Hi my name's Nick Herriman and in this
lecture I want to explain to you
Clifford Geertz's idea of symbols as
models.
Clifford Geertz belongs to an
approach in anthropology we call "symbolic
anthropology".
And this approach
predominated in the 1960s and the
1970s.
Within symbolic
anthropology there were two ways of
studying symbols.
One was the structural
approach.
Structural anthropology analyzed symbols in
terms of basic underlying
units of meaning.
What this means is that
we studied, if you like, the DNA
of meaning.
So Needham, for example--these primary factors--talked
about basic ideas
like up-down; black-white; night-day
backwards-forwards.
And from these very
basic 'dichotomies', or 'binaries' as they
are  sometimes called-- 'dichotomies', or 'binaries'
as
they're sometimes called--you could
develop things like the images like a
witch, which would be 'black' not 'white';
'backward' not 'forward'; 'up' not 'down';
'night' not 'day'; 'moon'
not sun; that kind of thing.
Levi-Strauss is a bit more complicated.
He would get narratives and find them to
have similar underlying structures.
So you have something, for example,
Cinderella and Ash Boy.
The Cinderella story is about a girl whereas
Ash Boy is a boy.
Yet
there's a similar structure in as much as
the girl is poor and the boy's poor.
The girl
is named after the remnants of fire
("cinder" in "Cinderella"); the boy's named
after remnants of fire
("ash" as in "Ash Boy") and so on.
And so you develop a parallel structure into
ostensibly
different stories.
And what structuralist
anthropologists showed was underlying
meanings which, otherwise, we would be
unaware of.
However, what we are going to look at today
is not structural anthropology but
interpretive anthropology.
And this kind
of anthropology focuses on getting a
deep or "thick" understanding of what
symbols mean to people.
So interpretive
anthropology is a way of doing anthropology,
like evolutionary anthropology, or
functionalism.
Now it treats cultures as
things to be interpreted.
And it focuses on
meaningful actions and symbols.
And because the focus is on interpretation
hence we get the name "interpretative anthropology".
And this should help you
remember the name.
Within interpretative
anthropology there are several famous figures:
Victor Turner--his work Forest of Symbols.
You might have heard of the idea of the, ummm, "liminal
stage" in rights of passage.
Victor Turner wrote about that.
Mary Douglas Purity and Danger--
you might have heard of the ideas of
filth is culturally constructed;
Sherry Ortner's key symbols; Eric Wolf's
Virgin of Guadalupe; and, probably most
famous of all is, Clifford Geertz's book,
The Interpretation of Cultures in particular
two chapters in there: "Religion as a
Cultural System," which we will talk about
today and "Deep play: Notes on a Balinese
cockfight".
So, as is suggested for Geertz, culture is
a text; quotes the culture of a people is an
ensemble of texts... which the
anthropologist trains to read over the
shoulders of those to whom they probably
belong".
So what Geertz was encouraging us to do
was to think about anthropology as less as
a science which tests hypotheses and
more as a discipline associated with
interpretation.
So anthropology is not an
experimental science in search of a law [e.g.
a law of motion] but an interpretive one in
search of
meaning.
I'll give an example.
A functional anthropologist looks at the way we
worship.
I come from a town called "Fremantle" in
Western Australia.
And every year the
[Italian migrant] fishermen there
do a ritual where they bring out a
Virgin [Mary]--a statue of the Virgin--and
it's
called "The Blessing of the Fleet"'; it blesses
the fleet of fishing vessels.
Now it's
designed to--if you ask the fishermen, or
at
least in the 1950s the fishermen who were
Italians who had come from Sicily, in the
south [of Italy],
why they did that, they would say, "oh, it's
to ensure good luck on the fishing, to make
sure
the Virgin Mary protects us".
Functionalist anthropologists say, "no, really what you're
getting at here is it's an excuse to provide
social cohesion, it brings the group
together.
