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.