2005/02/16 by Clifford Geertz · 2 citations
Social Sciences · #Anthropological Studies and Insights #Cross-Cultural and Social Analysis #African history and culture analysis
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1467-9655.2005.00223.x
openalex publication_date 2005/02/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/01
For an anthropologist pushing 80 and feeling it push back, there seems little else to do on a ceremonial occasion of this sort [the 2004 Sir James Frazer Lecture], dedicated as it is to commemorating a marmoreal figure whom most people remember, so far as they remember him at all, as a cloistered Edwardian don who devoted his life to a Causabon-like compilation of the world's exotica, but to reflect upon one's own, rather different, but hardly less transient, career in a related line of work and try to suggest what time and change have done to it. Not that this will avail against what time and change have done, and will continue to do, to it. There is nothing so dead as a dead academic, and any Ozymandian dreams one might entertain will be quickly dissolved by the simple device of looking up the Collected Frazer Lectures, 1922-32 on the Amazon web-site bestseller list and finding them placed at 2,467,068. I want, I hope without undue self-reference or illusions of permanence, simply to put into the record a particular encounter with a particular time. And a particular subject: the anthropology of religion. Why I have spent so much of my time and energy since wandering into anthropology from the Humanities studying (in heavy quotation marks, here and throughout) ‘religion’– in Southeast Asia, in North Africa, in the past, in the present, increasingly in the world at large – is not entirely clear to me, particularly as I have myself no particular religious background or – so far anyway, and as I say, it's getting late – commitment. Some of it, this concern, not to say obsession, with faith, worship, belief, sanctity, mystery, world-view, sorcery, propitiation, and the adoration of trees (on which, you will remember, Frazer has no less than five separate chapters) certainly has to do with that Humanities background: literature and philosophy do incline the mind to recherché subjects. But far more, I think, it is due to the continuing centrality of the description and analysis of myth, magic, rite, and spiritual tonality in anthropology from E.B. Tylor [1889], William Robertson Smith [1889], R.R. Marrett [1917], and Frazer [1890] forward through Bronislaw Malinowski [1948], Raymond Firth [1967], E.E. Evans-Pritchard [1956], Godfrey Lienhardt [1961], Victor Turner [1968], and Mary Douglas [1966], to essay only a local – Oxbridge, London, and Manchester – genealogy. (My own, of course, is American: Ruth Benedict [1927], Gladys Reichard [1923], Robert Redfield [1953], Clyde Kluckhohn [1962].) Along with kinship, with which, via totemic classification and the incest taboo, it was directly linked from the beginning, religion has been so much at the centre of anthropological thought that anyone concerned, as I was and am, with the emblems and insignia of the human way of being in the world would be immediately drawn toward it as a field of research. And so, when the powers at Harvard, having organized a group of graduate students to go to Indonesia on a team project to study kinship, village life, peasant marketing, the Chinese shopkeeper minority, and local government, found themselves in need of someone to ‘do’ religion, I jumped at the chance and wrote my doctoral thesis and my first book on the interplay of Islamic, Hindu-Buddhist, and Malayo-Polynesian currents in the spiritual life of the Javanese, and have been worrying over the complexities and puzzlements encountered – theoretical ones, empirical ones, philosophical ones, sectarian ones, perhaps most important, practical ones – ever since. Thinking back, not to that particular project, or to my work there as such, both of which are by now more or less archival, but to the whole period – the immediate post-World War II, incipient Cold War 1950s – it seems clear that there was around that time a major shift in both the aims and the objects of the anthropological study of religion: what it was looking at, and what it was looking for. Virtually all of the previous forays had been into tribal or archaic beliefs and ceremonies (Australia, the Ancient Semites, Native America, the Trobriands, the Nilotes, the Chuckchee), with the assumption, implied or open, that rudiments and foreshadowings of Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, and the other so-called ‘High Religions’ could be seen there and thus the elementary forms of the religious life, in Émile Durkheim's famous slogan, could be defined, classified, and reduced to rule. Now, however, an effort got under way to address the ‘High Religions’ directly and in their immediate and contemporary, emotionalistic forms, less to ferret out their common features than to place them within the social and historical – dare I say, in this venue, ‘cultural?’– contexts within which they emerged and upon which they acted. What had been comparative folklore in search of parallels and prefigurations – shamans as priests, cockfights as sacraments, regicide as redemption (what Frazer called ‘our debt to the savage’) – became a comparative ethnography in search of consequence: import, impact, significance, weight. How, precisely, and how much, does ‘religion’ matter in the ongoing course of things? Wherein lies its appeal and force? Its reach? Its persistence? What, as we came soon to put it, is it – the imagery, the discipline, the fervour, the theatrics, the obsessiveness, the story-telling – all about? This ‘turn’, or ‘move’, or ‘paradigm shift’ was, of course, but part, and a minor part at that, of a general shift in anthropological attention away from deserts, jungles, and arctic wastes, to what came to be known as The New Nations, The Developing Countries, The Third World, The Emerging Powers, or The Non-aligned States [Geertz 1963]. Someone setting out to study India, Iran, Nigeria, Egypt, China, or Brazil, or, as I was, Indonesia, found themselves faced not with an ant-hill assemblage of myths, spirits, and psychical practices to label and sort out, but with massive, deeply historical, and conceptually elaborated social and cultural formations, complete with officials, texts, economies, and ratified names. Complex societies, ‘civilizations’ if you wish, some of them as large as subcontinents, with multicultural populations, bundles of languages, and spiritual connections across half the world, presented those of us who, trained on benge and Blessing Way, came to be engaged with them not just with a new object of study, but with a revised conception of how to study it – what it was we wanted to find out. With