Clifford Geertz, intellectual autonomy, and interpretive social science

Clifford Geertz was a key protagonist in the development of “interpretive social science,” but much of our understanding of his position as an intellectual neglects the crucial years before the publication of The Interpretation of Cultures. In this article, I argue that there is a common thread in Geertz’s early work and that it addressed, quite sophisticatedly, the reworking of the concept of cultural system, which he wrote on from the mid-1950s through the early 1970s. This research program was first developed in the context of the “basic social science” that characterized Harvard’s Department of Social Relations, and it had the support of key figures in that network. Geertz’s position in that intellectual debate was as a contributor to the development of a theory of culture that could address issues left unsolved by structural-functionalism and action theory. In that process, Geertz gradually developed a more interpretivist reading of the cultural system, while maintaining the support of his original network. The article offers some conclusions about the role of support within attention spaces in cases in which emergent intellectual positions can lead to the definition of new research programs.

1. The period that ran from the end of World War Two to the late 1960s was—particularly at Harvard—a golden age of inter-, cross-, and multi-disciplinary work. Elena Aronova has argued (Aronova 2017, p. 570) that the rise of interdisciplinary work in the context of Cold War America was connected to representations of good citizenship and was promoted “not only as a means to practical results, but also as an end in itself.” The interdisciplinary scholar thus possessed specific civic virtues that marked him as “creative, practical, open-minded, tolerant, and scientific” (Cohen-Cole 2014, p. 67).

2. Little has been written about the specifics of the graduate curriculum at the DSR (but see Parsons 1951a). Vidich (2000) offers an autobiographical retrospective look. Johnson and Johnson (1986) argue that three major themes characterized the atmosphere at the DSR: “the first emphasized the role of theory in scientific work, the second theme emphasized the role of values and subjective dispositions in action, and the third was a certain optimistic attitude toward American society” (Johnson and Johnson 1986, p. 133). The pivotal role, with regard to the first theme, was played by essays that showed the promise of (and socialized students to) the unity of basic social science and its multi-disciplinary outlook: first, a “mimeographed document” entitled “Toward a Common Language for the Social Sciences” (abridged version Parsons 1949), and later (after 1951) the collective work of Toward a General Theory of Action.

3. An overview of the monographs published by Geertz, particularly in the early phase of his career, reveals that his main interests were in the areas of religion (Geertz 1956, 1960, 1968a, b) and economic change (Geertz 1963a, b)—that is, with the Latency and the Adaptation functions of Parsons’s paradigm. In the 1970s, he also published a book on Kinship in Bali (Geertz and Geertz 1975) and Negara, a book on Balinese dramaturgical politics (Geertz 1980). These two books can be categorized as focused on the functions of Goal attainment (see also Geertz 1965a) and Integration (it must be kept in mind, however, that kinship and the family play a latent role, as well as an integrative one). I thank Victor Lidz for a clarifying email exchange on this topic.

4. The list of CASBS fellows for the year 1958–1959 reads like a hall of fame of the modern human sciences. Besides Shils, Apter, Fallers, and Geertz, the list of fellows includes Thomas Kuhn, Willard V.O. Quine, George Homans, Roman Jakobson, Daniel Bell, and Morris Janowitz. The small cohort of anthropologists was enriched by the presence of Fred Eggan, Meyer Fortes, Melford Spiro, Raymond Firth, and George Murdock. See https://casbs.stanford.edu/past-fellows-research-affiliates-and-visiting-scholars, retrieved online October 14, 2017.

5. This objective was clearly stated by Apter in his preface to Old Societies, New States, where he claimed the CCSNN wanted to reproduce the spirit of the CASBS in another setting, including “its loose structure, its spontaneity, and its creativity” (Apter 1963, p. viii). See also Apter’s letter to Fallers, February 2, 1960: “looking around the group that attended, a pretty high proportion are ‘Center graduates,’ and the atmosphere is not unlike that of the center” (UoCL SCRC, Lloyd Fallers Papers Box 2 F. 7, Apter to Fallers, February 2, 1960). Chicago, itself a University that valued scholarship, creativity, and interdisciplinarity (not least at the Committee on Social Thought) seemed like an institution that could be highly receptive of the idea. Shils, who was well-connected at the University of Chicago, had previous experience at CST.

