Introduction: <em>The Interpretation of Cultures</em> at Fifty

Andrea Cossu; Matteo Bortolini

doi:10.6092/issn.1971-8853/19491

Authors

Andrea Cossu Department of Sociology and Social Research, University of Trento https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8324-4024

Andrea Cossu is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Trento (Italy). He works in the areas of cultural sociology and sociological theory. Recent publications have appeared in Poetics, European Journal of Social Theory, American Journal of Cultural Sociology, and Memory Studies.
Matteo Bortolini Department of Historical and Geographical Sciences and the Ancient World, University of Padua https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2532-9334

Matteo Bortolini teaches Sociology at the Department of Historical and Geographical Sciences and the Ancient World at the University of Padua (Italy). His latest book is A Joyfully Serious Man. The Life of Robert Bellah (Princeton University Press, 2021). He is now working on a biography of the late American anthropologist Clifford Geertz.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/19491

Keywords:

Clifford Geertz, hermeneutics, anthropology, classics, memory

Abstract

Introducing the symposium “The Interpretation of Cultures at Fifty,” editors Andrea Cossu and Matteo Bortolini reflect on the dynamics of the iconicization of texts and the paradoxical quality of so-called “classics”: their being present while being rewritten and forgotten. A brief illustration of the papers by the contributors to the symposium — Joan W. Scott, Anne Taylor and Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ann Swidler and Ronald Jepperson, Simon Susen, and Monika Krause — completes the introduction.

References

Alexander, J.C., & Taylor, A. (2024). “Ideology” and After: Reinscribing the Aesthetics of Symbolic Structure in Geertz. Sociologica, 18(1), 7–23. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/17767

Bortolini, M. (2023). “A Twenty-Four Hour Job”. Hildred and Clifford Geertz’s First Foray into the Field and the Scholarly Persona of the Ethnographer. History and Anthropology, November, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2023.2275787

Bortolini, M. (2024). Clifford Geertz (1926–2006). In L. Allodi (Ed.), Analisi comparativa delle civilizzazioni (pp. 363–375). Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino.

Bortolini, M., & Cossu, A. (2015). Two Men, Two Books, Many Disciplines. Robert N. Bellah, Clifford Geertz, and the Making of Iconic Cultural Objects. In A. Law & E. Royal Lybeck (Eds.), Sociological Amnesia (pp. 37–55). London: Routledge.

Bortolini, M., & Cossu, A. (2020). In the Field but not of the Field: Clifford Geertz, Robert Bellah, and the Practices of Interdisciplinarity. European Journal of Social Theory, 23(3), 328–349. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431018823140

Bourdieu, P. (1979) La distinction. Critique sociale du jugement. Paris: Les Éditions de minuit.

Burke, M.J. (2007). Geertz’s Influence on Intellectual Historians. Historically Speaking, 8(4), 40. https://doi.org/10.1353/hsp.2007.0032

Cossu, A. (2021). Clifford Geertz, Intellectual Autonomy, and Interpretive Social Science. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 9(33), 347–375. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-019-00085-8

Cossu, A. (2022). Talcott Parsons and Clifford Geertz: Modernization, Functionalism, and Interpretive Social Science. In A.J. Treviño & H. Staubmann (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Talcott Parsons Studies (pp. 261–270). London: Routledge.

Davis, N.Z. (2009). Review: The Interpretation of Cultures, by Clifford Geertz. The Sixteenth Century Journal, 40(1), 58–61. https://doi.org/10.1086/SCJ40541103

Geertz, C. (1973). The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Geertz, C. (1983). Local Knowledge. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Goffman, E. (1956). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York, NY: Doubleday.

Guhin, J. (2014) Religion as Site Rather Than Religion as Category: On the Sociology of Religion’s Export Problem. Sociology of Religion, 75(4), 579–593. https://doi.org/10.1093/

Isaac, J. (2018). The Intensification of Social Forms: Economy and Culture in the Thought of Clifford Geertz. Critical Historical Studies, 5(2), 237–266. https://doi.org/10.1086/699685

Isaac, J. (2023). Anthropology and the Turn to History. In R. Bourke & Q. Skinner (Eds.), History in the Humanities and the Social Sciences (pp. 379–406). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Krause, M. (2024). Interpretation and Critical Classification. Geertzism and beyond in the Sociology of Culture. Sociologica, 18(1), 87–93. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/18663

Lutkehaus, N. (2008). Margaret Mead. The Making of an American Icon. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Paidipaty, P. (2020). Tortoises all the Way Down: Geertz, Cybernetics and Culture at the End of the Cold War. Anthropological Theory, 20(1), 97–129. https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499619899747

Scott, J.W. (2024). On Rereading Clifford Geertz’s The Interpretation of Cultures 50 Years After the Fact. Sociologica, 18(1), 95–102. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/17903

Susen, S. (2024). The Interpretation of Cultures: Geertz Is Still in Town. Sociologica, 18(1), 25–63. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/18664.

Swidler, A. (1996). Geertz’s Ambiguous Legacy. Contemporary Sociology, 25(3), 299–302. https://doi.org/10.2307/2077435

Swidler, A., & Jepperson, R.L. (2024). Interpretation, Explanation and Theories of Meaning. Sociologica, 18(1), 65–85. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/18837

Introduction: The Interpretation of Cultures at Fifty

Authors

DOI:

Keywords:

Abstract

References

Downloads

Published

How to Cite

Issue

Section

License

Information

Make a Submission

Current Issue