Local knowledge: further essays in interpretive anthropology.
New-York/N.Y./USA etc. 1983: Basic Books

(by Clifford Geertz)

(Abstract)

Presented in III PARTS, with an author's Introduction, are 8 essays addressing the task of anthropological understanding, ie, to assay meaning systems & expressions in their local contexts by integrating ethnographic data with broader knowledge perspectives. PART I - contains Chpt (1) Blurred Genres: The Refiguration of Social Thought (see SA 30:1/82M1075); (2) Found in Translation: On the Social History of the Moral Imagination (see SA 27:3/79K0347); & (3) "From the Native's Point of View": On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding - uses Bronislaw Malinowski's, A Diary in the Strict Sense of the Term to characterize basic problems in fieldwork concerning interpretation of "experience-near" concepts (ie, those presented from the local perspective); local concepts of the person found in Java, Bali, & Morocco are described. PART II - includes (4) Common Sense as a Cultural System - which discusses common sense as an organized presentation of thought about reality, with cultural variations illustrated using E. E. Evans-Pritchard's analysis of Azande witchcraft & showing diverse perspectives on hermaphroditism of Americans & Navajos; (5) Art as a Cultural System - examines the central importance of the social matrix of art, providing examples from fifteenth-century Italian painting, Moroccan Islamic poetry, the Yoruba sculptor's use of line, & use of color by New Guinean Abelam painters; (6) Centers, Kings, and Charisma; Reflections on the Symbolics of Power - discusses the religious & political symbolism of royal parades or progresses, using examples from Elizabethan England, fourteenth-century Indic Java, & eighteenth- & nineteenth-century Morocco; & (7) The Way We Think Now: Toward an Ethnography of Modern Thought - covers anthropological perceptions of primitive thought, models of mental processing by Jean Piaget, Sigmund Freud, Noam Chomsky, & Claude Levi-Strauss, & methodological issues in the comparative study of thought, eg, linguistic classifications, convergent findings, & the characteristics of academic careers. PART III - includes (8) Local Knowledge: Fact and Law in Comparative Perspective - which examines cultural variation in adjudication, with examples from Bali, Islamic Moroccan, Malaysian, & Indic law. Notes.

source: Sociological Abstracts Inc. (paper version)

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