Geertz and Sociology

Interpretative anthropology, like Znaniecki’s socjology, was born from the opposition towards the so-called hard anthropology and sociology. In the domain of its methods the significance of participating observation and free anthropological interview, as well as the role of the ‘area’ – the world we all have come to live in today, are emphasized. Hence, the first part of the article is devoted to the changes that occurred after World War II, not only in Europe, but also in North America and in the countries of the Far East. The variety that has been muddied recently makes anthropologists and sociologists more sensitive to the different aspects of the problem when they describe what Alien is. In the second part religion as a social phenomenon seen from various theoretical perspectives is shown. The case described by Geertz that is connected with the religion on Bali forces one to be careful with statements about traditional secularization theory, which stresses a destructive effect of modernization on religion

In the Search of a Paradigm of the Anthropology of Religion

In our anthropological considerations today we refer to the conclusions given by C. Geertz. They may seem to have only a historical character. The paper sought to show symptoms which prove that Geertz's thought has not so much been revitalized as its success has never been on the wane. Similarly as in the case of British anthropology, which is in principal pursued in the functional-structural spirit, bringing to mind the „immortal” figure of Malinowski, so Geertz's works were read in the United States in the 1960s. At the moment, they are also read in Indonesia, in such countries as, for instance, China, Germany, Russia, Holland, or Portugal

The Problem of Sacrum in African Studies

In the context of post-modernist anthropology with its conception of the "elusiveness of sense" in a given sign we demonstrate, on the comparative material (Sudan, Ghana), the value of SACRUM as a meaningful and "inherent structure of cultural reality." We refer to the works of E. E. Evans-Pritchard (E-P) Nuer Religion, G. Lienhardt's Divinity and Experience (both anthropologists are the disciples of B. Malinowski) and many studies of H. Zimoń. The latter is an Africanist working at the Catholic University of Lublin; we also mention C. Geertz, an American anthropologist. The latter is not connected with Africanist studies, but by introducing Mircea Eliade's model of sacrum into the province of anthropology, has become a significant figure, in the level of anthropological research on religion. The works of British functional anthropologists, the exception here is E-P's Nuer Religion, fail to notice other works than E. Durkheim's conception of art. Durkheim associated the categories of sacrum with society and everything that was social was sacred, and therefore unquestioned. Some anthropologists had doubts as to the effectiveness of Durkheim's reductionist model of sacrum and functional-utilitarian conception of religious actions understood as a magic behavior. E-P noticed those difficulties and the image KWOTH with the Nuer, he brought to mind, is a phenomenological attempt to analyze religious phenomena. Sacrum, according to Eliade, is beyond time, but on the other hand it always, in a mysterious way, comprises time and space. H. Zimoń takes up this point, including Eliade's model of sacrum in the analyses on the religious rituals among the people of, among other things, Konkomba in Ghana. He proved that this value in African cultures has a transcultural meaning

Why Do We Need Anthropology? On the Mutual Penetration of Discourses on Culture/Spiritual Culture

Świat współczesny to świat wielokulturowy i chyba już zdążyliśmy do tego przywyknąć – przynajmniej większość z nas. Stąd codziennie, na przykład w pracy, staramy się pokonywać dzielące nas różnice, szukając porozumienia z kimś, o kim tak naprawdę niewiele wiemy. Choć rozumiemy go, to jednak nie jesteśmy w stanie „wczuć” się w jego świat. Antropologia kulturowa/interpretacyjna, której naturalnym kontekstem jest „globalna wioska”, pomaga nam oswoić „Innego”. Odwołując się do wybranych koryfeuszy antropologii starałem się krok po kroku budować nić porozumienia z „kimś”, kto nie przynależy do mojego świata i nigdy tak nie będzie. W propozycji tej nie zasypuję różnic, i właśnie mimo tych różnic, szukam porozumienia z „kimś”, za którym stoi inna, niepowtarzalna tradycja. Porozumienie jest możliwe, gdyż wszyscy jesteśmy ludźmi, ale „skrojeni” na miarę własnej kultury. Antropologia interpretacyjna to osobliwa propozycja spotykająca się najczęściej z filozofią kultury i z literaturą.The modern world is a multicultural world and we have probably got used to it—at least most of us have. Hence, every day, for example at work, we try to overcome the differences that divide us, seeking to communicate with someone about whom we really know very little. Although we understand the person, we are unable to „empathise” with his or her world. Cultural/interpretive anthropology, whose natural context is the „global village”, helps us to domesticate the „Other”. Referring to selected coryphaeuses of anthropology, I tried to build step by step the thread of understanding with „someone” who does not belong to my world and never will. In this proposal, I do not sugar-coat the differences, and it is precisely in spite of these differences that I seek agreement with the „someone” behind whom stands a different, unique tradition. Agreement is possible because we are all human, but ‘tailored’ to our own culture. Interpretive anthropology is a peculiar proposal that meets most often with philosophy of culture and with literature

