Clifford Geertz - NY Times Article

Clifford Geertz, Cultural Anthropologist, Is Dead at 80
By ANDREW L. YARROW
Published: November 1, 2006


Clifford Geertz, the eminent cultural anthropologist whose work focused on interpreting the symbols he believed give meaning and order to people’s lives, died on Monday in Philadelphia. He was 80 and lived in Princeton, N.J.
The cause was complications after heart surgery, according to an announcement by the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, where he had been on the faculty since 1970.
Best known for his theories of culture and cultural interpretation, Mr. Geertz was considered a founder of interpretive, or symbolic, anthropology. But his influence extended far beyond anthropology to many of the social sciences, and his writing had a literary flair that distinguished him from most theorists and ethnographers.
He won a National Book Critics Circle Award for “Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author” (1988), which examined four of his discipline’s forebears: Bronislaw Malinowski, Ruth Benedict, E. E. Evans-Pritchard and Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Drawing on history, psychology, philosophy and literary criticism, Mr. Geertz analyzed and decoded the meanings of rituals, art, belief systems, institutions and other “symbols,” as he defined them.
“Believing with Max Weber that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning,” he wrote in his 1973 book, “The Interpretation of Cultures” (Basic Books). The Times Literary Supplement called the book one of the 100 most important since World War II.
Mr. Geertz also wrote voluminously on his fieldwork in Indonesia and Morocco. In one of his most widely cited essays, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” included in “The Interpretation of Cultures,” he analyzed the kinship and social ties that are constructed, emphasized and maintained in this form of ritual “deep play” as if they were “an assemblage of texts.”
In his writings, Mr. Geertz drew a careful distinction between culture and social structure, differentiating himself from functionalists like Lévi-Strauss, who believed that rituals, institutions and other aspects of a culture could be best understood by the purposes they serve.
Whereas social structure embraces economic, political and social life and its institutional forms, Mr. Geertz said, culture is “a system of meanings embodied in symbols” that provide people with a frame of reference to understand reality and animate their behavior. Culture, he argued, fills the gap between those things that are biological givens for our species and those we need to function in a complex, interdependent and changing world.
In short, in the Geertz formulation, the question to ask about cultural phenomena is not what they do, but what they mean. Mr. Geertz also argued against the idea that one could define the essence of humanity across all cultures.
“The notion that the essence of what it means to be human is most clearly revealed in those features of human culture that are universal rather than in those that are distinctive to this people or that is a prejudice that we are not obliged to share,” he wrote in 1966. “It may be in the cultural particularities of people — in their oddities — that some of the most instructive revelations of what it is to be generically human are to be found.”
Mr. Geertz was also deeply concerned about the anthropologist’s role and the discipline’s methodology. Recognizing the colonialist and Western heritage of anthropology, he believed that it was difficult for anyone from one culture to represent another accurately and meaningfully. He noted that anthropologists were hardly passive, objective observers, but rather individual creators of narratives, with their own voice.
Arguing that ethnographic reality does not exist apart from anthropologists’ written versions of it, he said that cultures and peoples should speak for themselves, with anthropologists learning to “converse with them” and interpret them.
In his book “Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology” (Basic Books, 1983), Mr. Geertz also addressed the question of whether someone from one culture can objectively understand another.
For him, the anthropologist’s task is to use what he called thick description to interpret symbols by observing them in use. Therefore the anthropologist must be both empirically rigorous and a savvy interpreter, akin to a psychoanalyst. In 1972 he wrote that “cultural analysis is (or should be) guessing at meanings, assessing the guesses and drawing explanatory conclusions from the better guesses.”
Mr. Geertz’s elaborate theorizing and his later doubts about the limits of anthropological knowledge left some scholars nonplussed. As Jonathan Benthall, writing in The New Statesman in 1995, said: “He disappoints some colleagues because he comes up with no overarching theories.”

