What Does Geertz Mean By Thick Description?

by | Last updated on January 24, 2024

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What does Geertz mean by thick description? Geertz described the practice of thick description as

a way of providing cultural context and meaning that people place on actions, words, things, etc

. Thick descriptions provide enough context so that a person outside the culture can make meaning of the behavior.

What is meant by thick description?

In the social sciences and related fields, a thick description is

a description of human social action that describes not just physical behaviors, but their context as interpreted by the actors as well, so that it can be better understood by an outsider

.

What is theory What does Geertz thick description offer an anthropologist?

What is an example of thick description?

What is thick description in new historicism?

What are the four key elements of thick description?

Thin Description: observation, description and outline of a situation. Thick Description:

observation, description, interpretation, and analysis

of a situation.

What is thick description quizlet?

“thick” description involves

understanding and absorbing the context of the situation or behavior

. It also involves ascribing present and future intentionality to the behavior.

What is Clifford Geertz explanation for the purpose of culture?

Culture, according to Geertz, is “a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.” The function of culture is

to impose meaning on the world and make it understandable

.

What is thick and thin description?

:

every difficulty and obstacle

—used especially in the phrase through thick and thin was loyal through thick and thin.

What does Geertz mean when he says culture is public because?

Geertz argues that culture is “public because meaning is”–

systems of meaning are necessarily the collective property of a group

.

Who coined the term thick description?

How do you make a thick description?

What is a thick culture?

The essential idea of thick culture is that societies are distinguished and structures (and individual behaviour) are fundamentally conditioned by a primordial force, unseen but highly palpable, which contains the genetic code of all that is collectively important and meaningful in that society.

What is Geertz’s paraphrasing of Weber in his understanding of culture?

When, as quoted, he says, in the name of Weber, that the proper approach to culture is ‘

not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning

‘, the meaning he is referring to is ‘the webs of significance he [man] himself has spun’ (Geertz 1973, p.

Is Clifford Geertz a functionalist?

First of all, though Geertz positions himself apart from the British structural-functionalist school,

his definition of ritual, and religion for that matter, is still pretty functionalist

and echoes Durkheimian and Radcliffe-Brownian ritual understanding, which presuopposes ritual as a vehicle to generate, maintain and …

Why is thick description important?

Thick descripton refers to the detailed account of field experiences in which

the researcher makes explicit the patterns of cultural and social relationships and puts them in context

(Holloway, 1997). This can be contrasted with thin description, which is a superficial account.

What are the three basic parts of culture?

What is the best way to define culture?

What is the interpretive approach in anthropology?

What does Thick mean in art?

thick description is

manifestly a quality of the explication rather than of the action or text that is explicated

; it is not the object that is thick or thin but only the description of it.

Which anthropologist advocated for thick description?

What is ethnography Clifford Geertz?

As for ethnography, Geertz was suggesting that it was anthropologists who, based on their ability to hang out, could distinguish between twitching eyelids and the act of “practicing a burlesque of a friend faking a wink to deceive an innocent into thinking a conspiracy is in motion”.

Which is the key assumption in Claude Lévi Strauss’s structuralism?

What is meant by thinking as enculturation?

Enculturation is

the gradual process by which people learn the culture of their own group by living in it, observing it, and being taught things by members of the group

.

Which of the basic characteristics of culture that vary cross culturally and are arbitrary?


Symbols

vary cross-culturally and are arbitrary. They only have meaning when people in a culture agree on their use. Language, money and art are all symbols. Language is the most important symbolic component of culture.

What is thick and thin description?

:

every difficulty and obstacle

—used especially in the phrase through thick and thin was loyal through thick and thin.

What we call our data are really our own constructions of other people’s constructions of what they and their compatriots are up to?

Amira Khan
Author
Amira Khan
Amira Khan is a philosopher and scholar of religion with a Ph.D. in philosophy and theology. Amira's expertise includes the history of philosophy and religion, ethics, and the philosophy of science. She is passionate about helping readers navigate complex philosophical and religious concepts in a clear and accessible way.