Thick Description
| dc.contributor.author | Harrison, Anthony Kwame | en |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2017-01-09T22:22:14Z | en |
| dc.date.available | 2017-01-09T22:22:14Z | en |
| dc.date.issued | 2013-10-01 | en |
| dc.description.notes | < EDITORS: R. Jon McGee and Richard L. Warms >< REFEREED: No >< USER_REFERENCE_CREATOR: Yes >< ACC_END: 2013-01-31 >< DTx_ACC: 01/2013 >< PUB_END: 2013-10-31 >< DTx_PUB: 10/2013 > | en |
| dc.description.notes | Thick description is an approach to cultural analysis popularized by the anthropologist Clifford Geertz in the introductory essay of his 1973 book The Interpretation of Cultures. This method involves densely textured descriptions and explanations of social acts and activities, which strive to uncover the layers of cultural significance underlying them. This effort by social researchers to construct actor-oriented understandings of meaning is necessarily interpretive. Geertz's position that ethnography (cultural anthropology's principal method of inquiry) is fundamentally a project of thick description and his definition of culture (anthropology's chief organizing concept) as interconnected webs of significance render thick description a more or less complete explanation of what anthropologists should do--that is, endeavor to identify and represent the cultural contexts in which behaviors and the meanings behind them are embedded in order to figure out what people are really up to. Cultural anthropologists today recognize Geertz's articulation of thick description as a seminal moment in debates over the discipline's position as closer to either the social sciences or the humanities. Geertz's work also helped usher in the next generation of ethnographers who championed more literary approaches to ethnographic writing and analysis. The remainder of this entry expands on the notion of thick description through (a) a brief overview of its initial articulation by the philosopher Gilbert Ryle, (b) a discussion of the debates and criticisms surrounding Geertz's application of thick description, and (c) an elaboration on its significance and legacy. | en |
| dc.description.version | Published version | en |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/10919/74038 | en |
| dc.language.iso | en | en |
| dc.publisher | SAGE | en |
| dc.relation.ispartof | Theory in Social and Cultural Anthropology: An Encyclopedia | en |
| dc.rights | In Copyright | en |
| dc.rights.uri | http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ | en |
| dc.title | Thick Description | en |
| dc.type | Book chapter | en |
| pubs.organisational-group | /Virginia Tech | en |
| pubs.organisational-group | /Virginia Tech/All T&R Faculty | en |
| pubs.organisational-group | /Virginia Tech/Liberal Arts and Human Sciences | en |
| pubs.organisational-group | /Virginia Tech/Liberal Arts and Human Sciences/CLAHS T&R Faculty | en |
| pubs.organisational-group | /Virginia Tech/Liberal Arts and Human Sciences/Sociology | en |