....Around this time, he did the first of a half dozen fieldwork stints in Indonesia, spending 1952 to 1954 in the central Javanese village of Pare. His early work on Indonesia combined aspects of more conventional ethnography and history with concerns about economic and political development in the wake of decolonization.
“The Religion of Java” (1960), his first major work, is an ethnographic description of Javanese religion. “Agricultural Involution” (1963) takes a big-picture view of modernization and economic development in the wake of Indonesian independence, while “Peddlers and Princes” (1963) focuses on development from the more microscopic level of the towns of Modjokuto in Java and Tabanan in Bali. A century of social development in Modjokuto is the subject of “The Social History of an Indonesian Town” (1965).
“Kinship in Bali” (1975), written with his first wife, the anthropologist Hildred Storey, posited “an underlying order in Balinese kinship practices” in the cultural realm of symbols, patterns and ideas, despite differences in practices, or social structure, in different parts of the island.
“Negara: The Theater State in 19th Century Bali” (1981) examined the nature of royal families in tiny pre-colonial south Balinese kingdoms, while challenging the “power-centered tradition of political theory from Machiavelli and Hobbes to Marx.

....After beginning his academic career as a research associate and instructor at Harvard, Mr. Geertz spent two years in California. From 1958 to 1959, he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences in Palo Alto; he was later an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1960 until 1970, Mr. Geertz taught at the University of Chicago, becoming a full professor in 1964. He joined the Institute for Advanced Study in 1970 as its first Professor of the Social Sciences and from 1978 to ’79 taught at Oxford University.
Because of political turmoil in Indonesia, Mr. Geertz later turned his attention to Morocco, where he began doing fieldwork in the ancient village of Sefrou in 1963, returning five more times over the course of his career.
Profoundly influenced by his fieldwork there, he honed his comparative and historical approach in “Islam Observed” (1968), which the anthropologist Edmund Leach praised as “a highly insightful comparison between Islam as interpreted by Indonesians and Islam interpreted by Moroccans.”
By the end of his career, Mr. Geertz had grown discouraged about the ability of social science to generalize or develop sweeping theories, concluding that circumstances are too different among cultures, across time, and within societies. At the same time, he was heartened by the what he called the deprovincialization of anthropology, as the profession came to embrace ever more Asian, Middle Eastern and other non-Western scholars.
In his 1995 memoir, “After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist,” Mr. Geertz eloquently meditated on his field work and academic career, concluding that anthropology is “an excellent way, interesting, dismaying, useful and amusing, to expend a life.”

Cultural Anthropology

Today I went to the book sale and bought William A. Haviland's "Cultural Anthropology" and guess what I found on the first page??? An explanation for anthropology:

"[... ]Anthropology, the study of humankind, seeks to produce useful generalizations about people and their behavior and to arrive at the fullest possible understanding of human diversity. [...] Physical anthropologists study humans as biological organisms, tracing the evolutionary development of the human animal and looking at the biological variations within this species. Cultural anthropologists are concerned with human cultures, or the ways of life in societies. Within the field of cultural anthropologists are archeologists, who seek to explain human behavior by studying matererial objects, usually from past cultures; linguists, who study languages, by which cultures are maintained and passed on to succeeding generations; and ethnologists, who study cultures as they can be experienced and discussed with persons whose culture is to be understood."

UN

I was curious and had to find out the requirements myself (Sorry, Julie and ES!!!)


"Membership in the United Nations is open to all peace-loving states which accept the obligations of the Charter and, in the judgement of the Organization, are willing and able to carry out these obligations.

The admission of any such State to membership in the United Nations will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council."

Article 4, Chapter 2, United Nations Charter

How does a new State or Government obtain recognition by the United Nations?
How does a country join the UN as a Member State?

The recognition of a new State or Government is an act that only States and Governments may grant or withhold. It generally implies readiness to assume diplomatic relations. The United Nations is neither a State nor a Government, and therefore does not posses any authority to recognize either a State or a Government. As an organization of independent States, it may admit a new State to its membership or accept the credentials of the representatives of a new Government.

Membership in the Organization, in accordance with Paragraph I of Article 4 of the Charter of the United Nations, "is open to all peace-loving States which accept the obligations contained in the United Nations Charter and, in the judgment of the Organization, are able to carry out these obligations." States are admitted to membership in the United Nations by decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council. The procedure is briefly as follows:

1. The State submits an application to the Secretary-General and a formal declaration stating that it accepts the obligations under the Charter.