"It also provides you fisherman with a
sense of confidence and that confidence
"will make you more successful in your
fishing and....make you feel more able to
"deal with the dangers you're exposed to better
than if you're nervous.
So that's the
"function of this ritual".
That's what
a functional anthropologist
would say.
And indeed the functional anthropologist was not too concerned with what the
fisherman has to say.
The interpretive
anthropologist takes a different
approach.
He is asking different kinds of
questions altogether.
He's thinking, "OK
what does the Virgin really mean to you?"
And you say, "okay well she's a kind of..."
The
fisherman might say, "well she's like my
mumma".
And so the anthropologist will
look at the the idea "mother", of "virginity"
and try to get a deeper
understanding.
I'll give you an example and that comes from Wolf's "Virgin of Guadalupe", which I
referred to in the previous slide.
And, in that piece, Wolf talks about how the
Virgin of Guadalupe (which is an
apparition of the Virgin in Mexico in
the late 1500s) and that
apparition means different things to
different people.
For for sort of
Spanish-style Mexicans with very
authoritative fathers, the death of
Christ represents the death of the
Father and for them that kinda
expresses an Oedipal desire if you like.
For the
Indigenous, Native American, Aztec and
whatever
cultures the Virgin of Guadalupe represented
continuity
with the past and the Earth Mother
Goddess (I think her name was Tepeyac, can't
remember [actually it was Tonantzin, she appeared in Tepeyac]).
Interpretative anthropology looks for deeper
meaning and significance whereas a
functional anthropologist is really not
too concerned with those but just how
the ritual or the symbol works to help
the individual or the group to survive.
OK let's look at Geertz in a bit more detail
now.
Geertz sees humans as animals suspended in webs
of significance they themselves have
spun.
What he means by this is...think
about a spider.
A spider attaches to this
wall back here.
There are different ways
of spider can attach.
It could be in this kind of...a web of concentric circles.
It could be
big dropping, big drooping kind of webs.
It could be funnel webs; different kinds of
webs.
And if you think about the wall as like [objective]
reality; so that there are different ways
to attach
to the wall.
There are different was a spider attaches
to the wall.
In the same way there are different ways we
can attached ourselves to reality.
You see, as I did [on TV] when I was doing
fieldwork, two planes crashing into
two towers in New York.
For some people, it's part of a large Zionist plot.
For
other people, it's an expression of...
revenge for the crimes perpetrated by
by the US on on Muslims.
For plenty of people within the US, it takes
on
different meaning: an unprecedented attack,
a persecution of innocent victims and so
on.
And so there are different ways, if you like,
to attach yourself to reality.
And
the way in New York firefighter attaches
himself with that reality is different to
the
way, I don't know, one of the Al-Qaeda people
who believe they are involved, attach themselves
to that reality.
So our job is to work out, as anthropologists, what different
meanings people attached to that.
So the anthropologist looks at the way
Al-Qaeda supporter might look at that
reality as opposed to the way American
firefighter, or Australian [firefighter],
or whatever would associate himself to that.
[The interpretive anthropologist] tries to get into a
very thick description.
A thick description is just like this.
Ummm I don't know if you can see my
eye is...the eye...what my eye is doing right
now [it's blinking or winking].
You can say "oh that's just...ahhh...two eyelids
eyelids contracting...muscles contracting
and two eyelids meet".
That
would be a thin description.
[For] a bit thicker description you'd say,
"ohh what Nick is doing here is
closing his eyes to demonstrate what a
wink
looks like."
To a bit deeper, you'd say, "well in Australian
and other Western cultures, there is a
"thing called a wink which indicates the
"winker and the 'wink-ee' (the person who is
"being winked to) are sharing a joke or sharing
"something that other people aren't privy
"to".
Then a deeper explanation
still, you'd say, "well Nick is providing
a
"lecture online.
"He's providing a demonstration which indicates
a wink and he keeps on going and
going!"
The deeper you, the thicker the description,
if you like, and the better the description
is from an
anthropological perspective.
So culture is it is a set of these kinds of
meanings, which
are which is set in symbols.
