Interpreting the Interpreter: Geertz and his Field of Anthropology

Abstract

If Geertz is not a “relativist” (as this term is sometimes used), his pluralism, his appreciation of differences, contrasts, conflict, among cultures is refined to an unusual degree, so that at times he seems almost to be on the lookout for them…. As he wrote some years ago, “the essential vocation of interpretive anthropology is not to answer our deepest questions, but to make available to us answers that others … have given.”