Interview med professor Clifford Geertz

Resumé

I had the honour of interviewing Professor Clifford Geertz at the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, USA on 18 October 2000. The interview focused on Geertz’ theore­tical conceptions, the tradition which he draws on, the critique he has encountered, and interpretive anthropology’s future development. Of particular interest was the clarification of his much debated method, his definition of symbol and his famous definition of religion as a cultural system. Geertz emphasizes that he attempts to exercise an applied pragmatic phenomenological and hermeneutical method without any general theory (or philosophy) of meaning, phenomenology, or culture. He maintains that he only has a con­ceptual frame­work inspired by different scholars, who nevertheless have a similar focus and perspective, i.e., meaning and symbol. In relationship to this, Geertz defines his symbol within the Peircian semiotic tradition. Therefore, the term symbol is understood as a sign (an index for example), which becomes a symbol via a cultural interpretation. Furthermore, his definition of religion as a cultural system is, in his view, a non-essentialistic definition and therefore not - as Talal Asad claims - ethnocentric. Although it is Geertz’ opinion that interpretiveanthropology has been influenced by postmodernism, he predicts that inter­pretive anthropology’s future development will be in reasonable continuity with its past.