6. See for example, RBPP, April 1, 1965. However, a first attempt was made as early as 1961, soon after Clyde Kluckhohn’s death. Both Shils and Parsons thought that Geertz and Bellah, as prominent students of religion, could benefit from working together: Bellah was offered a position in sociology at Chicago, while Geertz was offered a position in anthropology at Harvard. See RBPP, Bellah to Parsons, January 10, 1961; Parsons to Bellah, February 3, 1961.

7. RBPP, Bellah to Geertz, November 3, 1970.

8. It was as part of the negotiations with Geertz that the Committee, which had already broadened its focus beyond the topic of social change, established a weekly workshop on “culture.”

9. Much of the history of the demise of Parsonianism in American social science has Whiggish undertones, and it has been retrospectively constructed as a heroic narrative of dissent and conceptual innovation. Calhoun (2007) offers careful historical reconstructions of American sociology after World War Two. In particular, see and Abbott and Sparrow (2007), Calhoun and Van Antwerpen (2007), and Steinmetz (2007). In particular, Calhoun and Van Antwerpen criticize the “folk theory” centered on the pre-eminence of a Harvard-Columbia complex, pointing to the fact that “common accounts of mainstream sociology not only exaggerate the cohesion and dominance of the postwar establishment but also underestimate the regional and institutional differentiation of the field” (373).

10. See RBPP, Geertz to Parsons, March 19, 1959.

11. See RBBP, “Comments on Bellah’s Paper on the Typology of Religion by C. Geertz (addressed to Professor Parsons).” The manuscript is still unpublished, and possibly the only surviving copy is the one in Bellah’s personal archive.

12. Expressive symbolism was another aspect on which Geertz’s comments on Parsons’ work (particularly, the essays the latter wrote for Theories of Society: Parsons 1961a, b, c) prove extremely illuminating. Geertz was not particularly thrilled by the way Parsons had framed his proposal, and he privately voiced his criticism, particularly regarding “Culture and the Social System.” He also complained that Parsons had disposed too quickly and superficially with the complexity of expressive symbolism: “It is in the area of expressive symbolism that the theory of action is weakest on the cultural level, and this is rapidly approaching the stage of scandal.” He again hinted to the need to craft a theory of symbolism out of philosophical and literary sources, and complained that Parsons had originally intended to exclude readings on expressive symbolism from the reader. Geertz’s lengthy comments to Parsons revealed another front of disagreement with his former mentor, namely the problem of the evolutionary logic of cultural systems. Contrary to Parsons, who saw Durkheim’s position as centered on the “development of science and philosophy out of religion,” Geertz argued in favor of a notion that saw “science, philosophy, art, and modern religion out of a general cultural situation where these are not differentiated very sharply from one another” (emphasis added). All the quotes are taken from a long letter that Geertz sent to Parsons (RBPP, Geertz to Parsons, March 19, 1959).

13. That tripartition provided a powerful schema for the interpretation of social-scientific work, even when Geertz was not playing entirely by the rules of action theory. Rather than adhering to the paradigm, he was pointing out the lack of focus on culture and the gap in the development of a comprehensive vision in which culture could be analytically as refined as the other aspects, and not in an ancillary position.

