Clifford Geertz by His Colleagues

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Edited by Richard A. Shweder and Byron Good

University of Chicago Press

Due/Published March 2005, 160 pages, paper

ISBN 0226756106

Clifford Geertz is the most influential American anthropologist of the past four decades. His writings have defined and given character to the intellectual agenda of a meaning-centered, nonreductive interpretive social science and have provoked much excitement and debate about the nature of human understanding.
As part of its centennial celebration, the American Anthropological Association sponsored a presidential session honoring Geertz. "Clifford Geertz by His Colleagues compiles the twelve speeches given by a distinguished panel of social scientists along with a concluding piece by Geertz in which he responds to each speaker and reflects on his own career. These edited speeches cover a broad range of topics, including Geertz's views on morality, cultural critique, interpretivism, time and change, Islam, and violence.
A fitting tribute to one of the great thinkers of our age, this collection will be enjoyed by anthropologists as well as students of psychology, history, and philosophy.

Contents

Preface
Richard A. Shweder and Byron Good
1. Cliff Notes: The Pluralisms of Clifford Geertz -- Richard A. Shweder
2. Passing Judgment: Interpretation, Morality, and Cultural Assessment in the Work of Clifford Geertz -- Lawrence Rosen
3. Celebrating Geertzian Interpretivism -- Jerome Bruner
4. Coded Communications: Symbolic Psychological Anthropology -- Robert A. LeVine
5. Geertz's Style: A Moral Matter -- James A. Boon
6. Clifford Geertz on Time and Change -- Natalie Zemon Davis
7. Happenstance and Patterns -- Amelie Oksenberg Rorty
8. Geertz's Concept of Culture in Historical Context: How He Saved the Day and Maybe the Century -- James Peacock
9. Clifford Geertz and Islam -- Dale F. Eickelman
10. Deep Play, Violence, and Social Reconstruction -- Michael M. J. Fischer
11. Speaking to Large Issues: The World, If It Is Not in Pieces -- Ulf Hannerz
12. On the "Subject" of Culture: Subjectivity and Cultural Phenomenology in the Work of Clifford Geertz -- Byron Good and Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good
13. Commentary -- Clifford Geertz
Appendix
Index