池田光穂
"There is an Indian story -- at least I heard it as a n Indian story -- about an Englishman who, having been told that the world rested on a platform which rested on the back of an elephant which rested in turn on the back of a turtle, asked (perhaps he was an ethnographer; it is the way they behave), what did the turtle rest on? Another turtle. And that turtle? "Ah, Sahib, after that it is turtles all the way down."(Geertz 1973:28-29)
"Such, indeed, is the condition of things. I do not know how long it would be profitable to meditate on the encounter of Cohen, the sheikh, and "Dumari" (the period has perhaps already been exceeded ) ; but I do know that however long I did so I would not get anywhere near to the bottom of it. Nor have I ever gotten anywhere near to the bottom of anything I have ever written about, either in the essays below or elsewhere. Cultural analysis is intrinsically incomplete. And, worse than that, the more deeply it goes the less complete it is. It is a strange science whose most telling assertions are its most tremulously based, in which to get somewhere with the matter at hand is to intensify the suspicion, both your own and that of others, that you are not quite getting it right. But that, along with plaguing subtle people with obtuse questions, is what being an ethnographer is like."(Geertz 1973:29)
"The danger that cultural analysis, in search of all-too-deep-lying turtles, will lose touch with the hard surfaces of life-with the political, economic, stratificatory realities within which men are everywhere contained-and with the biological and physical necessities on which those surfaces rest, is an ever-present one. The only defense against it, and against, thus, turning cultural analysis into a kind of sociological aestheticism, is to train such analysis on such realities and such necessities in the first place. It is thus that I have written about nationalism, about violence, about identity, about human nature, about legitimacy, about revolution, about ethnicity, about urbanization, about status, about death, about time, and most of all about particular attempts by particular peoples to place these things in some sort of comprehensible, meaningful frame."(Geertz 1973:30)
"As a discipline, cultural analysis is based on using qualitative research methods of the arts, humanities, social sciences, in particular ethnography and anthropology, to collect data on cultural phenomena and to interpret cultural representations and practices; in an effort to gain new knowledge or understanding through analysis of that data and cultural processes. This is particularly useful for understanding and mapping trends, influences, effects, and affects within cultures." Wikipedia - Cultural Analysis.
画像クリックで拡大します。
Müller, Niklaus, Glauben, Wissen und Kunst der alten Hindus, F.Kupfeberg, Mainz, 1822, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundation
Source: http://uchuronjo.com/cosmo/fig_cosmo/zo_kame_hebi.html
リンク
- クリフォード・ギアーツ「厚い記述」について
- フィールドワークの現象学
- Wikipedia - Cultural Analysis.
文献
- Geertz, Clifford., 1973. Interpretation of Cultures: Selected essays. New York: Basic Book.