regard to Java, that anthology of the world's best imperialisms, poised to become the nucleus of a rambling and precarious, conceptually ill-defined political entity, this meant two things: first, a recognition, forced upon one by the merest contact with local life, of adversative, religiously phrased divisions within a single, many-minded society; and, second, the realization that these divisions and this many-mindedness did not preclude, but in fact produced, a distinct and particular sort of spiritual temper – a bent, a humour, a stamp, a moral climate. If the ‘function’ of religion was, as we were still taught to say in those days, ‘the tuning up of ultimate value attitudes of the society’, the tuning here was various, contrastive, and contrapuntal, and so were the attitudes. What Denys the of called and and out to be an on which, first, to the of ‘religion’ and to to put it The this of – out and spiritual currents and them in the of life – was and the common all to the and of The and with the to that the and came within of it, were far and more than the or And they those and and the as and at by in the was not so much the as – which had been there from the Islam, which in the and Christianity, by and in the and and the which in the and of – that most description and were and not all that the the was the way in which those and the they were across the and most of and life, and, in and those – them on – that a change of The of how all this out are on the the of these and of mind as the of the Cold War upon the local and to one or the other of the of and as the to the of – of dead – when out these across the whole of the The of all and of the forced and which it and the in a of political and a sort of cultural of course, But that the and of religious was them is I say, this sort of the interplay of local and world not just myself and my into the of a it the whole of who in the 1950s and to the study of to become new anyway, India, with the of its and the of was perhaps the most But Nigeria, with its and its with its and moral in of in and ones in and across the and North and at one in and and in the – all these presented anyone to their spiritual with a rather sort of than that which had faced and his in and his in or and his the The first it and the one most of is one that was, of course, there from the beginning, but which now that and were no be and by the simple device of attention on and that at to ones in to have to do with the the the the the or the – What is to be under this are its What are its What, when you to it, or or or was called in the book that emerged from it, and The of [Geertz had on from the and to and political is still not clear what its The how we are to and cultural in other that are at to ones in and and different, is general in a it is ‘the or ‘the or ‘the or or or or just what into the as we say, and it does so, is an a that and only and rather The is to with own, more or less of what ‘the ‘the or, in the at ‘religion’ what us as kinship, or government, or faith, and those we are to This hardly in a of cultural What it in is a over which to – The part, what we is If there is any and it is into more and under which the of of ‘religion’ in be it is The connections the of – – that we and under the ‘religion’ and those that we so hardly more in with we as at and to – as are ones we in as having to do with the or of things: and ‘the of that it might that all we have in is one with the with the But there or so it to as I to what it was I had in fact been to to description in the one of in a that a large and of and – of of analysis – has been in the human which be to sort the the to and to and most the anthropology of religion, into the conceptually more and of and, most philosophy is not to what it has to say with or it up with in famous to try to Not to the of work that has since – we say, and and to to in their most of it – with to the analysis of simply to have a we or, as I came to of thought to of particular value in with and comparative of religion. The first of these is what has been called ‘the of is due to the but the is – no first there – is not a the is a and social in the of in out in the world the and it is in that that is as with with put it, what we it is only by in an that we at all The in the first, is that is that it is here one the via or or which are its a device is not its but its we are and the of the of it in a due to the of by the of this is a more or less those or or are religion, common – the whole and not of in of the and but of what the social and of has called that is at and not by now to be so a And all this more directly with religion and worship, there has been the in the human since but which has a and in of all and and in of of the conception of or or of the that it is at the at which cultural or to and to in the of the the or the – the of – that the sort of concern, to as that we as religious into as I have done more than a by social to his but with most are the of general in on the in and in what we are the of and a a is in common in the need of the tribal and its is the (in some to their to if not to their to the ultimate with these general that is that it is in or and that religious so are toward at which I just now and, here in at a famous to and into a common was out the most of whom the to a general of as a by of which I I could and the centre of so far as there was in my and it first, it to This in the first a rather rather effort to a as I thought I and to of religion now and but to and more at that time anyway, still rather and line of This was more of a than toward the at of and the in was with the way in which a a or an most of their world-view, and the and temper of their life, their are to complete and one in religious in in myth, in spiritual discipline, in the of to human to an and of the of human [Geertz an less as the I from and put it, a particular and to might say, I world to And world to in – we ever to over into it or not – is what we by having a [Geertz any having thus my as best I could the and them out the powers to I rather quickly of and the and of in and wanted to to the the is all, to if all this came to in as we say, ‘the the one which people but only I encounter with or religiously at that time was in the of the I – Indonesia – but us that of course, and at has been so the whole of its and seems soon to Java, it is rather than in its and, Java, it has been – not but – of with and from other or was, a an and, a much a but had much on the and of a of the and the of and which Java, a much much more and spiritual and seems (in its at – its social is and this out, to it, and to the of the in I a of rather and in some from North in the late in which, rather than an of to have or other to do with as I had Java, I to how a single, not to say Islam, had out in with