Culture as text: hazards and possibilities of Geertz's literary/literacy metaphor

Abstract

This paper considers the conceptual, ethnographic, ethical, and methodological implications of Geertz's influential metaphors of culture as 'text' and of fieldwork as 'reading.' In Morocco, one of Geertz's two long-term field sites, large segments of the rural population, Berberspeaking even more than Arabic-speaking, are unschooled and nonliterate. Women's rich expressive culture, including religious culture, is oral. Drawing on long-term fieldwork among Tashelhit-speaking Berber women in southwestern Morocco, I consider the language ideologies that shape women's attitudes toward the production and dissemination of religious oral texts. These ideologies complicate the supposed transparency of Geertz's literary/literacy metaphor. The paper reconsiders the possibilities of this metaphor for the anthropology of language, and locates Geertz's contribution and critical responses to it within the history of ideas and ethics shaping ethnographic research.At the heart of the interpretive anthropology Clifford Geertz pioneered, or at least popularised, is the metaphor of culture as text. He wrote in 'Deep play,' his description of the Balinese cockfight, that,

Voice of Vision – Crafting Christian Culture as Symbolic Stories: An Arts-based Inquiry approach to exploring how mission and vision are enacted in New Zealand Christian Schools.

“…In this study this critical realism lens applied particularly to the participants' stories elicited through the interview process, transcription of dialogue, arts-based activities, and the collection of school archival documents. This is similar to the view (Geertz, 1973;Hoffman, 2009) of cultural texts as public systems of meanings and written artifacts, with the notion of "reading" another people and culture as a universal and accessible means of explaining interpretation from an anthropological perspective. Within this study the "reading" of participant stories and school culture was also obtained and enriched through the production of written and visual artifacts (see methodology Arts-Based Inquiry section).…”

Social representations of the health care of the Mbyá-Guarani indigenous population by health workers

“…All subsystems that circulate and intertwine in a complex cultural system, including traditional medical systems, are related to a world view, as observed in this study, and to a corresponding ethos of its people 17 . In this sense, the world view is a cognitive and existential attribute that allows certain people to develop a representation of a simple reality, including its concept of nature, self, and society.…”

“…On the other hand, the culture, in this perspective, refers to the metaphor of the Geertzian text, which is not only socially constructed but gains meaning in social life 16 - 17 . Social experience develops as it is recognized, shared, and confirmed by others in their acts of articulation and communication.…”

“…In this sense, the world view is a cognitive and existential attribute that allows certain people to develop a representation of a simple reality, including its concept of nature, self, and society. The ethos is a moral and aesthetic attribute that reflects the nature and quality of life of a people, and its organization is the underlying attitude towards itself and its world reflected by life 17 .…”

“…Geertz 17 states that religion combines ethos and the world view of a people, providing to the set of social values what perhaps they most need to be coercive: a sense of objectivity. Language and religion, which are the unifying elements of the Mbyá people, contain information and explanations of the ancient methods of promotion, protection, and recovery of health 7 .…”