2. The application is considered first by the Security Council. Any recommendation for admission must receive the affirmative votes of nine of the 15 members of the Council, provided that none of its five permanent members - China, France, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the United States of America - have voted against the application.

3. If the Council recommends admission, the recommendation is presented to the General Assembly for consideration. A two-thirds majority vote is necessary in the Assembly for admission of a new State, and membership becomes effective the date the resolution for admission is adopted.

At each session, the General Assembly considers the credentials of all representatives of Member States participating in that session. During such consideration, which routinely takes place first in the 9-member Credentials Committee but can also arise at other times, the issue can be raised whether a particular representative has been accredited by the Government actually in power. If controverted, this issue is ultimately decided by a majority vote in the Assembly. It should be noted that the normal change of Governments, as through a democratic election, does not raise any issues concerning the credentials of the representative of the State concerned.

Global Force

P. W. Botha, Defender of Apartheid, Is Dead at 90

"P. W. Botha, the South African leader who struggled vainly to preserve apartheid rule in a tide of domestic racial violence and global condemnation, died yesterday at his home in South Africa. He was 90.

Peter Andrews/Reuters

P. W. Botha, left, and Nelson Mandela, then South Africa’s president, discussing Truth Commission hearings in 1997. Mr. Botha refused to testify before the panel.

His death was reported by The South African Press Association in Cape Town, quoting the security staff at Mr. Botha’s home on the southern Cape coast.

Mr. Botha was a combative, irascible son of a well-to-do Afrikaner farm family who dropped out of college to work for the right-wing National Party, then rose through the ranks of South Africa’s political establishment, gaining a reputation as the “Old Crocodile” for his ability to charm, outwit and crush his opponents.

In 1978, Mr. Botha became prime minister and proceeded to engineer the creation of a new Constitution, one that held out the promise of limited reform of apartheid policies. When the Constitution came into effect in 1984, Mr. Botha became president. “We must adapt or die,” Mr. Botha told his constituents after becoming prime minister.

But the Constitution only roiled the battle over race. Though it allowed Asians and people of mixed race to be represented in a white-controlled Parliament, it continued to exclude the nation’s black majority. Some apartheid laws, like a prohibition on mixed marriages and a requirement that blacks carry special passes, were relaxed. But the measures only fueled the anger of apartheid’s opponents. One opposition leader, Frederik van Zyl Slabbert, said Mr. Botha’s reforms were the political equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic."
Article

This article about the apartheid supporter P.W. Botha caught my attention because the headline stated that Botha had held his position against a global front. Therefore, the article seemed to imply that some global force was against apartheid ( I would hope so) and that Botha acted outside of the global schematic. I have not researched much on this subject but it continues to raise questions about global "police" and determining when a country's actions need to be confronted.


On a different note, this past weekend I listened to some of the Lost Boys of Sudan speak about their experiences and what they hoped people would do about the genocide in the Sudan. They spoke a lot about U.N. action being taken as the signal of the start of war with the U.S. in Darfur. Also apparently the U.N. does not include the Sudanese in their voting practices. Perhaps someone else (Julie or Evan maybe?) knows what the requirements are for joining the U.N. Shouldn't more countries be in it if it is going to be representative of a global force?

"Cowboy Nation"

Robert Kagan’s provocative piece “Cowboy Nation” details what he sees as the desire for empire as war being part of our American blood. He wrote, “The early United States was an expansionist power from the moment the first pilgrim set foot on the continent; and it did not stop expanding—territorially, commercially, culturally, and geopolitically—over the next four centuries. The United States has never been a status quo power; it has always been a revolutionary one, consistently expanding its participation and influence in the world in ever-widening arcs. The impulse to involve us in the affairs of others is neither a modern phenomenon nor a deviation from the American spirit. It is embedded in the American DNA”.