in the the most as [Geertz was to be a I that anyone my was organized around the in of the two of what I called their of religious in Java, a and rather in a and rather The of these is not in to without and are so deeply my was to how of some of them from and some of them and social practices into one if you that sort of if you to and particular But a on the way to the both it all soon became in the world at the of the large and local to drawn and to a of and as I What had been a and immediate interplay the of life and of and at large and of the two populations, in a much more and this and in part to it, its and as as its I the the the course of their separate social the and the out of out of of ultimate in of which they both life and to it. all religious these within them their the through which they were those to immediately – they with their is this that they to be at a but What is to be has not these or not What has is the way in which it is [Geertz you to it as I say, does not to be the it a and away from which I was the there in both to be a still but in the way in which religious were with the of The the two were less less and less – more in need of organized The forms which this in both – of religious the of and – nothing so much to mind as line from this one called them but that is not who, having of their their has both in Indonesia and particularly and in the world since those were in what out to be the Indonesia has had five two of them of them more in has had two one of them and the other and to The Cold which into social to the the to and the has There are only a of what was a if in rather the the and poised has been a and a its or perhaps most from the of of the as as as to – that I as just to become in the two as and has since become across the whole of the world under as and the and have since. have the the on the the of and the in and the of Asia, and the increasingly increasingly of and to and the are the of to as it as I was, in part, to The world will not still you complete and the most you do with the is its What the is when it it any as an of the you you have it has been not but it does And from that of looking from what I now to what I I both and had I particularly or I have a but it was, at a and the and I was what to of they were And so, it now out, was the they the half of the The the study of religion in the social was, with a and and Robert in Victor Turner and Mary Douglas in still much of a and the of the so-called that the of life was pushing religion out of the it to the of the the the and the – was in and and still had and and the open, the had no as a social a in this place or that, as a and a on but that it would ever be the and in and that it had in the the or the was of course, still out to be the and without without to But it that to and my in And it certainly does not that to anyone Christianity, and of religion, and on is not only the that it was its its seems to have to put it at up in a of what has to and around the world, in the of the and the one of this of course, a an [Geertz and I what I have been than to it. But it is to suggest a of the within and Indonesia as as within as as the other that to be at rather new under the and of I will here only they are but part of a much social and they rather to two of the the of a of the major some of the minor ones – from the and social formations, the and within which and in of which they were and from the of and Asia, from those of and the from those of the New and North and the of religious or or as a and of – a a The of the and world from their of and most immediate to and contexts of course, of that is they are called The of into and Africa, the of with into America, and from its the rather more of out of into China, and Southeast or that of out of the New into and – all these that change as they and work with of and permanence, into the of of the most local of local What is new in the immediate or to of a is that the of religious and their and was a matter of in one or – and in – the is both and more various, more a general than a of the and of of this or that, this or that, across the There are an of India, five in There are as as some in and ones, in and ones in the and There are from in and in will soon if they ones in the in a I from when all this was just getting and I was just to in the of religious its This and, a of and of into setting the whole of and spiritual both those who those into they and those who are The of religiously is hardly a new in world – in New in Africa, in Southeast Asia, in the But the on which they now are in in in London, in and, most of all, in – all there in the two or is not just that is being not just that is The of more or less of the the and the into and – the from to of and of – that was as getting in and in the as those to their religious is now a general in a world more and more people and the they have so to out of in in is not just and not just North and Southeast who are this sort of spiritual is it only to The of the world's is both the and the of religious and them in and at the of its and its much, else is or is a a a a a but I to my the as of and to study, or are finding out, a rather matter than being one at in in all, a of more or less on what being a in fact on how to be one in a setting not to it. There be and of course, a of an of to it less to a religiously or a of the and the life, into but and a toward a much more and in to the of the new And just in of course, over a half the and in his at a period – are all, Frazer and in the in my I in an through field is a it would from the in the at – the ‘the drawn ‘the to be – to the political of the of or the of the of to say nothing of the we them of or the we them ones of North ‘the anthropology of a or or ‘the of or ‘the of the discipline, be clear by now that, at so far as I do as is and has a single, and and has a matter of through encountered – ones, or ones, or ones, a a or a – all in an effort to how of what is and particular of in it into one to the that, more or less and on religion of and ‘the of The are but in a of is that, as I over Java, with hope and from and and, the and of the which seems to through the whole and of it all, all, a – to and in on one is presented with a of and of to their in the of and one all, so much religion, it, or it, as it. at the of the one it most all of us not just or of the and thus The of the world's by general to the of not only of religious but of place of and what other or people to themselves from one and themselves of their is not just in and North America, which has been perhaps the most but in Asia, Africa, and America, drawn with and into the of the world's of course, that all this will in time sort out and of cultural what we to to will or be so far as I there is at the little of it. is with us late and