The Interpretation of Cultures

Situating The Interpretation of Cultures within the historical development of the field of cultural anthropology illuminates the ways Geertz inserts himself into the academic conversation.

Cultural anthropology has its origins in 19th century European/Western political and intellectual threads in which colonialism played a key role. Continuing Enlightenment Era ideas of the 17th and 18th centuries, 19th century thought concerned itself with challenges to religious dogma and the search for universals that could define humankind; at the same time, it sought justifications for Western subjugation of various Eastern, African, and American Indigenous peoples. With Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859), in which he articulated evolutionary theory, came an organizing principle around which to justify the subjugation of non-Western peoples from a cultural anthropological standpoint: “A major task of cultural anthropology was thought to be that of classifying different societies and cultures and defining the phases and states through which all human groups pass—the linear interpretation of history” (Historical Development of Cultural Anthropology.” Encyclopaedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/science/cultural-anthropology/Historical-development-of-cultural-anthropology.). The need to distinguish so-called “civilized” societies from so-called “primitive” societies while maintaining a universalism under which humankind could be subsumed is the prime motivating factor in the cultural evolutionist framework of 19th century cultural anthropology.