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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 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 ...
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.
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 “webs of significance” spun by humans themselves.
British anthropologist Victor Turner (who eventually left the United Kingdom to teach in the United States) was an important bridge between American and British symbolic anthropology. [140] Attention to symbols, the meaning of which depended almost entirely on their historical and social context, appealed to many Boasians.
His book The Invention of Culture (1975; 1981) is considered a classic of ethnography and theory, and has been translated into Japanese, Portuguese, Italian and French. His concepts of symbolic obviation, figure-ground reversal, analogic kinship, holography and fractality of personhood have been critical in the development of anthropological ...
Animism is used in anthropology of religion as a term for the belief system of many Indigenous peoples [8] in contrast to the relatively more recent development of organized religions. [9] Animism is a metaphysical belief which focuses on the supernatural universe: specifically, on the concept of the immaterial soul. [10]
The anthropology of religion, as a field, overlaps with but is distinct from the field of Religious Studies. The history of anthropology of religion is a history of striving to understand how other people view and navigate the world. This history involves deciding what religion is, what it does, and how it functions. [2]