Geertz Definition Of Culture
Geertz was essentially arguing that culture most fundamentally could not be viewed as a set of behaviors practices and beliefs but rather was an ongoing construction of meaning as people continually reflected upon the signi ficance of their lives.
Geertz definition of culture. Geertz does not conceptualize culture as the only cause or factor in human action. Geertz defines culture as webs of significance a symbolic system and a historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols 89 and thereby he calls for an interpretive methodology in search of meaning 5. Geertz argues that culture is public because meaning is systems of meaningare necessarily the collective property of a group. Culture according to geertz is a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate perpetuate and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life the function of culture is to impose meaning on the world and make it understandable.
In this sense culture was similar to language. Geertz is not an idealist even though his sense of culture may beconsidered ideational in the broadest sense of the term. Culture and biological evolution where the fossil datings given in the original essays have been definitely superseded. Proceeding from this definition he.
The dates have in gen eral been moved back in time and as this change leaves my central ar guments essentially intact i see no harm in introducing the newer esti mations.