So the meaning of symbols which we talk about
is publicly available symbols; symbols
that everybody [in a given culture] shares.
OK so Geertz's focus is mainly, in this
text, on sacred symbols.
And what he
talks about is a synthesis of your
world view (what you think the world is, how you think the world
is) and your ethos (the way you think you
should act).
The way sacred symbols
make the world...the way they make the world
seem emotionally convincing and the way you
act seem rational.
And there is a kind of clear link here.
The way you act will be related to how
you see the world.
If you believe that
there's a God who determines everything in
the world; it makes sense to praise Him.
If you don't believe that there's a God,
it doesn't make sense to pray to Him.
So the way you look at world (your worldview)
and
ethos (the way you act) are
naturally connected.
For models of and models for
In order to demonstrate what models for are,  I needed another screen that's bigger
So, I've got
it turns out I needed
 
with a kind of imprint. It knows exactly
everything it needs to know---it's already
with in it. It doesn't learn much. It  just goes
out and does what's 'hard wired', if you like.
A whale comes with less knowledge and
needs more help from its mother. In
particular to be reared. But the one with
the least; the one with the least knowledge
of all is humans. We're born with almost no
instincts for survival.
We don't know how to make tacos. We
don't know how to hunt. We don't know how to gather.
We don't know how to make a living. We don't know how to pay a bill,
for example. All these things we have to
learn. And all of that stuff, basically, is
culture. And that is ...if you're watching
this...you and I share some some cultures
with other people. And our job is to get
that stuff that we share, we communicate
through words and symbols to the kids
babies who are just being born. That's one of our big
jobs in life; it's to transmit that. And
then their job is to transmit it on.  Because
without that we are we are literally
nothing; we die.
This is not the case with a beaver. A beaver,
for example, knows what it needs to do right
from the beginning. It knows how to
dam. If I wanna make a dam, I need to get a blue print
I need a guide for how to make a dam. So these are models
for how to behave. A model of is is is a
picture of the world. Here is a model of
I guess it's a fire on an ocean. It's a very
artistic model of a fire on an ocean. Maybe it's a
sunset, I'm not sure.
Apologies for my
ignorance of art. This was just propping up my
computer. Umm Le Corbusier...no that's not it...
Sorry i can't tell you what that was.
I'm sure you art people would know.
So that that presents; it's a way of
representing the world. Now humans are unique
We're, from our first etching on caves; up
until the 19th century art like this; and
into the 21st century. We are unique in
that we are the only species that likes
to go about making models of the world.
Now I think...I'll give you an example, if a model
for how to behave was the 10 Commandments
a model of the world would be like Adam
and Eve and ... create.. and God created the world
in seven days; created Adam; gave him a
wife etc; that's a model of the world; how
it all happens how it all fits together.
OK? So "models for"; "models of". "Model for"
is an ethos, "model of" is a worldview. So
religion has these "models of" and "models
for". But they're not just simply models of
or models for. The Bible by itself
according to this Geertzian approach
would not be such an effective way to
make people become Christians or Jews.
What you actually need is to establish
long-lasting and powerful and pervasive
moods and motivations in people. And so,
when we're talking about umm moods and
motivations, these tie into the ethos, which
is like the style of life or what to do
Think about moods. You know Christmas
has a certain mood. You know people run around and
there's a certain feeling you should have a
Christmas . The ideal is to be at peace
with everybody etc. etc. The
reality of course can be different, but,,,there's
often this... this gap between the reality [sic. I mean ideal]
of Christmas of being closely tied
and at peace with the world---that's
the symbolic image and the reality that
makes Christmas so difficult for some people. So there's
a Christmas mood...there's a New Year's mood
which is one of revelry, excitement. There's an
Easter mood---if you're a Christian--of
solemnity, reflection. There are moods and
there are also motivations. Christmas
makes people go out--in the West--and cook a
turkey. New Years makes them go out and pop
some champagne; kiss somebody. Easter
makes them share eggs and chocolate and
that of course brings people closer
together. And these are tied into your
world conception of everything. So the
reason why we celebrate Easter is that
(if you're a Christian) is that Christ was
crucified on the cross. The reason why we
celebrate Christmas is because Christ was
born. Ummm i'll leave that there.
