Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropology

Justin Rego

Anthropology 601
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04/09/08

Symbolic and interpretive anthropology began in the 1960’s, reaching its full

manifestation in the 1970’s, from the postprocessual paradigm. Symbolic anthropologists

are largely concerned with rituals and meaning within culture; they have in common with

ethnoscience the idea that culture is a mental projection, however reject the

ethnoscientists assertion that these mental projections can be modeled as in linguistics;

rather, they use tools drawn from “psychology, history and literature” in order to study

the meaning of symbols in a culture. According to the symbolic anthropologists,

“symbols are shared systems of meaning” and can only be understood in a particular

historical and social context. Culture lies in the interpretation of events with which we

construct out cultural reality (McGee and Warms 2008:482).

Geertz, Turner and Douglas are all symbolic anthropologists, although each

approaches the study of rituals and meaning from different perspectives. Geertz believes

that symbols transmit meaning and affect how people think about the world. His analysis

of a Balinese cockfight, using “thick description” describes how this social interaction

creates and shares a system of meaning for the men of Bali (McGee and Warms

2008:482-483).

For Turner, symbols are mechanisms for the maintenance of society; in this she is

heavily influenced by Durkheim; she believes that symbols and rituals act to regulate

social solidarity, which is maintained by rituals. However, unlike Geertz, she follows a

“formal program” of symbolic analysis. However, some have criticized Geertz and

Turner’s approach for being too descriptive; it is simply hard to draw upon their analysis

in the development of a comprehensive theory of symbol. Douglas however, defies the

assertion that theory building is not possible with symbolic anthropology. She attempts to

analyze “universal patterns of symbolism” focusing on beliefs about pollution and

hygiene as expressed by religion. She is also influenced by Durkheim (McGee and

Warms 2008:484), believing that symbols “create a unity in experience” and religious

ideas about purity and pollution symbolize beliefs about the social order (McGee and

Warms 2008:483). Each of these anthropologists, again, expresses a different view point

about the study of symbolism. By a brief analysis of each essay, we can describe and

understand their differing ideas about symbols and the interpretation of them.

Douglas, in her essay External Boundaries, performs an analysis of symbols and

rituals of pollution, focusing on India’s lowest caste. She believes that symbols are

representations of the body; they are both complex systems, and bounded (Douglas

2008:485) and questions why “bodily refuse” become symbols of danger and power for

certain cultural structures, such as India’s castes. She renounced all psychoanalytical

explanations, stating (Douglas 2008:488) that “everything symbolizes the body and the

body symbolizes everything”. She distinguishes four kinds of social pollution; danger

from external boundaries; danger from transgressing internal lines; danger in margin of

lines and danger from internal contradictions.

In her example of the ritual beliefs of India’s castes regarding pollution, she notes

that the castes themselves can be equated with the body. The highest caste prays, while

the lowest removed the refuse from the system, such as by cleaning latrines, and

performing other derided jobs (Douglas 2008:489). However, this lowest caste (the

Coorgs), fears external contamination by pollution. Douglas believes these fears are

symbolic of their low status in the community. Rituals express anxiety about bodily
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orifices; the sociological counterpart to these fears is the protection of the political and

cultural unity of the group. “Caste pollution represents” a symbolic system “based on the

image of the body whose primary concern is the ordering of a social hierarchy” (Douglas

2008:490). For example, the upper caste fears sexual pollution, particularly of women;

Douglas believes this is because women are the gateway into the caste via reproduction,

and in order to maintain the purity of the caste sexual behavior must be regulated. This is

done through ritual ideas of pollution (Douglas 2008:491). Thus, “the objective of rituals

is to form social relations and give visible expression to them” (Douglas 2008:493).

Turner, in his essay Symbols in Ndembu Ritual, studies the rituals of the Ndembu

of Zambia. He believes that ritual is “prescribed formal behavior referencing beliefs in

mystical beings or events” and defines symbols as “the smallest unit of ritual still

retaining properties of ritual behavior” (Turner 2008:493). Symbols can be activities,

objects, events or even relationships and are involved in social processes which must be

studied as “distinct phases” of these social processes (Turner 2008:494) and are

mechanisms for the maintenance of society (McGee and Warms 2008:483) in a

Durkheimian sense.

