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Symbolic anthropology aims to thoroughly understand the way meanings are assigned by individuals to certain things, leading then to a cultural expression. [2] There are two majorly recognized approaches to the interpretation of symbolic anthropology, the interpretive approach, and the symbolic approach.
Clifford James Geertz (/ ɡ ɜːr t s / ⓘ; August 23, 1926 – October 30, 2006) was an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology and who was considered "for three decades... the single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States."
David Murray Schneider (November 11, 1918, Brooklyn, New York – October 30, 1995, Santa Cruz, California) was an American cultural anthropologist, best known for his studies of kinship and as a major proponent of the symbolic anthropology approach to cultural anthropology.
Historical particularism (coined by Marvin Harris in 1968) [1] is widely considered the first American anthropological school of thought.. Closely associated with Franz Boas and the Boasian approach to anthropology, historical particularism rejected the cultural evolutionary model that had dominated anthropology until Boas.
This theory attracted students and researchers interested in a holistic approach, that was broad and deep, that related economic circumstances with mythological and spatial classifications and that explored the relationship between the natural world and religious, symbolic systems. This was long before structuralism.
The book is a foundational text in cultural anthropology and represents Geertz’s vision of how culture should be studied and understood. The essays collectively argue for a new approach to anthropology, one that emphasizes the interpretive analysis of culture, which Geertz describes as
Geertz's thick-description approach, along with the theories of Claude Lévi-Strauss, has become increasingly recognized as a method of symbolic anthropology, [9] [5] enlisted as a working antidote to overly technocratic, mechanistic means of understanding cultures, organizations, and historical settings.
Examples of symbolic culture include concepts (such as good and evil), mythical constructs (such as gods and underworlds), and social constructs (such as promises and football games). [9] Symbolic culture is a domain of objective facts whose existence depends, paradoxically, on collective belief.