Session 4

Question 1

What is the main Acknowledgement made by Geertzs model of Thick Description?

Answer 1

1. Culture is observable! (From looking at the world one can understand culture)
2. Culture is public because meaning is.

Question 2

What is culture according to the Thick Description approach?

Answer 2

1. Culture is a social structure that is visible in the outside world. It can be observed. Social phenomena leave marks on the individuals psychology but they remain social phenomena. If you follow these marks of visibility you are on the path of understanding “a” culture.
2. The concept of culture is essentially a semiotic one. “Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun,…” Culture is supposed to be those webs.

Question 3

What is Geertz’s criticism on previous models?

Answer 3

1. If we look to much at the mental dimension of culture we tend to get to obscure because we can’t look into other people’s heads.
2. Analysis of culture is not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. It is explication I am after, construing social expressions on their surface enigmatical.

Question 4

What is the the three-step of Thick Description?

Answer 4

Beschreiben - Verstehen - Deuten
(Similar to the analysis of text)

Question 5

Explain the three-step of Thick Description.

Answer 5

Question 6

What was kept as the basics of Thick Description?

Answer 6

1. Culture is a public and dominantly social phenomenon.
2. It is, therefore, in principle, observable.
3. It is a matter of signs and their significance.
4. Its analysis is a hermeneutic task.
5. In many respects, the analysis of culture is very similar to the analysis of texts.

Question 7

According to Geertz, what is Cultural analysis?

Answer 7

“Cultural analysis is guessing at meanings, assessing the guesses, and drawing explanatory conclusions from the better guesses.”

Question 8

What are the advantages of Thick Description?

Answer 8

1. It focuses on observable reality
2. It tries to explain symbolic nature of cultural/social reality
3. Develops methods to analyse “circulation of social energy” more concretely than either New Historicism or Discourse analysis
4. Has served as “eye-opener” for many cultural phenomena

Question 9

What are the Disadvantages of Thick Description?

Answer 9

1. The idea to read cultures as texts tends to blur differences between different kinds of texts.
2. It inherits the problems of the hermenutic circle.
3. It tends to disregard the material basis of culture
4. It tends to disregard the mental dimension of culture.
5. It does’nt ask how a specific phenomenon came about and focuses more on how it is.