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Clifford Geertz & the Human Sciences Co-Sponsored by: Yale University Clifford Geertz Center for Cultural Sociology & & Whitney Humanities Center The Human Sciences Jeff Alexander - Yale University David Apter - Yale University Peter Brooks - Yale University Stuart Clark - University of Wales, Swansea J. Joseph Errington - Yale University Peter Galison - Harvard University Bernhard Giesen - University of Konstanz Paul Lichterman - USC College George Marcus - University of California, Irvine Isaac Reed – University of Colorado, Boulder Philip Smith - Yale University Mats Trondman – Växjö University Robin Wagner-Pacifici - Swarthmore College Photo by Randall Hagadorn Georgia Warnke - University of California, Riverside Friday, October 19 ~ Sunday, October 21, 2007 Contact: Nadine Casey The Whitney Humanities Center Phone: 203-432-9855 [email protected] The New Haven Lawn Club Friday, October 19th - Whitney Humanities Center George Marcus Noon - 2:00 Registration and Lunch GEERTZ'S LEGACY BEYOND THE MODES OF CULTURAL ANALYSIS OF HIS TIME 2:00 ~ 2:30 Jeffrey Alexander (Yale University) Clifford Geertz and The Human Sciences In this presentation, I want to examine Geertz’s legacy beyond the arenas in which his scholarship most clearly had impact during this lifetime: the 2:30 ~ 5:15 Session I: Geertz in the Human Sciences reconstitution of the central intellectual tradition of American cultural an- Chair: Jason Mast thropology in terms of his leadership in defining first, symbolic analysis, and 2:30 ~ 3:00 George Marcus (University of California, Irvine) then interpretation as the primary modality in the study of culture; his influ- ence in giving shape to area studies and social history; and his early contri- 3:00 ~ 3:05 Commentator: Ryan Sayre butions to the development/modernization paradigm of the 1960s. Instead, 3:05 ~ 3:15 Questions I want to ask how Geertz is reflected in and passed through (and beyond) 3:15 ~ 3:30 Coffee Break the so-called ‘postmodern’ turn in the study of culture, about which he ex- pressed mixed judgments. And more importantly, how his influence is re- 3:30 ~ 4:00 Stuart Clark (University of Wales, Swansea) flected in domains of study in which he had little direct or obvious influence. 4:00~ 4:05 Commentator: Samuel Nelson These domains, which I view importantly as products of the critiques car- 4:05 ~ 4:15 Questions ried in the so-called postmodern turn, are very much beyond the sort of focus on the culture concept that created the conceptual space on which 4:15 ~4:45 Mats Trondman (Växjö University) Geertz’s originality depended (it is well to recall here that Geertz’s scholar- 4:45 ~ 4:50 Commentator: Rui Gao ship was shaped within the influential and near dominant Parsonian catego- ries of the time, which gave culture a niche, even though Geertz was far 4:50 ~ 5:00 Questions from a Parsonian in his own intellectual style). The most important domain 5:00 ~ 5:15 Follow up questions to consider here in terms of anthropology is its entry into the realm of sci- 5:15 ~ 7:00 Reception: Whitney Humanities Center ence and technology studies since the 1990s. And here I might begin with the observation that Geertz during his last years at the Institute for Ad- 7:30 Dinner for speakers at Zinc Restaurant vanced Study had been trying to replace himself with a prominent scholar in Saturday, October 20th - Whitney Humanities Center, Room 208 science studies, an effort that failed at least partly because of an institu- 9:00 ~ 10:00 Coffee and Registration tional politics that resembled his famous failed effort to bring Robert Bellah to the Institute at the beginning of his tenure. Interestingly, around the 10:00 ~ 12:30 Session II: Structuralism, Hermeneutics, Geertz time of that effort, I recall my discussion with Geertz in which he was seek- Chair: Nadya Jaworsky ing ideas for his replacement among anthropologists, or at least a scholar 10:00 ~ 10:30 Peter Brooks (Yale University) involved in non-Western research, and seemed personally at a loss to come up with someone The question for me is whether this interest or investment 10:30 ~ 10:35 Commentator: Andy Junker by Geertz in science studies, broadly conceived, as the ‘future’ has been 10:35 ~ 10:45 Questions reciprocated by science studies or other new research agendas by a con- 10:45 ~ 11:15 Philip Smith (Yale University) tinuing or legacy interest in him. The larger issue here is the fate of the study of culture, the apogee of which in the U.S. is justly associated with 11:15 ~ 11:20 Commentator: Dominik Bartmanski Geertz, in arenas where, after the critiques of the 1980s, the styles of cul- 11:20 ~ 11:30 Questions tural analysis which are associated with Geertz (perhaps Levi-Strauss, also, and generally the anthropological tradition) are effectively proscribed. Can a 11:30 ~ 11:45 Coffee Break legacy for Geertz (and for the mode of classic cultural analysis which he 11:45 ~ 12:15 Peter Galison (Harvard University) came to dominate) be otherwise perceived today in these newer arenas of 12:15 ~ 12:20 Commentator: Inge Schmidt anthropological research? 