GEERTZ, "Thick Description"/ Kinsey

"Thick Description" is the title of Chapter 1 of Clifford Geertz's seminal essay collection, The Interpretation of Cultures. Because this essay is Chapter 1, it describes Geertz's theoretical approach to ethnography. This essay is theoretical because Geertz is explaining not only how he approaches the practice of ethnography and how he thinks about ethnography but is arguing what ethnography is and what it is good for. It is theoretical, moreover, because he uses only two examples (and none from his own ethnographic work) to elaborate his theory. The first example he uses involves winking (shutting the eyelid), and the second example he uses is a "fiction" or narration of an event that took place in Morocco in the early 19th century.

Geertz argues that the ethnographers job is to write culture. He argues, moreover, that how ethnographers approach the writing of culture is very important. He argues for "thick description." Thick description involves, above all, a commitment to writing about the concrete: the nitty-gritty details. Thick description entails being a body (witnessing, experiencing) amongst other bodies and immersing oneself and becoming intimately acquainted in/with "extremely small matters." Geertz's argument is that we do not come to know how other human groups think or mean from flying over at 60,000 feet. We come to understand other cultures (and only partially) by living on the ground and for an extended period of time.

Geertz calls his approach semiotic; he believes that actions - like words which partially constitute and explain actions - are symbolic. There is no "rosetta stone" to translate culture. To understand a cultural logic (and again that understanding is only ever partial and contingent), the ethnographer must immerse himself -- not in the abstract possibilities, but in the immediate minutiate -- working deeply rather than broadly.

While Geertz believes that ethnography is worthwhile, for it provides for humankind a record of what man has said and, in the best cases, how he has said it, the project is never and can never be complete. The project of writing culture, of understanding what one is-always already outside of, is filled with trouble. For while the project requires tremendous attention on working deeply, the deeper one goes, the more nuance one finds; generalities become even more problematic. Thus, as Geertz says recounting another's tale, it's "turtles all the way down."

Geertz's work is interesting for all who engage in qualitative research practices. He outlines a theory of practice - how those of us who study writing and writing about writing - might ethically engage someone else's work. He argues for immersing ourselves in the culture, refraining from generalizations (especially generalizations made before we have exhausted our powers of thick description), and recognizing our own position as interpreters with only partial, limited, and contingent understanding. Geertz offers a way of moving forward and interpreting texts ethically and scrupulously. He also reminds us that even the most banal interchanges, texts, artifacts, are constructed in vast and rich discourses -- discourses which open up possibilities of interpretations rather than close them down.