Clifford Geertz
Clifford Geertz
Clifford James Geertzwas an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology, and who was considered "for three decades...the single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States." He served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth23 August 1926
CountryUnited States of America
Clifford Geertz quotes about
thinking issues feminist
Has feminism made us all more conscious? I think it has. Feminist critiques of anthropological masculine bias have been quite important, and they have increased my sensitivity to that kind of issue
humanity may facts
One of the most significant facts about humanity may finally be that we all begin with the natural equipment to a live a thousand kinds of life but end in the end having lived only one
thinking humanity perception
I think the perception of there being a deep gulf between science and the humanities is false
thinking knows
We don't know what we think until we see what we say.
intellectual literature fields
Gender consciousness has become involved in almost every intellectual field: history, literature, science, anthropology. There's been an extraordinary advance
life congratulations taken
To see ourselves as others see us can be eye-opening. To see others as sharing a nature with ourselves is the merest decency. But it is from the far more difficult achievement of seeing ourselves amongst others, as a local example of the forms human life has locally taken, a case among cases, a world among worlds, that the largeness of mind, without which objectivity is self-congratulation and tolerance a sham, comes.
structure skeptical agree
I agree with Chomsky in almost nothing. When it comes to innate structures and so on, I'm very skeptical
writing thinking anthropologists
I think of myself as a writer who happens to be doing his writing as an anthropologist
thinking impact feminism
I think feminism has had a major impact on anthropology
home should-have wanted
If we wanted home truths, we should have stayed at home.
elephants turtles stories
There is an Indian story -- at least I heard it as an Indian story -- about an Englishman who, having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, asked (perhaps he was an ethnographer; it is the way they behave), what did the turtle rest on? Another turtle. And that turtle? 'Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down
writing done ends
I don't write drafts. I write from the beginning to the end, and when it's finished, it's done
thinking world american-universities
I think the American university system still seems to be the best system in the world
atmosphere alive fields
I don't feel that an atmosphere of debate and total disagreement and argument is such a bad thing. It makes for a vital and alive field.