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The purpose of symbolic and interpretive anthropology can be described through a term used often by Geertz that originated from Gilbert Ryle, "Thick Description."By this what is conveyed, is that since culture and behavior can only be studied as a unit, studying culture and its smaller sections of the structure, thick description is what details the interpretation of those belonging to a ...
The Interpretation of Cultures significantly influenced the field of anthropology by shifting the focus towards a more interpretive approach to understanding cultures. Geertz's work helped to move anthropology away from the search for universal laws of human behavior and towards a more nuanced understanding of how cultural meanings are ...
The interpretive turn in the social sciences had strong foundations in the methodology of cultural anthropology. A shift occurred from using structural approaches (as an interpretive lens) towards meaning. With the interpretive turn, contextual and textual information took the lead in understanding reality, language, and culture.
This approach aims to understand the cultural meaning and significance of a particular behavior or practice, as it is understood by the people who engage in it. [2] The "etic" approach, on the other hand, is an outsider's perspective, which looks at a culture from the perspective of an outside observer or researcher.
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant.
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."
The Roman historian Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a prolific ethnographer in antiquity. The term ethnography is from Greek (ἔθνος éthnos "folk, people, nation" and γράφω gráphō "I write") and encompasses the ways in which ancient authors described and analyzed foreign cultures.
In anthropology, Verstehen has come to mean a systematic interpretive process in which an outside observer of a culture attempts to relate to it and understand others. Verstehen is now seen as a concept and a method central to a rejection of positivist social science (although Weber appeared to think that the two could be united).