So what these...you got your 'models of';
you've got your 'models for'; you got your
moods; you got your motivations. And all this
addresses things like problems of meaning.
Problems of meaning are questions--if you
like existential questions--of why is
there suffering in the world? Why haven't
I got what I deserved? Why do I have to
work for a living? Now the classic
Christian perspective; the reason why I
have to work for a living
(apologies for overusing Christianity; I'll just use that
today though; just for one example)... the reason why
I have to work for leaving is because
Adams sinned in the Garden of Eden; God was
angry and said, "because you
have not followed my command and you've
eaten from the tree of knowledge, you and
your kind will have to work forever; and
you will live in sin." And Jesus of
course will redeem me from that sin.
So that...this is the explanation of why
there is suffering; why I have to work;
why there is sin in the world.
Because i can go back now to God; the way
God created the world. That explains
problems meaning. Why is there suffering?Why did
this plane fall out of the sky killing 176 [people]?
 
that's because it's God's will. That's
how I look at it as a Christian. If look at it as
an atheist séance I say "oh it was a complete coincidence"
Again, from an anthropological
perspective, the belief in coincidences is a form
of religious perspective. Ummm... another... if
I am an Azande person, I might think the
reason why the plane fell out of the sky was
because...because... of witchcraft. A witch
affected the pilot. IfI was a certain
kind of Confucian Chinese person, I might
say, "it's because the ancestors were..."
I'm going to different ways of answering
problems of meaning such as why did the
plane for out of the sky. Now again it's
not just to have these beliefs they need
to appear real. And the beliefs we are
talking about belong number 2
the religious perspective. But before we get
there we should contrast that with the
common sense of perspective. The common-sense
perspective is pretty simple. It's what we
we need to survive and get around in the
day. I want to staple paper together, I get
a stapler and [this thing?] is stapled. I know I
use a stapler to do that. A religious
perspective goes beyond the simple
appearances of daily life and asks what
lies behind them. So if, for example,
a plane falls of the the sky; there's a...ummm...
inquest and we discover that the
pilot... that the engine had a problem with it.
It was completely uncontrollable, if you
like.
Just like a bushel was made with wrong
kind of rubber and burned and
that set the fire...set the plane on fire. So
it crashed out of the sky. Now most people
would say, "yes but why did that happen to
"that plane not the other plane was
"flying the same time and not the other 300 planes
of the same model and make that were flying at the same time?"
Now, to answer this, we need to go beyond
the common sense perspective of the world
and move to a religious perspective. Could be
quite simple and say "it's a coincidence".
Can become more complicated and say "it's God", "it's the
ancestors,"
'it's witchcraft," "it's spirits". Or whatever.
So what this is talking about is what is
"really real";
what lies behind the appearance of
things in this world. Everyday it appears,
every day we see the Sun come up and go
down apparently come up to go down.
What lies behind that? What keeps it all
going? Well the religious person might
say God, or whatever it is they believe in, the
tortoise or whatever it is.
So, if you're looking at this red ball
... this red circle thats coming up from below
their circle what's coming up in the
morning. So common sense tells us that the Sun is
rising. The religious perspective sees there's
God behind it.
Scientific perspective says well
actually it isn't the sun 'rising'. The earth is revolving
giving the appearance of
sunrise, coz that's a scientific kind of perspective.