14. UoCL SCRC, CGP, Box 59 f. 3, Parsons to Geertz July 29, 1971. The letter was sent to thank Geertz for his contribution to the Festschrift for Parsons that Bernard Barber and Alex Inkeles had edited (Barber and Inkeles 1971). Geertz’s piece (he was the only non-sociologist to contribute to the book), “After the Revolution: The Fate of Nationalism in the New States” (Geertz 1971) was to Parsons “particularly interesting and significant,” “one of the very best things you have done.” It was also understood by Parsons as being a kind of conceptual rapprochement: “I think [it] goes rather far toward clearing up the kinds of differences which we have been involved in for a number of years. I think your formulation of the tensions involved in ideological structuring of the problem of new nationhood is admirable and it checks theoretically with my own views very much.” UoCL SCRC, CGP, Box 59 f. 3.

15. Bellah, for example, used the unpublished manuscript for the article on religious evolution that came out of the seminar he taught with Parsons and Eisenstadt in 1963. In 1965, before the publication of the abridged version of Religion as a Cultural System, both Bellah and Geertz had completed their entries for The Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. See RBPP, Parsons to Bellah, April 1, 1965; RBBP, Geertz to Bellah, April 9 1965.

16. “Religion” is also one of Geertz’s essays in which the legacy of Alfred Schutz and his phenomenology is most evident. Meaning, for Schutz, was encapsulated in finite provinces upon which “we may bestow the accent of reality” with a “specific cognitive style.” The constitution of reality, in these provinces, descended from human experience and not from the ontological structure of reality. Geertz’s use of Schutz, also prominent in “Common Sense as a Cultural System,” anchored the meaning process to concrete experience. However, one can also hypothesize a more Wittgensteinian line, then still implicit in Geertz’s thinking, in which meaning was wrapped in games whose rules made sense only within the (always very loose) boundaries of a life form.

17. Bellah, whose “Civil Religion in America” had appeared in the same book, reviewed only Part II to avoid any conflict of interest.

18. In a sense, Geertz had inverted the functions in the hierarchy of control, bringing religion into the questionable embrace of cognitive symbolization while not being cognitive per se. To Bellah, this was a form of reductionism, which he wanted to avoid, while at the same time urging Geertz to avoid it as well.

19. UoCL SCRC, CGP, Box 229 f. 7. At the time, Bellah and Geertz were therefore two distinct voices in the analysis of religion, but this did not prevent close collaboration and intellectual camaraderie. Around the same time, both Bellah and Geertz contributed separately to the entry on “Religion” for the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences. The entry implied the customary division of labor: Geertz wrote the entry on “Anthropological Study,” Bellah “The Sociology of Religion,” and James Dittes “The Psychology of Religion.” See Geertz (1968b) and Bellah (1968). However, like in Parsons’ case, the main point of divergence between Bellah and Geertz remained evolutionism and—more generally—the dynamic of differentiation. Bellah’s entry was already drafted in 1965 and Geertz remarked that “I really am in full agreement with this general line of argument (save, of course, evolutionism) and I think you are really pushing it ahead” (RBPP, Geertz to Bellah, April 9, 1965). Upon receiving Bellah’s review in 1968, Geertz remarked that “1) At one level, I think there is a pretty serious disagreement between us,” but not on the issues that Bellah that had picked up. Geertz also remarked that “common sense has no metaphysical paramountcy, only—I would argue—phenomenological, whatever that means; one can as well talk about the ‘aura of factuality in relation to common sense or science as with religion.” See RBPP, Geertz to Bellah, July 30, 1968.

20. This dream never really left Bellah, who subscribed to the evolutionary framework until his last writings. In the 1970s, as both were developing their own version of interpretive social science, establishing an explicit connection with functionalism would have been troublesome, in times of reaction against action theory. Bellah, on all accounts, was much more optimistic: “I do suspect that it will be our students and not ourselves who finally sift out what of Talcott is going to be continuingly important.” Bellah was referring to the group (which included Bill Sullivan and Ann Swidler) that had just begun the project that led to Habits of the Heart: “While the phrasing of our project is not at all recognizably Parsonian, I think it is concerned with issues very close to the heart of what Talcott was talking about.” UoCL SCRC, CGP, Box 36 F. 8, Bellah to Geertz, July 31, 1979. The letter was written to give Geertz an update of Bellah’s last meeting with Parsons, just the day before the latter’s final trip to Germany.