Turner defines several classes of rituals, which act in different ways to modulate

social processes and conflict. The first class corrects deviations from “prescribed

customary behavior; the second class anticipates conflicts, and includes “periodic rituals

and life-crises rituals” (Turner 2008:508-509). Additionally, symbols, which make up

rituals, can also be classes separately; they are of two types, dominant or instrumental.

Dominant symbols are ends in and of themselves, while instrumental symbols are the

means to the goal of the ritual (Turner 2008:509).

Thus, to explain symbols, Turner believes we must examine the context in which

that symbol is used, namely the ritual context. These contexts determine what sort of

ritual is performed. By using indigenous informants, the anthropologist can gain emic

perspective on the meaning of these rituals to the people under study, while the

anthropologists own etic analysis can garner further insights. The ritual is thus analyzed

as a system of symbolic meanings with multiple layers depending on social contexts

(Turner 2008:509).

Geertz is perhaps the most famous of the post modernists; he has been called the

grandfather of postprocessualism. He developed several accessible concepts which

changed the way anthropologists thought about culture, social behavior and how humans

construct knowledge and meaning, the main of which is “thick description”. Thick

description is basically the observation that every social event has multiple layer of

meaning, and like an onion, these layers of meaning must be peeled away in order to fully

understand the meaning behind social events. In Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese

Cockfight, Geertz examines a popular social event within Balinese society, the cockfight.

His essay is a paragon of thick description.

For Geertz, culture was a product of the mind, and did not exist in the

Durkheimian sense of the superorganic. Because culture was of the mind, and culture

equals meaning, meaning must be within the mind as well. Thus culture and everything

that creates it is socially constructed and events only exist from the meanings we imbue it

with. Rituals reinscribe social ties, thus everything within a ritual has a deep meaning

reinstating the social order. However, some (Renner 1984:538) have criticized Geertz for

failing to operationalize his methodology, or rather, for having no methodology at all!

Geertz says that anthropology is not its theories, but what anthropologists do. He finds

that doing anthropology is a form of knowledge, and needs no methodology. However,

this is at odds with many anthropologists conceptualization of a definition of

anthropology; anthropologists need a methodology in order to validate their research.

Alternatively, Renner’s opinion may be due to the division between postprocessualists

and positivists which developed in the 1970’s and on.

In the cockfight, only Balinese men are participants and cocks symbolize

masculinity for them. The Balinese name for the cock, as in English, is also a metaphor

for male genitalia (Geertz 2008:514). The cock fight is dominated by both core and

peripheral betting. However, one does not bet on a cock in order to gain monetarily;

rather betting is largely based on social and kinship ties. High bets are made by higher

status people, while smaller bets are made by lower status people. The higher status

central betters set the pace of the bets. The most sought after cock matches are those

where the cocks are considered equal. Here the odds are practically even, and the fight is

most interesting. This is the heart of the cockfight, the “deep play”, when the stakes are

the least known, most interesting and at their highest (Geertz 2008:519).

What is at stake is nothing more or less than a temporary loss or gain in status for

the owner of the winning or losing cock. At the moment of victory or defeat, the social

order is inverted. In the rigidly hierarchical structure of Balinese society, where upward

and downward class mobility is non-existent, for a moment a status change is possible.

By inverting the social system, the cockfight reinscribes is by relieving social tension.

Ultimately, as Geertz states, the cockfight is a “story they tell themselves about

themselves” (Geertz 2008:528).

References Cited:

Douglas, Mary

2008 External Boundaries. In Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History.

Edited by R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms, pp. 484-493. Mayfield

Publishing Co., Mountain View, California.

Geertz, Clifford

2008 Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight. In Anthropological Theory: An

Introductory History. Edited by R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms, pp. 511-

531. Mayfield Publishing Co., Mountain View, California.

McGee, R. Jon, and Richard L. Warms, editors

2008 Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History. Mayfield Publishing Co.,

Mountain View, California.

Renner, Egon

1984 On Geertz’s Interpretive Theoretical Paradigm. Current Anthropology, Vol.

25, No. 4, pp. 538-542

Turner, Victor

2008 Symbols in Ndembu Ritual. In Anthropological Theory: An Introductory

History. Edited by R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms, pp. 493-510. Mayfield

Publishing Co., Mountain View, California.