More problems with actual men as reflections, distortions, approximations Against Man as metaphysical entity 9.1. Geertz sees no opposition between generalized, abstract understanding in terms of theories versus circumstantial understanding 9.2. Scientific theory is about cover lawsyet what defines man is its variability 9.3. To be human here is thus not to be Everyman; it is to be a particular kind of man 9.4. Urges descend into detail in social sciences

Peter Winch, selections from The Idea of a Social Science 1. Meaningful behavior 1.1. Wittgensteins account of languagelinguistic philosophy approach to social science (application of a rule) 1.2. Meaning behavior as symbolic, Weber: if and insofar as the agent or agents associate a subjective sense with it 1.2.1. Subjectively intended: motive and reason 1.2.1.1. Problems: linguistic? Cultural? Socioeconomic? 1.2.1.2. Sinnhaft: traditional versus purely reactive 1.2.2. Further: action with a sense is symbolic 1.2.2.1. Actual actions is not necessary, because meaning is private and the idea is all that matters 1.2.2.1.1. Semantically stable? 2. Investigation of regularities

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2.1. Mill: institution as embodiment of uniformity, which can only be grasped in a generalization 2.1.1. This makes it verifiable 2.1.2. But uniformity presupposes judgments of identity, which makes the whole enterprise relative 2.2. In a physical science, the relevant rules are those governing the procedure of investigators in the science in question 2.2.1. Individual scientific investigator 2.2.1.1. His relation to the phenomena which he investigates 2.2.1.2. His relation to his fellow scientists 2.2.2. His relationships actually constitutes meaning of his findings 2.2.2.1. Is this true for social sciences? 3. Understanding social institutions 3.1. The concepts and criteria according to which the sociologist judges that, in tow situations, the same thing has happen must be understood in relation to the rules governing sociological investigation. 3.1.1. Why? 3.2. Social institutions cannot be simply observed as a natural category 3.2.1. Example of liquidity in economics 3.2.1.1. Secondary categories 3.3. Understanding of a human society is closely connect with the activities of the philosopher 4. Residues vs. derivatives 4.1. Two functions of division: 4.1.1. It is supposed to provide recurring features in our observation of human societies, which will be a suitable subject for scientific generalization 4.1.1.1. Residues: constant, recurring elements: what remains when the changeless features are left out of account 4.1.1.1.1. E.g. Enlightenment man, rational, formal 4.1.1.2. Derivations: variables: refers to a fact about such kinds of conduct which was discovered empirically the main occupants of this category are the theories in terms of which people try to explain why behave as they do 4.1.1.2.1. Must have quasi-intellectual and intellectual content 4.1.1.2.2. Relation between idea and context is an internal one 4.2. Social science, in that they have social significance, cannot be observational and experimental 5. Verstehen and causal explanation 5.1. Winch: Weber is wrong in that he is incorrect about the process of verification in sociological interpretations 5.2. Verstehen requires philosophy 5.3. Said of social performance: the actual performance can never be reduced to the ability to make statistical predictions

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6. Internality of social relations 6.1. Kinds of new ideas 6.2. If social relations between men exist only in and through their idea, then, since the relations between ideas are internal relations, social relations must be a specie of internal relations too. 6.3. Problems with thunder example? 6.4. Reaffirms role of philosophical investigation in social sciencesidea of social science is invalid? Peter Winch, Understanding a Primitive Society 1. Main question: how to make intelligible in our terms institutions belonging to a primitive culture, whose standards of rationality and intelligibility are apparently quite at odds with our own? 2. Issues with Evans-Pritchards Witchcraft, Oracles, and Magic among the Azande 2.1. rejection of Evans-Prichards scientific criteria thesis, the idea that science and scientific Western culture be the ultimate judge 2.2. Agrees with logical versus scientific binary, but scientific is not in accordance with objective reality, just some reality 2.3. Rationality approach, not relativist 2.3.1. Rationalist approach requires prior knowledge, It is impossible to keep a discussion of the rationality of Black Magic or astrology within the bounds of concepts peculiar to them; them have an essential reference to something outside themselves 2.3.1.1. Parasitic is irrational 2.3.1.2. Against Durkheim 2.3.2. Semantic stability (p. 311) 2.3.3. What criteria have we for saying that something does, or does not, make sense? A partial answer is that a set of beliefs and practices cannot make sense insofar as they involve contradictions. 2.3.3.1. Predictive powers: cannot by disproven by future experience 2.3.3.2. What about internal stability? 2.3.3.2.1. End up in tautology 2.3.3.3. It is difficult to refute by experience 2.3.4. Context: contingency of environmental factors 2.3.5. Rationality: pushing concepts to logical conclusions? 2.3.5.1. Must recognize its own internal contradictions 2.4. Cant get ahead of presuppositions 3. Refute positivist criticism of his philosophical approach 3.1. Philosophic argument that attempts to show that Evans-Pritchards approach is sound 3.1.1. Descriptions: must be intelligible as socially recognizablespecific times and places 3.1.2. Changing stock descriptions of human actions: The changes in human action are thus intimately linked to the thread of rational criticism in human history.

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3.1.2.1. Grammar of these descriptions 3.1.2.2. In context of the rationality of the primitive man 3.1.2.3. Positivist criticism: observer, i.e. scientists, must clarify what the agents criterion and intention was and why he used that reasonall this must be rational to those who invoke it 3.1.2.3.1. Problems: but whose concept of rationality? 3.2. Intelligibility: must somehow bring Ss conception of intelligibility (b) into intelligible relation with our own conception of intelligibility (a). That is, we have to create a new unity for the concept of intelligibility, having a certain relation to our old one and perhaps requiring a considerable realignment of our categories. We are not seeking a state in which things will appear to us just as they do to members of S, and perhaps such a state is unattainable anyway. But we are seeking a way of looking at things which goes beyond our previous way in that it has in some way taken account of and incorporated the other way that members of S have of looking at things. 3.2.1. Not just a concept in a language, but to say of a society that it has a language is also to say that it has a concept of rationality (Again: linguistics) 4. Suggestions for how to overcome the difficulty of intelligibility in looking at primitive cultures, whose standards of rationality and intelligibility are apparently quite at odds with our own 4.1. Discusses ethical relativism 4.1.1. What is a moral concern

QUESTIONS 1. What is the place of cover laws of the kind Hemple strives for in Geertz? What will be the results of Geertzs holding back abstraction in theory in political science? While Geertz writes about social sciences generally, what are the implications of his theory of thick description for comparative politics? 2. What prevents the philosopher-anthropologists requirements of thick description from completely sliding backward into cultural relativism? 3. Respond: political scientists do not study the nation-statethey study in the nation-state. 4. Do Geertzs units of ethnographic analysis apply to political science? Can the latter field make use of the idea of thick description but strive for further abstraction because of the existence if institutional ideal-types? 5. What do we need to interpret in political science that Winch and Geertz do not address? 6. Winchs hermeneutical approach leads him to suggest that very idea of a social science impossible. Agree or disagree? 7. What is Winchs account of the factors that influence the thoughts the cultural agent? What categories of causal influences does he give for meaningful actions? 8. Parse the role of linguistics in both Geertz and Winchs philosophies.