Showing papers by "Clifford Geertz published in 1989"

Works and lives : the anthropologist as author

Abstract: Clifford Geertz is known for his work on the interpretation of cultural forms. In this book he develops his view that anthropology should be understood as a kind of writing: doing good anthropology is like writing good literature. Drawing on Foucault and Barthes, Geertz discusses the relations between authors and their works. He then examines the work of some of the great anthropologists: Levi-Strauss, Evans-Pritchard, Malinowski and Benedict. Viewing their ethnographic writings as texts, he highlights their style, imagery and metaphors, analyzing the languages that they invent and employ. Responding to criticisms of his earlier work, the author concludes with a far-reaching reflection on the nature of anthropology and its future in a post-colonial world.

Toutes Directions : Reading the Signs in an Urban Sprawl

Abstract: In late February of 1986, a week or two before the massive joint celebration of the 25th anniversary of Hassan II's accession to the Moroccan throne and the 10th of his launching of the Green March into the Sahara (the March actually took place in November of 1975, but it was ritually assimilated to Coronation Day for this milestone occasion), the municipal council of a small city in the east-central part of the country issued a decree. Henceforth, the color of all buildings in the city was to be beige: creme, in the French redaction, qehwi, in the Arabic. Paint could be obtained at designated outlets. Compliance with this decree was, as one would expect, very far from complete, and the city, Sefrou, 28 kilometers due south of Fez, of which it is in many ways a miniaturized version, remains in fact more white than anything else, and when not white, pastel. But, as one would not expect (at least I did not), the decree was, among certain sorts of people and in certain sections of the city, immediately and completely obeyed: brightly colored, variegated house facades, some of them masterpieces of design bravura, were painted over during the course of a day or two, into a dun homogeneity-la vie urbaine officielle. Behind this event, trivial in itself and of very uncertain permanency of effect, lies a long and far from trivial story, political and cultural at the same time. The changing shape of the city, its changing class and ethnic composition, the changing relations between it and its hinterland, it and its economic base, it and its governing elites, it and the national power, and most critical of all, the changing, and diversifying, sense of its inhabitants as to what citadinit--that French word that translates so awkwardly into English but so readily, as mudaniyya ("belonging to and in a city," as Mohammed Naciri has put it), into Arabic-really means, were all caught up in a bitter and many-sided debate, a debate about what a proper "Islamic city" ought to be, how it ought to feel, what it ought to look like.' Driven on by the controversies swirling about the assumptions, or supposed such, of "Orientalism," the debate in scholarly circles over "The Islamic City" whether there is such a thing; what, if there is such a thing, is "Islamic" about it; and how much, if there is such a thing and we can isolate what is Islamic about