Geertz, Clifford. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

In The Interpretation of Cultures, Clifford Geertz describes his extensive field research spent collecting much information about the cultures he is studying. His “symbolic anthropology” focuses on “Culture” which he defines as “an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, 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” (89). He feels that culture is a system of signs and codes that govern behavior and allows different individuals to communicate. According to Geertz, the function of culture is to impose meaning on the world and make it understandable. In his work he emphasizes the importance of the symbolic (of systems of meaning—as it relates to culture, cultural change, and the study of culture.)
In his work, Geertz focuses on specific cultural practices but does not draw general conclusions about a culture from these specific studies. In his various researches in Southeast Asia and North Africa, Geertz finds individual events, performances and practices to interpret in great detail developing “local knowledge” of the specific occurrence rather than “global knowledge” of the culture as a whole. He uses the term “thick description” of culture to describe his detailed descriptions of a limited aspect of the ideas and practices of a given society at a given time. He compares this technique as a cultural version of the close reading strategies of the New Critics.
Geertz applies “thick description” to the Balinese cockfight. Close observation and extensive interpretation reveals new aspects of Balinese social life that has escaped other scholars who focused of the more mainstream aspects of Balinese society. Geertz makes the following observations about the fight itself:
(1) The fact that he and his wife were almost caught when the police raided the illegal cockfight made the couple more accepted by the villagers since most of them were there too. Fellowship was demonstrated in their cowardly act of running away and teasing became a part of their acceptance.
(2) The cockfight is an obsession of consuming power much like the American ballpark or golf course. It is both cocks and men fighting, and there is a deep psychological identification of Balinese men with their fighting cocks.
(3) It is unusual in Balinese culture in that it is a single sex public activity while all other activities involve participation of both men and women on equal ground.
(4) There is a great deal of roosterish imagery in the language, and men spend a large amount of time grooming, feeding, and discussing their cocks.
(5) The cocks are symbolic expressions of the owner’s self and also expressions of an animal nature that totally revolts the Balinese. This identification with the cock is also that of his ideal self, his penis, and what he most fears and is fascinated by—“The Powers of Darkness.” (420)
(6) A cockfight is a form of blood sacrifice to the appropriate demons to pacify them.
(7) “In the cockfight, man and beast, good and evil, ego and id, the creative power of aroused masculinity and the destructive power of loosened animalism fuse in a bloody drama of hatred, cruelty, violence, and death” (420-421).
(8) “Fighting cocks . . . is like playing with fire only not getting burned” (440). The fights can represent village and kin group rivalries and hostilities, but in play only.
(9) “For the Balinese, the cockfight brings together themes—animal savagery, male narcissism, opponent gambling, status rivalry, mass excitement, blood sacrifice—whose main connection is their involvement with rage and fear of rage, and bending them into a set of rules which at once contains them and allows them play, builds a symbolic structure in which, over and over again, the reality of their inner affiliation can be intelligibly felt” (449-450).
(10) The cockfight allows the Balinese male to see a part of his own life, as an owner and a bettor, and how he reacts to it.
(11) The Balinese man forms and discovers a particular part of his own temperment and his society’s temper at the same time.

Clifford Geertz was one of the first anthropologists to see that insights provided by common language, philosophy, and literary analysis could have a force in social sciences. His research is directed toward frames of meaning within which various peoples live out their lives. His work with marginal cultural events and institutions suggests the possibility of new interpretations of canonical texts and also the addition of the interpretation of marginal literary texts.

Veeser, H. Aram, ed. The New Historicism. New York: Routledge, 1989.

