A01=Clifford Geertz
Anthropologist
Author_Clifford Geertz
Career
Category=JHM
Category=QDH
Category=QDTS
Consciousness
Cultural anthropology
Cultural diversity
Cultural psychology
Cultural studies
Culture war
Decolonization
Dichotomy
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Ethics
Ethnocentrism
Ethnography
Explanation
Feeling
Human science
Hypocrisy
Ideology
Imperialism
Incest
Jerome Bruner
Learning
Linguistics
Literary criticism
Meaning-making
Melford Spiro
Modernity
Morality
Narrative
Natural science
Parochialism
Pessimism
Philosopher
Philosophy
Political philosophy
Political science
Politics
Populism
Positivism
Postmodernism
Prejudice
Princeton University Press
Psychoanalysis
Psychology
Racism
Reason
Reductionism
Relativism
Religion
Rhetoric
Science
Scientism
Scientist
Sensibility
Skepticism
Social science
Sociology
Sociology of knowledge
Sri Lanka
Subjectivism
Subjectivity
Symptom
Theory
Thomas Kuhn
Thought
Uncertainty
War
World view
Writing
Yugoslavia
Product details
- ISBN 9780691089560
- Weight: 397g
- Dimensions: 152 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 22 Jul 2001
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Clifford Geertz, one of the most influential thinkers of our time, here discusses some of the most urgent issues facing intellectuals today. In this collection of personal and revealing essays, he explores the nature of his anthropological work in relation to a broader public, serving as the foremost spokesperson of his generation of scholars, those who came of age after World War II. His reflections are written in a style that both entertains and disconcerts, as they engage us in topics ranging from moral relativism to the relationship between cultural and psychological differences, from the diversity and tension among activist faiths to "ethnic conflict" in today's politics. Geertz, who once considered a career in philosophy, begins by explaining how he got swept into the revolutionary movement of symbolic anthropology. At that point, his work began to encompass not only the ethnography of groups in Southeast Asia and North Africa, but also the study of how meaning is made in all cultures--or, to use his phrase, to explore the "frames of meaning" in which people everywhere live out their lives.
His philosophical orientation helped him to establish the role of anthropology within broader intellectual circles and led him to address the work of such leading thinkers as Charles Taylor, Thomas Kuhn, William James, and Jerome Bruner. In this volume, Geertz comments on their work as he explores questions in political philosophy, psychology, and religion that have intrigued him throughout his career but that now hold particular relevance in light of postmodernist thinking and multiculturalism. Available Light offers insightful discussions of concepts such as nation, identity, country, and self, with a reminder that like symbols in general, their meanings are not categorically fixed but grow and change through time and place. This book treats the reader to an analysis of the American intellectual climate by someone who did much to shape it. One can read Available Light both for its revelation of public culture in its dynamic, evolving forms and for the story it tells about the remarkable adventures of an innovator during the "golden years" of American academia.
Clifford Geertz published his famous work, The Interpretation of Cultures, in 1973. It influenced a generation of not only anthropologists but also other scholars and intellectuals. His most recent book is After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist. He is currently a faculty member at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.