Geertz and anthropological debates around religion

Among various anthropological questions religion surely takes the central position. The author of the article tries to show C. Geertz’s conception of religion as the background of evolutionist and functional debates about it. He departs from perceiving religion in the categories of a social fact towards treating it as a system of symbols. The model suggests a certain closed circulation of connected elements: ethos and worldview, mutually confirming each other. Worldview is an element of the natural structure of the world. This suggests that it is the only possible and natural way of acting and perceiving the world, consolidated by religious and emotional experience that is an element of the ritual. In the situation of social change religious symbols seem to lose their influence, turning into various forms of ideology – a phenomenon Geertz called “ideologization of religion”. This is done owing to the victory of “commonsensical cognition” over religious cognition. By the very fact the religious lifestyle – “religiousness” – is transformed into “religious-mindedness”. The struggle between them is the “struggle for reality”

The Borders of Symbolic Culture. An Anthropological Perspective

within symbolic cultures - which, when crossed, chaos and feeling of senselessness, and instability sneak into man’s experience? The paradigm of post-modernist culture concentrates mainly on the concept of sense. To create or „unveil” it is an essential element of cultural process. Among many meanings of sense the basic one is that which refers to being-value as the source of sense. Questioning this concept of sense - in the case of post-modernist destruction - does not mean „death” of the problem of sense. Nor does it mean in the ethnology of religion, respectively, „death” of the problem of Sacrum. Geertz brought to our minds the image of culture in the form of manuscript. It is full of blanks and undertones, yet there is some minimum of coherence. Among many cultural symbols Geertz lists those which point to an idea of order, broadly speaking, a contradiction to chaos. This idea is an antidote to an existential and basic fear, a fear that stems from disharmony between that which is and that which should be. Mention in the title has been made of borders. They are borders of, sometimes different, paradigms of symbolic culture. It seems that they are included in the consensus (Geertz) as to the basic values like life, good, and bad. In the religious language they mean recognition for the category of Sacrum as a transcultural value

Recenzja: Leksykon socjologii moralności. Podstawy - teorie - badania - perspektywy, pod redakcją naukową Janusza Mariańskiego, Zakład Wydawniczy NOMOS, Kraków 2015, ss. 975.

Ksiądz Profesor Janusz Mariański jest uznanym, szanowanym autorytetem naukowym, wybitnym socjologiem, zwłaszcza w dziedzinie socjologii moralności, autorem kilkuset pozycji – w tym kilkudziesięciu monografii naukowych. W swoich pracach łączy umiejętnie teorie socjologiczne z praktyką badań empirycznych. W 2015 roku, nakładem Wydawnictwa NOMOS, ukazuje się pod redakcją księdza Profesora Leksykon socjologii moralności. Podstawy – teorie – badania – perspektywy

Funeral Rituals - the Rituals of Transition

According to the authors, the phenomenon of death may at least be viewed in two dimensions. If we define “life” as “a group of specific phenomena of forms and motions, as they are externally perceived, pertaining to people, animals and plants,” then death and our knowledge about it is only an outcome of the empirical perception of the phenomenon of the “parting” of other people and animate beings. Now if “life” as such becomes a subject matter of reflection, in other words, if we know that we are dying, then the fact of dying becomes an integral element of human culture. The analysis of the relationship between the ritual of transition and the fact of death is brought home to us by a number of anthropological conceptions pertaining to the ritual, starting from the classical “model” of the ritual of transition by Arnold van Gennep, through the theoretical considerations by Victor Turner, to the “new anthropology” of Clifford Geertz. By a ritual the authors have in minds stereotypical behaviours, the behaviours that repeat themselves, thereby being predictable as regards their form. The religious symbols are attendant on them. We find the rituals of transition in the “border-line” moments of life, i.e. they are celebrated on the occasion of birth, initiation, marriage and death. Turner, who developed the classical theory of van Gennep, pinpoints that the ritual deals with the events which are not controlled by technology, and at the same time they are associated with mystic powers. According to Max Gluckham, the rituals of transition may be thoroughly explained in terms of social relations. They serve to mark the division of social roles wherever they are vague and/or confused. The ritualization of everyday relations does not follow from the consciousness “immersed” in holiness, but from the diversity of social aims and roles, which an individual plays within a community and in relation to other individuals, and of parts of everyday life. The rituals express, however, unity despite real conflicts. Now Geertz, the American anthropologist, speaks about order not only at the socio-political level. He combines the phenomenological method with the condense description of the so-called new anthropology, an anthropology that he advocates. Among many cultural symbols he distinguishes those which point to a general idea of order, being in opposition to chaos. Now chaos, according to Geertz, may intrude into our interior at least at three levels: cognitive, emotional and ethical. The fact of death is an event which pushes to the extremes the sense of chaos. It is the holistic approach to the ritual reality as a condense image of both the structure and culture of a group that decides, according to Turner, about a possibility to code the symbolic rituals. At the liminal stage of the rite of transition the symbols become particularly intensified, the moment at which the principal form of communitas is revealed as a kind of social anti-structure. That structure is constructed by virtue of a binary opposition of traits which may easily be identified, e.g. totalitarity-particularity, the old order-the new order. In such circumstances, emotionally tense, the process of communication is carried out through the retainment of the axiomatic principles drawn from the sacerrima. The persons taking part in the ritual learn the social norms and values and about the order of reality along with the necessity of death