What is interesting about this argument is Kagan emphasis that our liberal (not current political nor IR term, but idea of the individual) tradition leads us to see ourselves as able to spread liberty. Furthermore we as a nation see it or our destiny as listed in the Declaration (Kagan sees it as the defining document of the American mantra) to spread our empire.

I think Kagan needs to emphasize that despite our goals toward liberty, we still act in accordance to what serves us. Currently actions in Africa or other parts of the world could be seen as spreading liberty, but they do little to serve our national interest.

This article is important to our study because it reminds us to examine ourselves without forgetting that our past is not ideal. Furthermore the idea makes both sides examine their roots. The question of doing good is troublesome for us because it can embroil us in conflicts that neither suit us or that we cannot solve. Perhaps the lyrics of a Rolling Stones song have applicability here. Instead of fighting our past, we should have some “sympathy for the devil”.

"Please allow me to introduce myself
Im a man of wealth and taste
Ive been around for a long, long year
Stole many a mans soul and faith
And I was round when jesus christ
Had his moment of doubt and pain
Made damn sure that pilate
Washed his hands and sealed his fate
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name
But whats puzzling you
Is the nature of my game
I stuck around st. petersburg
When I saw it was a time for a change
Killed the czar and his ministers
Anastasia screamed in vain
I rode a tank
Held a generals rank
When the blitzkrieg raged
And the bodies stank
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guess my name, oh yeah
Ah, whats puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah
I watched with glee
While your kings and queens
Fought for ten decades
For the gods they made
I shouted out,
Who killed the kennedys?
When after all
It was you and me
Let me please introduce myself
Im a man of wealth and taste
And I laid traps for troubadours
Who get killed before they reached bombay
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But whats puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, oh yeah, get down, baby
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, oh yeah
But whats confusing you
Is just the nature of my game
Just as every cop is a criminal
And all the sinners saints
As heads is tails
Just call me lucifer
cause Im in need of some restraint
So if you meet me
Have some courtesy
Have some sympathy, and some taste
Use all your well-learned politesse
Or Ill lay your soul to waste, um yeah
Pleased to meet you
Hope you guessed my name, um yeah
But whats puzzling you
Is the nature of my game, um mean it, get down
Woo, who
Oh yeah, get on down
Oh yeah
Oh yeah!
Tell me baby, whats my name
Tell me honey, can ya guess my name
Tell me baby, whats my name
I tell you one time, youre to blame
Ooo, who
Ooo, who
Ooo, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Oh, yeah
Whats me name
Tell me, baby, whats my name
Tell me, sweetie, whats my name
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Ooo, who, who
Oh, yeah"

Some words of hope

"A little patience, and we shall see the reign of witches pass over, their spells dissolve, and the people, recovering their true sight, restore their government to its true principles. It is true that in the meantime we are suffering deeply in spirit, and incurring the horrors of a war and long oppressions of enormous public debt. If the game runs sometimes against us at home we must have patience till luck turns, and then we shall have an opportunity of winning back the principles we have lost, for this is a game where principles are at stake."


Thomas Jefferson

The Threat of Blackness, by Dario A. Euraque

Overall, Euraque uses his essay to discuss the cultural makeup of the Latin American countries involved in the banana trade. He specificallly references Honduras and the complex combination of native, European, and African cultures. The interplay between the native 'indians' of Honduras and the two groups of people that came to inhabit the island with them created a very unique cultural identity that came to fruition (haha no pun intended) as the banana trade in specific regions of Honduras increased drastically.

Euraque stresses that labeling countries such as Honduras as simply "banana repulics" tends to ignore the cultural and economic history of the country itself, as it connects and intertwines with the banana trade. Thus, such a perspective will "delink not only national economic and political history from the banana enclave... but it also delinked national cultural history from the regional processes on the Caribbean North Coast." To prove his point, Euraque uses the example of the 1926 Honduran Congress vote to name the country's currency after Lempira, "the indigenous cheiftain who died fighting the Spainards in the 1530s." While Lempira's actually place in history is not exactly pertinent, more importantly Euraque examines how the use of Lempira as a national icon reflects the cultural identity of the country at the time. Because Lempira was an indigenous hero, his popularity reflects a national connection with those indigenous to the island even though most of the nations population was a unique combination of indigenous, Eurpoean, and African American heritage.