The essays included in The New Historicism reflect the responses, the heterogeneity, and the contention that surround the study of New Historicism. The theory enables scholars to cross boundaries separating history, anthropology, art, politics, literature, and economics. In Vesser’s opinion, New Historicism “remains a phrase without an adequate referent” (x). It looks at questions such as the “Third world” as signifier, the relationship between feminism and New Historicism, the question of “class” as category, and viability of cultural materialism and demonstrates how New Historicism considers history from a different perspective as it views contested issues of current criticism. In bracketing together the fields of literature, ethnography, anthropology, art, history, and other disciplines and sciences, it allows us to question the complication and the “unavailability of exchanges between culture and power” (xi). The essays in this volume have no definitive answers to questions raised by the theory but establish the whole range of the study into it.
Veeser also establishes these main assumptions of New Historicism:
“1. that every expressive act is embedded in a network of material practices.
2. that every act of unmasking, critique, and opposition uses methods it condemns and risks falling prey to the practice it exposes.
3. that literary and non-literary “texts” circulate inseparately.
4. that no discourse, imaginative or archival, gives access to unchanging truths nor expresses inalterable human nature.
5. finally, as emerges powerfully in this volume, that a critical method and a language adequate to describe culture under capitalism participate in the economy they describe” (xi).
The New Historicists look at historical considerations along with literary analysis.
They try to describe “culture in action” (xi). They also demonstrate many ways that culture and society affect each other and show relationships between texts and other signifying practices. The essays in the book illustrate many unusual connections. The book tries to define, illustrate, and raise questions about New Historicism that often uses a vocabulary of circulation, negotiation, and exchange.
Stephen Greenblatt, Louis Montross, and Catherine Gallagher are recognized practitioners of New Historicism, but they also used varied examples. Greenblatt in “Toward a Poetics of Culture” tries to show that the aim of nearly all practices is to show a profit of some kind. He uses such diverse ideas as an open road and the regulated police terrain of Yosemite National Park, aluminum signs regulating an unspoiled landscape, and a stabbing death in New Orleans which he relates to Mailer’s The Executioner’s Song. Montrose in “The Poetics and Politics of Culture” uses Renaissance texts to give a sense of history. Gallagher in “Marxism and the New Historicism” suggests that criticism should not involve politics but is driven by debate and contest.
Other varied examples are included. Joel Fineman’s “The History of the Anecdote” relates a 17th century criminal trial to Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. Jon Klancher’s “English Romanticism and Cultural Production” connects Arthur Schlesinger’s New Frontier rhetoric to later anti-war and inner city riots. Jonathan Arac’s “The Struggle for Cultural Heritage: Christina Stead Refunctions Charles Dickens and Mark Twain” discusses Charles Dickens, patriarchy, and literary incest in Christina Snead’s 1940 The Man Who Loved Children. Jane Marcus’ “The Asylums of Antaeus: Woman, War, and Madness: Is there a Feminist Fetishism?” relates the action of the early Suffragettes to Parisian fashion houses. Richard Terdiman’s “Is there Class in this class” uses an ancient Roman tax bracket to parallel the track system in modern high schools. Finally Vincent P. Pecora’s “The Limits of Local Knowledge” makes comparisons between Balinese gambling customs, mass political murder, and the CIA. Examples of history and literary connections are as varied as the people who write about them.
Opposing viewpoints of New Historicism come from the essays of Brook Thomas, Frank Lentricchia, Gerald Graff, Judith Lowder-Newton, Richard Terdiman, and Vincent P. Pecora. Brook Thomas’ “New Historicism and Other Old Fashioned Topics” discusses the fact that one can find as many sorts of new history as one can find historians. Frank Lentricchia, in his essay, “Focault’s Legacy: A New Historicism?” feels that the New Historicists revive liberalism and sentimentalization of arts. He also feels that they fail to show how traces of social circulation are influenced by art and that they give art an improper placement against the “marketplace” of life. In “Co-optation,” Gerald Graff feels that New Historicism seems hostile to American values and places too much value on community norms. Judith Lowder-Newton, in her essay, “History as Usual? Feminism and the New Historicism,” the New Historicists copy and claim early feminist ideas as their own views.
The Feminine-Marxists Richard Terdiman, Vincent Pecora and Gayatri Chakrovorty Spivak have their own views. Terdiman feels that New Historicists use critical methods to question and duplicate the authors they suspect of practicing the theory. Pecora feels that too much description hides the world and stops the flow of intelligent viewpoints. Spivak’s “The New Historicism: Political Commitment and the Postmodern Critic” expresses the idea that culture and criticism should challenge each other.
Heyden White in his essay “New Historicism: A Comment” stresses the point that New Historicism leaves no theoretical basis on which to question historical revisions and that there are a variety of approaches in the study of literature and history. Stanley Fish’s essay “Commentary: The Young and the Restless” points out the fact that New Historicism has changed the literature curriculum, has allowed varied texts, and has made students more aware of history and the significance of cultural events. In summary, Fish feels that New Historicism is important because of the major changes it has made in the literary world of criticism.