Anthropology In Anthropology

What can anthropology contribute to our understanding of man? In 1966, Clifford Geertz set out to answer this question in his article, which was first published in the book New Views of the Nature of Man. While the question is still relevant, today it would likely be phrased in more gender-neutral terms. That said, his clear prose and Geertz’s keen assessment of state of his field alone make it a worthwhile read. At a time when anthropologists were still trying to come to terms with their fields’ problematic legacies of Evolutionism (43-4), Geertz’s text offers a refreshing insight into one of the most formative discussions of modern anthropology (an entail a critique of both cultural relativism and historicism (37?-42)).

( {{{In his article Geertz lays out why the study of culture matters and why cultural anthropologists need to explore new

Geertz specifically criticizes them for wavering through tremendous amounts of data in the hope to discover universalities that define humanity as a whole. Anthropology, Geertz believes, should not employ static and reductive methods to analyze cultures, as this would only lead to watered-down descriptions that obscure the vast diversity that exists among humans (). Consequently, what Geertz demands is nothing short of a fundamental paradigm shift in the field – away from a generalizing and comprehensive focus toward an in-depth analysis of significant and peculiar symbols of a culture (44). In order to achieve this, anthropologists need to discard their stratigraphic approach and replace it with a synthetic one; a unitary system of analysis in which biology, psychology, sociology, and cultural factors are all