Soon, European and indigenous culture combined to identify a "threat of blackness" embodied by the control of economic development (specifically the banana trade) by a region of the country heavily populated by those of mainly European and indigenous descent. In fact, this region of banana exportation was "heavily reliant on the labor of mulatto and black populations... [who were often] viewed as a 'menace' to the Indian/Spanish national identity promoted in the 1920s." As Lempira rose as a national hero, so did the concept of "Indians domesticated within Indo-Hispanic mestizaje," implying that those of African descent were not capable of this same domestication by the Europeans.

Euraque seeks to remind us that while the banana trade deeply affected the economic stability of the Latin American countries, it also altered the social systems of these nations, orchestrating the development of specific cultural identities dependent upon the time period and progression of the banana trade in a specific time. The 'racialization' of Lempira existed in a cultural environment seeking to create a specific identity that would encourage successful economic policies, especially as related to the banana trade.

"The Macondo of Guatemala": Banana Workers and National Revolutions in Tiquisate, 1944-1954, Cindy Forster

Forster traces the role of United Fruit workers in the political changes in Guatemala. She argues that the United Fruit banana plantation workers were in a unique position to resist (sucessfully or otherwise) exploitation by the company and government due to the workers ability to organize such large numbers in their union. The revolution, which temporarily established land reform and better wages/conditions for wokers, had a strong poplular base, but could not hope to withstand the U.S. supported invasion and overthrow.

Mark Moberg - Responsible Men and Sharp Yankees

Essence of the essay:

Moberg discusses the strategies employed by United Fruit to monopolize the banana export industry in British Honduras (known today as Belize) and how these strategies affect the relationship between "the colonial state, traditional elites, and the United Fruit Company. In the essay he traces the history of United Fruit in British Honduras from the time the company was invited to operate early in the 20th century until the time the company abandoned their contract in 1920.

Short summary:

The intentions of United Fruit are made clear in the essay; the company moves in, develops a monopoly, and exploits the land of British Honduras. A contract between United Fruit Company and British Honduras was formed. United Fruit was to produce and export agriculture for 25 years and in return the government would provide the company cheap land and a new railway system for transportation of goods. The company was able to buy land for $1 per acre, whereas private farmers had to pay nearly $8 per acre.

The land was infected with Panama Disease circa 1914 and the disease slowly spread causing most of the land owned by United Fruit to be unsuitable for the growth of banana plants. Shortly after this disaster struck the company pulled out of British Honduras and offered to sell the land back for twice the price at which it was purchased. In the conclusion, Moberg mentions the present situation with the banana export industry in Belize.

One idea that I may look into for a future blog is the outcome of the suit that was initiated by Chiquita (the successor of United Fruit) through WTO. The suit was meant to end the tariff quota system that allowed ACP fruit to export a certain amount of fruit with reduced taxation. If the ruling passes, "United Fruit will have dismantled a banana industry that played a major role in the company's own growth".

North vs South

Haha... Probably you all need to play some North vs South. Even as a European, I remember playing this action game on the NES ( That was the Nintendo Entertainment System from the late 80s, early 90s). So much fun...

Striffler, "The Logic of the Enclave: United Fruit, Popular Struggle, and Capatalist Transformation in Ecuador"

Striffler’s chapter focused on the presence and eventual departure of the United Fruit Company from Ecuador during the years 1930’s to 1962. He traced the evolution of the company from having widespread power to that of readjusting due to dissent from local peasants and workers.

From the initial presence of the company, local peasants constantly threatened its property rights. The government was not a reliable source of power for either side. Both were armed and enforced their own rules. Interestingly, the UFC treated its workers relatively well, which virtually eliminated their dissent. The spread of Panama disease required UFC to spread, which was the harbinger of the company having to leave. When it sought new land peasants fought it at every turn making the company acquiesce and grant them tenant rights. Finally in 1962 the company completed its switch to contracts to gain the commodity of bananas, which it so dearly desired.