12:20 ~ 12:30 Questions 12:30 ~ 12:45 Follow up questions Robin Wagner-Pacifici Saturday, October 20th - Whitney Humanities Center, Room 208 'MALARIAL AND DIFFIDENT': THE VISION OF CLIFFORD GEERTZ 12:45 ~ 2:15 Lunch: Whitney Humanities Center 2:15 ~ 2:45 Session III: Geertz, Style, Method ~ Part One This talk will highlight the recursive structure of Clifford Geertz’s famous essay, ‘Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,’ an essay in which, in Chair: Andy Junker Geertz’s own words, one stays ‘within a single, more or less bounded form, 2:15 ~ 2:45 Robin Wagner-Pacifici (Swarthmore College) and circle[s] steadily within it’. The talk will link this ever deepening 2:45 ~ 2:50 Commentator: Michael Yarbrough recursive structure to the specific social scientific stance I am calling ‘diffident engagement,’ a stance that takes its cue from Max Weber’s 2:50 ~ 3:00 Questions understanding of vocations. Geertz’s method of thick description, aimed 3:00 ~ 3:30 Isaac Reed (University of Colorado, Boulder) toward the illumination of meaning, needs to be understood in the light of 3:30 ~ 3:35 Commentator: Jesse Einhorn the productive ambiguity of anthropological distance. I will argue that diffident engagement, in both its Weberian and Geertzian variants, merits 3:35 ~ 3:45 Questions revisiting. 3:45 ~ 4:00 Coffee Break 4:00 ~ 4:30 Georgia Warnke (University of California, Riverside) Georgia Warnke 4:30 ~ 4:35 Commentator: Ates Altinordu GEERTZIAN IRONY 4:35 ~ 4:45 Questions Geertz's account of anthropological understanding fails to do justice to his 4:45 ~ 5:00 Follow up questions ethnographic work, at least that on Balinese cockfighting. Geertz's account of anthropology emphasizes the ironic side of anthropology: both 6:00 Banquet at Bentara Restaurant interpreter and his or her subject think they know something that the other 7:15 ~ 7:45 David Apter (Yale University) does not; no matter how successful the interpreter thinks his or her Clifford Geertz as a Cultural System ethnography is, it does not always allow him or her to predict how his or her subjects will act; interpreters and subjects deceive one another insofar Sunday, October 21st - The New Haven Lawn Club they inhabit different universes and usually fail to communicate. Yet, his 9:15 ~ 9:45 Coffee and Registration actual ethnographic work reflects a process of reciprocal education, a fusion 9:45 ~ 12:30 Session IV: Geertz, Style, Method ~ Part Two of universes and successful communication. Chair: Lisa McCormick 9:45 ~ 10:15 Bernhard Giesen (Konstanz University) 10:15 ~ 10:20 Commentator: Nadya Jaworsky 10:20 ~ 10:30 Questions 10:30 ~ 11:00 Paul Lichterman (University of Southern California) 11:00 ~ 11:05 Commentator: Carrie Gray 11:05 ~ 11:15 Questions 11:15 ~ 11:30 Coffee Break 11:30 ~ 12:00 J. Joseph Errington (Yale University) 12:00 ~ 12:05 Commentator: Sarah Egan 12:05 ~ 12:15 Questions 12:15 ~ 12:45 Final Thoughts - Open Discussion 12:45 ~ 2:00 Concluding Luncheon: The New Haven Lawn Club Peter Brooks Mats Trondman SEMIOTICS AND THICK DESCRIPTION (BARTHES AND GEERTZ) ‘TO LOCATE IN THE TENOR OF THEIR SETTINGS THE SOURCES OF THE SPELL’ “The concept of culture I espouse . is essentially a semiotic one,” writes CLIFFORD GEERTZ AND THE ‘STRONG’ PROGRAM Geertz. His interpretive anthropology often resembles the cultural semiotics FOR CULTURAL SOCIOLOGY practiced by Roland Barthes, especially in his Mythologies, which studies French culture through a kind of Brechtian “estrangement effect,” seeking In their formulation of a ‘strong’ program in cultural sociology, Jeffrey C. to make the everyday unfamiliar and to show that what appears a product Alexander and Philip Smith argue that sociology, at least after the days of of “nature” is in fact created by culture. Yet Geertz is highly critical of the the classics, is suffering from ‘a numbness toward meaning’ due to French structuralist recourse to a Saussurian linguistic paradigm. And ‘culturally unmusical scholars’. Clifford Geertz, I will argue, and Alexander Barthes is suspicious of the spatial metaphor implied in “thick description.” and Smith will agree, embodied this demanded musicality on, in Geertz’ If Geertz seems to reject explanatory laws as having no place in cultural own words, ‘particular ways of being in the world’. He knew how to do a anthropology, Barthes himself will eventually renounce the notion of a cultural sociology of symbolic structures, meaning making and “metalanguage.” Their work may be reconciled in the analysis of social performances, but did not found a school and had no party line. He even performance. came to reject theory, which forced Alexander in one of his mid-1980s lectures on cultural sociology to conclude that ‘we must ourselves turn reluctantly away from Geertz’.
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