21. See, for example, the undated “A brief, informal, unscholarly, disorderly, creative memorandum on methods of studying social change in Anthropology,” (UoCL SCRC, CGP, Box 215, f 11.

22. UoCL SCRC, CGP, Box 102 f. 12.

23. This “experimental period” was designed not only to determine the final shape of the program but also “as a means for seeking interested and able people who may wish to join it on a longer-term basis.” UoCL SCRC, CGP, Box 102 f. 12.

24. Although some of the invited speakers could not attend the conference, the list included scholars with wide-ranging interests: among them Geertz, De Man, Jacques Derrida, Hans Robert Jauss, Mary Douglas, and Jean Starobinski.

25. UoCL SCRC, CGP, Box 41 f 4 Geertz to Graubard, November 20, 1970.

26. UoCL SCRC, CGP, Box 41 f 4 Geertz to Graubard, August 11, 1971.

27. UoCL SCRC, CGP, Box 45 f .14. Goffman to Geertz, 15 March 1971 (emphasis added).

28. UoCL SCRC, CGP, Box 36 f. 8, Bellah to Geertz, September 29, 1971. The Weil lectures turned, a few years later, into Bellah’s bestselling The Broken Covenant (Bellah 1975). Bortolini (2012, p. 219) argues that this book “is a nearly perfect exemplar of symbolic realism” that was conceived at a time (1971) in which [Bellah] was elaborating his methodological principles.” Geertz’s paper, which Bellah read in advance at a crucial time, showed not only how an exemplar could be crafted, but also how to turn the theoretical implications of interpretive social science into plausible, case-centered, yet non-positivist, research.

29. UoCL SCRC, CGP, Box 61 f. 4. Riesman to Geertz September 24, 1973.

30. The early reception of The Interpretation of Cultures showcases its multi- and cross-disciplinary appeal. Anthropologists were probably shyer than others in the recognition of its merits, often remarking that Geertz’s anthropology was “art, not a science” (Colson 1975). Sociologists were more ready to embrace Geertz’s proposal. In 1974, he was awarded the Sorokin prize of the American Sociological Association for the best book, although Riesman reported to Geertz that “in talking with several members of the award committee afterwards, it became clear that a battle had been fought and fought hard to give the award to someone, namely, yourself, who is not in formal terms a sociologist; this was a sign of cosmopolitan outlook rather than defensive provincialism” (UoCL SCRC, CGP, Box 61 f. 4, Riesman to Geertz, September 4, 1974).

31. “Common Sense,” as we have seen, was presented first at Antioch College and then at Harvard, while “Art as a Cultural System” ended up (a sign of Geertz’s interdisciplinary appeal) on one of the journals of the Modern Language Association, MLN (Geertz 1976).

CGP:

Clifford Geertz papers

RBPP:

Robert Bellah’s personal papers

UoCL SCRC:

University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center

A preliminary version of this paper was presented at the meetings of the International Sociological Association (Toronto July 15–21, 2018), and of the American Sociological Association (Philadelphia August 11–14, 2018). I thank Matteo Bortolini, Giuseppe Sciortino, Victor Lidz, Stephen Turner, Jeffrey Alexander, Mary Jo Deegan, Gary Alan Fine, Anne Rawls, Ester Gallo, Christian Fleck, Eric Lybeck, and Christian Dayé for comments and conversations on the topic. I also wish to thank Hally Bellah-Guther, Jennifer Bellah Maguire, and the Special Collection Research Center at the University of Chicago Library, for their courtesy and assistance.

Authors and Affiliations

1. Dipartimento di Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale, Università di Trento, Via Verdi 26, 38122, Trento, Italy

   Andrea Cossu

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrea Cossu.

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