Transcript Clifford Geertz, “From the Native’s Point of View”

Clifford Geertz, “From the Native’s Point of View”
I.
The Point of View of the Researcher ・
The Position of the Researcher
1. Bronislaw Malinowski’s A Diary in the Strict Sense of the
Term showed Malinowski as: sometimes dissatisfied
with, and unsympathetic to, the natives he studied.
Geertz’s question: “if it is not…a capacity to think, feel, and
perceive like a native, how is anthropological knowledge
of the way natives think, feel, and perceive possible?
When we can no longer claim a sort of transcultural
identification with our subjects?”
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Clifford Geertz, “From the Native’s Point of View”
The Point of View of the Researcher ・
The Position of the Researcher
2. “Experience-near” concepts:
how an informant might describe his/her
own feelings and thoughts, and the
feelings and thoughts of close friends or
neighbours
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Clifford Geertz, “From the Native’s Point of View”
The Point of View of the Researcher ・
The Position of the Researcher
3. “Experience-distant” concepts:
how a specialist might describe such thoughts
and feelings, in order to prove their scientific or
conceptual hypotheses.
“Experience-near” and “Experience-distant” are
not qualitatively different; nor is one preferable to
the other.
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Clifford Geertz, “From the Native’s Point of View”
The Point of View of the Researcher ・
The Position of the Researcher
4. “The trick is not to get yourself into some
inner correspondence of spirit with your
informants….
• The trick is to figure out what they think
they are up to” p. 58 top
• What the ethnographer perceives “is what
they perceive ‘by means of’” p. 58 mid
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Clifford Geertz, “From the Native’s Point of View”
II.
Investigating social organizations
through the concept of “person”
1. “The Western conception of the person as a bounded, unique,
more or less integrated motivational and cognitive universe,
a dynamic center of awareness, emotion, judgment, and
action organized into a distinctive whole…
is a rather peculiar idea within the context of the world’s
cultures.” (p. 59 middle)
First, the researcher must ignore this idea, and apply ① the
framework of the informants’ idea of self-hood to the
informants’ ② experiences
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Clifford Geertz, “From the Native’s Point of View”
Investigating social organizations
through the concept of “person”
2. Personal and societal conceptions of
inside / outside, and their proper
ordering or hierarchy within that society
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Clifford Geertz, “From the Native’s Point of View”
III. The internal point of view: Frameworks by which
people designate and interact with each other
within the organization
1. Labels and Interrelationships (“Status markers”)
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Birth order
Kinship
Caste or class
Gender
Position at workplace or position in social order
Other
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Clifford Geertz, “From the Native’s Point of View”
The internal point of view: Frameworks by which people
designate and interact with each other within the
organization
2. Status markers and their definition of the “person”
⇒ One’s “identity” is not simply personal and individual, but
“representative of a generic type” who functions in a defined
position within a web of social relations:
one’s “cultural (or organizational) location”
※ Note: such rigid, performative roles are more commonly found
in close-knit, densely populated, immobile societies. They 8
provide the necessary personal distance among individuals.
Clifford Geertz, “From the Native’s Point of View”
IV. The internal point of view: Social attribution frameworks
⇒ “Symbolic means by which to sort people out”
１．Internal means of sorting and designating members of a
society or organization = “contextualizing the person”
– By ethnic group
– Within ethnic group, by family or clan membership
(genealogy)
– By village or place of origin
– By occupation
Each person has more than one of these designations,
and is known by a different designation depending on
the narrower or wider social context:
“Identity is borrowed from the setting”
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Clifford Geertz, “From the Native’s Point of View”
The internal point of view: Social attribution frameworks
2. “Looking at persons as though they were outlines waiting
to be filled in, is part of a total pattern of social life”
• Distinctions made among persons within the same,
but diverse, society: by context of life and practices
• Connections made among persons within the same,
but diverse, society: by context of personal choice
(occupation, friendships, politics)
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Clifford Geertz, “From the Native’s Point of View”
The internal point of view: Social attribution frameworks
3. Public identity as based in private arenas of life
• Public interaction based on “positional” categories
that are supposedly permanent and inherent
• Private interaction based in subjective experience
within the household and religious and
neighbourhood groupings
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Clifford Geertz, “From the Native’s Point of View”
V. Back to the researcher’s point of view on “the native’s point of view”
= “other people’s subjectivities”
• Semiotic means by which people define each other
within one society or organization
• Semiotic means by which we (researchers) grasp their
ways of doing this:
– Dialectic between extreme detail (thick description・ethnography)
and “global” (broad) conceptual structures and explanations
– The “hermeneutic circle”: researchers attempt to make details
explain the concept and make concepts explain the details
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