Concept of Culture

¶ … Culture Geertz Social Anthropology

Dear Colleagues

It has come to my attention, while I have been away in the wilds of India investigating the beliefs, kinship, economy and political order of the Irulas of the Thiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu, that the age old debate about the definition of social anthropology has again reached the literature. In this investigation I have been traveling between settlements and discovering interesting and fascinating issues associated with the group's relative interconnectedness through trade and marriage among their various settlements. Most interesting to me from a social anthropological perspective is how these groups retain contact, through memory of the indigenous members of their group that have left the fold and chosen to settle elsewhere, either with or without their ancestral identity, alone and in new settlements. To me this should at the very least offer some light on the ideations and outcomes of permanent migration in an era when it is happening more and more, especially among those last vestiges of peoples with common identity being pressured to "modernize."

I have also been relatively isolated, as would be expected and working diligently on my task of recording and interpreting data, from as close to the perspective of the individuals as possible. I thank you for thinking of me and sending me this reading material, as it has honestly been great food for thought that has helped me redouble my efforts to create scientific works as a response to my encounters.

Though Geertz has always been one of the most active proponents of socio-cultural anthropology it would seem that instead of adding to the character of the definition he simply developed a lengthy list o exclusionary characteristics, none of which seem to allow full exclusion. What Geertz really seems to be saying is that socio anthropology is so much like many other disciplines that it both cannot be separated from them and cannot be included in them. The distinction for Geertz seems to be that the very variability of the discipline creates its appeal and its scientific value as a socio anthropologist can simply look at anything and do any kind of scientific inquiry to constitute original research.

It has been my practice throughout my professional career to demonstrate my knowledge of fieldwork through well developed and insightful interpretations of witnessed events among peoples I find interesting. Yet, Geertz seems to belittle this endeavor stating that those who invest in such scientific abstractions of "the personal" are not objective, but rather are subjective and cannot produce works that are systematic, reproducible, cumulative, predictive, precise or testable. It has been my experience that the results of any inquiry in social anthropology and well most of the social sciences is an attempt to record a situation in time and place, within the very context of the period as well as the people. There is no evidence that there is a need for any other goal than to record what is happening at this particular time, in this particular place among these particular people and use that knowledge to better understand culture and the dynamics of human existence.