Clifford Geertz,

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Clifford Geertz, From the Natives Point of View

• The Point of View of the Researcher
• The Position of the Researcher
• 1. Bronislaw Malinowskis A Diary in the Strict
  Sense of the Term showed Malinowski as
  sometimes dissatisfied with, and unsympathetic
  to, the natives he studied.
• Geertzs question if it is nota capacity to
  think, feel, and perceive like a native, how is
  anthropological knowledge of the way natives
  think, feel, and perceive possible? When we can
  no longer claim a sort of transcultural
  identification with our subjects?

2
Clifford Geertz, From the Natives Point of View

• The Point of View of the Researcher
• The Position of the Researcher
• 2. Experience-near concepts
• how an informant might describe his/her own
  feelings and thoughts, and the feelings and
  thoughts of close friends or neighbours

3
Clifford Geertz, From the Natives Point of View

• The Point of View of the Researcher
• The Position of the Researcher
• 3. Experience-distant concepts
• how a specialist might describe such thoughts
  and feelings, in order to prove their scientific
  or conceptual hypotheses.
• Experience-near and Experience-distant are
  not qualitatively different nor is one
  preferable to the other.

4
Clifford Geertz, From the Natives Point of View

• The Point of View of the Researcher
• The Position of the Researcher
• 4. The trick is not to get yourself into some
  inner correspondence of spirit with your
  informants.
• The trick is to figure out what they think they
  are up to p. 58 top
• What the ethnographer perceives is what they
  perceive by means of p. 58 mid

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Clifford Geertz, From the Natives Point of View

• Investigating social organizations
• through the concept of person
• 1. The Western conception of the person as a
  bounded, unique, more or less integrated
  motivational and cognitive universe, a dynamic
  center of awareness, emotion, judgment, and
  action organized into a distinctive whole
• is a rather peculiar idea within the
  context of the worlds cultures. (p. 59 middle)
• First, the researcher must ignore this idea, and
  apply ? the framework of the informants idea of
  self-hood to the informants ? experiences

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Clifford Geertz, From the Natives Point of View

• Investigating social organizations
• through the concept of person
• 2. Personal and societal conceptions of
• inside / outside, and their proper
• ordering or hierarchy within that society

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Clifford Geertz, From the Natives Point of View

• III. The internal point of view Frameworks by
  which people designate and interact with each
  other within the organization
• 1. Labels and Interrelationships (Status
  markers)
• Birth order
• Kinship
• Caste or class
• Gender
• Position at workplace or position in social order
• Other

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Clifford Geertz, From the Natives Point of View

• The internal point of view Frameworks by which
  people designate and interact with each other
  within the organization
• 2. Status markers and their definition of the
  person
• ? Ones identity is not simply personal and
  individual, but representative of a generic
  type who functions in a defined position within
  a web of social relations
• ones cultural (or organizational) location
• ? Note such rigid, performative roles are more
  commonly found in close-knit, densely populated,
  immobile societies. They provide the necessary
  personal distance among individuals.

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Clifford Geertz, From the Natives Point of View

• IV. The internal point of view Social
  attribution frameworks
• ? Symbolic means by which to sort people out
• 1.Internal means of sorting and designating
  members of a society or organization
  contextualizing the person
• By ethnic group
• Within ethnic group, by family or clan membership
  (genealogy)
• By village or place of origin
• By occupation
• Each person has more than one of these
  designations, and is known by a different
  designation depending on the narrower or wider
  social context
• Identity is borrowed from the setting

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Clifford Geertz, From the Natives Point of View

• The internal point of view Social attribution
  frameworks
• 2. Looking at persons as though they were
  outlines waiting to be filled in, is part of a
  total pattern of social life
• Distinctions made among persons within the same,
  but diverse, society by context of life and
  practices
• Connections made among persons within the same,
  but diverse, society by context of personal
  choice (occupation, friendships, politics)

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Clifford Geertz, From the Natives Point of View

• The internal point of view Social attribution
  frameworks
• 3. Public identity as based in private arenas of
  life
• Public interaction based on positional
  categories that are supposedly permanent and
  inherent
• Private interaction based in subjective
  experience within the household and religious and
  neighbourhood groupings

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Clifford Geertz, From the Natives Point of View

• V. Back to the researchers point of view on
  the natives point of view other peoples
  subjectivities
• Semiotic means by which people define each other
  within one society or organization
• Semiotic means by which we (researchers) grasp
  their ways of doing this
• Dialectic between extreme detail (thick
  descriptionethnography) and global (broad)
  conceptual structures and explanations
• The hermeneutic circle researchers attempt to
  make details explain the concept and make
  concepts explain the details