The interesting point is that while the peasants gained property rights, they did so only to fall under a new institution of native capitalists who were less fair then the UFC. The UFC and others still remained able to gain their products.

I think this is an unfortunate occurrence when people gain rights only to be re-subjected to another, crueler rule. It seems as if the North will leave when it realizes what it can do to maintain its own needs. Furthermore it illustrates that the capitalist world system will find a way to survive no matter who is in charge, which highlights the decline of state/individual sovereignty. Good Night.

One Hundred Years of United Fruit Company Letters

Phillippe Bourgeois, Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine at the University of California, examines the role of the United Fruit Company in his essay "One Hundred Years of United Fruit Company Letters."

Bourgeois defines the United Fruit Company as "a quintessential model for the institutional form of the multinational corporation that has changed the face of the world during the 20th century." By looking at the "discussions, reports, and directives by managers, lawyers, accountants, undercover informants, and lobbyists [...]" from archival documents (1914-1970) , he examines the company's policy towards the banana plantations on the boarder of Costa Rica and Panama.

To achieve his initial idea, he splits his essay in three parts: In the first part, he concentrates on the relationship between the "host-countries" (Costa Rica and Panama) and the United Fruit Company and how the United Fruit Company managed to influence the host-countries' governments. In the second and in the third part, Bourgeois comes up with examples of how the company tried to keep their workers under control and how the company reacted towards possible unionism and occasional uproar.

But all parts do ultimately contribute to Bourgeois' s central topic, this is to say how the multinational corporation (in this case, the United Fruit Company) "has replaced the international corporate form, which had dominated the colonial era through governmental sponsored international trade monopolies."

SVBGA and Contract Farming (286-315)

In Lawrence S. Grossman’s “St. Vincent Banana Growers Association, Contract Farming, and the Peasantry,” the author claims that the St. Vincent Banana Growers Association (SVBGA) had little power over the peasants and two goals: managing the banana growth as a business and functioning as an institution focused on development.

Before showing the SVBGA as a beneficial organization, Grossman asserts that quality was a main factor in banana sales and introduces the processes of contract farming. Contract farming, according to Grossman, is the process in which farmers are guaranteed the purchase of their crops and assistance in obtaining credit and necessary supplies, so long as they follow the planting and harvesting rules set out by the buyer. The contract farmer’s biggest complaint in this system was that it was the wealthy buyers who set price standards for the crop. However, contract farmers also evaded the system by using chemicals purchased for the buyer’s crop on other sections of land and not following directions or advice given by the buyer. Grossman also discusses the British Windward Islands and their difficulties in raising Banana crops.

The most interesting sections of the essay are toward the end, as Grossman explains the processes of banana harvesting, the setup of the SVBGA, and how the SVBGA gave assistance to its members. The very detailed look at the labor intensive banana growing and harvesting can be seen on page 295. Specific steps and banana jargon point to a growing necessity for more skilled laborers. Grossman calls this the opposite of “deskilling of labor” with increased technology over time. The complexity of the work did not automatically enter a farmer into the SVBGA. Instead, only those selling 62,500 pounds of bananas in the course of a year were given seats as delegates “in their own right.” Five other delegates with 2,500 pounds of bananas can be elected by their district to be able to vote. Although only 6% of voting members in 1992 were delegates in their own right, many small farmers still saw the SVBGA as catering to large plantation owner’s interests. Meanwhile, the government of St. Vincent still holds the power to dismiss the board of directors entirely, should they see fit.

The SVGBA does give aid to those farmers registered with the association. In the chart on page 308, disaster and rehabilitation funds can be seen as just a few of the many efforts made throughout the past twenty-five years. Grossman pushes the point further stating that “the association’s policies have been supportive of small-scale farmers and have been essential in maintaining peasant involvement in the industry” (309). Grossman goes on to assert the considerable autonomy given to peasants claiming that they are not working in a system of “disguised wage labor” (311). Overall, Grossman sees the St. Vincent Banana Grower’s Association as a beneficial organization to large and small farmers alike.