The scientific perspective says to you, "okay well looks to you like you've got
solid material (hand) is holding up this
solid material (stapler), but in fact what
looks like a stapler is just a bunch of
neutrons and electrons
which are...and in fact it's mostly
space mostly gaps. And your hands
are mostly gaps. So it appears like it's solid
but  it's not. And
it is matter, well since Einstein we
decided well actually
this matter can also be also form of
energy; and energy is matter, and so on
So what... the appearance the ball is also
questioned, but in a different kind of
way. The aesthetic approach to reality is
different again . And let me pull up my encyclopaedia of art
and I can see here the aesthetic way of looking
at two people from an artist sort of artistic or
aesthetic perspective. Up here like this.
OK so so there are different ways to represent,
from the aesthetic perspective. That's a woman.
from one aesthetic perspective. This is [a woman] from another aesthetic perspective.
From a scientific perspective,
scientific perspective like pre-Newtonian
post-Newtonian perspectives. Within
the religious perspectives that different
again. There's God, spirits. [And] common
sense perspectives also vary between
cultures. But what we're really concerned with here is
the religious perspective. What we need is
for this... we need for culture to work ...we
need these perspectives, particularly the
religious perspective, to appear to be
fact. To make models of the world
convincing; so that the world as lived
is the world is imagined. It brings together
ethos and world view. So they reinforce
each other. And you can transit from the
common sense thing like,  "okay
my, my brother died" and move that to a religious
perspective: "because it was God's will"
or "because witchcraft" or whatever.
So you go from what is real: "my brother died" to what is
really real, [i.e.] what lies behind the
appearances of that death: "it was God's will"
"[it was] witchcraft" and whatever.
And it makes moods and motivations of life seem uniquely realistic.
So Christmas, if you're into Christmas, it
appears and feels really unique and really (if
it's working for you) happy. And say with
a wedding. A wedding is great cos you get
'models of' and 'models for' and they come
together. For example, on top of the
wedding cake, you have a bride and groom.
These are, if you like, a model of the ideal
bride and groom. But when you see the
bride and groom standing up together on
altar...is it the altar?  I've just been to a
wedding recently noticed a lot of people crying.
And tears were coming out of their eyes because
they're really emotionally invested.
They see a reality that kind of connects
this ideal image of bride and groom with
the reality of the bride and groom that you see
front of you. It appears uniquely real and
you feel it. You feel the reality of the
joining together of man and woman (as it
was in this case).
OK, so 'models of' and  'models for' come
together particularly in rituals. We've talked about
Christmas, and I just talked about a wedding. These are
rituals. Rituals are basically symbols in
action. Let's have a look at this
terrible illustration. So were talking
about religion. It's a set of symbols. It's a
cultural pattern you have 'models for' how
to behave. It's an ethos like the 10
commandments. And you have 'models of' [which is] a worldview. [This is
is for example the Garden of Eden and God
commanding that Adam lives on the
Earth and has to work. And just to make it
clear again, a 'model for' includes
something like how to make a taco. And
model of includes something like a
a representation of a fire or sunset or
whatever it is. Now these come together
in rituals. And in rituals there is a sense of
commitment. We have to engage and believe
and then we will see. It's not like
people, for example, often say "Well I'll
believe in God when I see Him". But that's
just taking a common-sense perspective
towards religion. Most religious people
don't take that perspective. They take another perspective.
They say, "if I believe first then what can
I see?"
So if you invest yourself in Christmas
or invest yourself in the rituals of the
church, or synagogue, or a mosque or whatever,
then you'll see then you'll understand. And
then the 'models for' and 'models of' will come
together. And they'll provide for you
moods. Llike one peace, of resignation
like your general peace and resignation
hopefully. During your wedding: happiness
and joy. During Christmas peace and
goodwill . During New Years, of revelry and
excitement. During Easter of reflection, a sense
indebtedness to Christ, for example.
They don't really go anywhere though, so Geertz is more interested in
motivation; what makes you do. What makes you
get married; what makes you give the bride and groom
presents; and this kind of stuff. So that's his vision
of religion. But it's very important in
to see the importance of
symbols. So, in conclusion, symbols are vehicles
which provide 'models of' the world and 'models
for' how to behave (within the religious
perspective). And I hope that explains to
Geertz's idea of symbols.
