everything you're saying here makes perfectly good sense to me, i'm happy to say, and i hope i gave no impression that it wouldn't. what i'm thinking about is whether we can say with geertz that there is a difference of degree (of complexity, as you say) rather than a difference in kind (duality) -- a distinction as opposed to a dichotomy, as putnam would say -- between human and animal "culture." that is, that many if not all animals have at least some rudimentary form of culture if we understand culture as geertz does, but that the webs of complexity become, well, webbier, or more complex, for humans than for animals, because of the complexity of the symbols and symbol systems. and then we have not given definitions of either culture or humanity that render one exclusively the terrain of the other.
fwiw, i've always thought his definition of religion, despite its drawbacks, actually constitutes a really helpful model of religious change, or, that is to say, of the ways religions change. students find it disturbing in no small part because it makes such sense, i think.
i mainly hope i am not speaking nonsense and making all cultural anthropologists everywhere wish i would leave it alone. :)
j
On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 11:50 AM, Alan Rudy <alan.rudy at gmail.com> wrote:
> This:
>
> http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_culture/culture-definitions/geertz-text.html
> is a pretty decent take on Geertz' approach to defining culture/s.
>
> My sense is that the key is that Geertz approaches the topic as one focused
> on the interpretation of historically accreted and locally-learned systems
> of meaning... with the emphasis on systems and interpretation. In answer
> to
> your question, and Chris' really interesting note about semi-feral subway
> dogs, there seems to me to that the biopsychosocial complex that cogenerate
> our bodies, minds and societies each grade (nodding to Bookchin) out of
> quantiatively diffferent animal processes and eventually - by combining
> quasi-bioevolutionary and semi-socioevolutionary processes - combine to
> generate the qualititatively new phenomena called humanity. Here its a
> question of complexity more than dualism.
>
> I like Geertz' focus on systems but, given my Marxism, I find his focus on
> meaning tends towards the historicist idealism of Weber more than the
> materialist historicity of Marx. I've never been sure of the relationship
> between material culture and symbolic meaning in Geertz. They are closely
> connected but in the twenty years between Geertz' initial training and mine
> a greater emphasis has come to be made - in my world - on active
> materialisms which find dialectical relations between material
> conditions/phenomena, meaning making/interpreting and cultural
> institutions/trajectories. Here, the systems of meaning are more-than
> social in their provenance... as I implied in my response to Charles stance
> on environmentalism/ecology.
>
> I think it is a mistake to try to define humanity in any kind of
> straightforward, transhistorical fashion... my sense is that human nature
> changes with modes of production, but that modes of production are never
> stable sets of relations expressed the same way across the territories said
> to fall under or within the spaciotemporality of any particular mode and
> its
> various forms of expression.
>
> I hope that helps.
>
> A
>
>
> On Tue, Aug 11, 2009 at 11:45 AM, Jeffrey Fisher <jeff.jfisher at gmail.com
> >wrote:
>
> > iirc (i don't have it in front of me) geertz defines culture as
> essentially
> > (in a nutshell) the use of symbols, for communication and for
> > understanding.
> > not just passing on of behaviors. in which case you have just explained
> > precisely why the passing on of such behaviors does not constitute
> culture
> > -- unless you want to disagree with this definition of culture.
> > on the other hand, i admit it's not entirely clear to me
> > (IAmNotAnAntrhopologist--although i admit i play one in class,
> sometimes),
> > that imitation doesn't require a certain use of symbols, if only in a
> very
> > rudimentary way. seeing someone else do something and then seeing how
> that
> > might be something you yourself could
> > do? doesn't this require at least a modicum of abstraction from the
> > event to the possibility of a future event, and further, the use of
> > the observed behavior as a model of one's own behavior?
> >
> > not a rhetorical question, and i'm thinking rudy has a handy answer to
> this
> > that i would like to hear, since it keeps coming up in my own thinking
> when
> > i think about, say, geertz, on the one hand, and peter singer, on the
> > other.
> >
> > honestly, the alan-cb conversation has me thinking about the problem in
> > "blade runner" -- that they've got this understanding of humanity that is
> > grounded in the ability to feel empathy, but when it turns out that there
> > are other beings (namely, replicants) who can feel empathy, then that's
> > maybe not a god definition of humanity. and then the whole thing calls
> into
> > question the value of defining humanity at all.
> >
> > sorry for the hit and run. off to meetings.
> >
> >
> >
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