The Interpretation of Cultures by Clifford Geertz

The study shows that structural/contextual influences together with individuals' culturally determined sense-making with regard to specific organizational events are more useful determinants of negotiated outcomes.

Results show that aggregate models of cultural difference are useful only to the extent that they serve as latent conceptual anchors guiding individuals' cultural responses to events. Results include a model of cultural negotiation linking organizational events with issue domains as points of departure for negotiations. Data collected by semi-structured interviews are analyzed using textual analysis software to uncover key issues that became catalysts for negotiation. This study expands theoretical research on negotiated culture by testing basic assumptions in the context of a German-Japanese joint venture. Genau hier setzen meine Überlegungen an: Ich interessiere mich dafür, inwieweit sich die Einheimischen in ethnographischen Darstellungen ihrer eigenen Kultur angemessen repräsentiert sehen, und welcher Stellenwert ihrer Kritik an eben diesen Darstellungen einzuräumen ist. Im Verlauf dieser 'Prepräsentationsdebatte' ist jedoch nur am Rande darauf Bezug genommen worden, welche Bedeutung dem Votum der Repräsentierten - also den Mitgliedern der untersuchten Gesellschaften - im Hinblick auf eine Beantwortung dieser Fragestellung zukommt.

In dieser Debatte ging es im weitesten Sinne um die Frage, in welchem Maße es Ethnographen gelingen kann, fremde Lebensformen und Weltbilder adäquat zu beschreiben - oder genauer formuliert: in welchem Maße es gelingen kann, das Selbstverständnis der Mitglieder fremder Kulturen auf eine angemessene Weise zu repräsentieren. Interest theory conceives ideology as a mask and a weapon within a “universal struggle for advantage” (201), while strain theory sees it as a symptom and a remedy for “sociopsychological disequilibrium” (201).Die Ethnologie hat in den 80er und 90er Jahren eine Debatte ausgefochen, die auch hierzulande als Writing Culture-Debatte bekannt geworden ist (vgl. The weakness of the evaluative conception becomes evident in the two dominant approaches to the study of the social determinants of ideology, which examine ideology’s social and psychological functions. This raises the question of how ideology can be an analytic tool in the social sciences when scientists exhibit bias in their arguments.

For example, Werner Stark paints ideology as psychologically deformed by human emotion, while more sophisticated arguments also present ideology as “a form of radical intellectual depravity” (197). This evaluative conception produces what Geertz refers to as Mannheim’s paradox, whereby the term’s lack of neutrality limits scientific objectivity-in this case, much sociological theory considers the relation between science and ideology in simplistic, judgmental terms.

Geertz argues that the social sciences have developed only an evaluative conception of ideology.

The Interpretation of Cultures by Clifford Geertz