860
Thick
Ue•;cnnti<)n
See also
C;eertz,
Clifford;
Hymes, l)ell;
ROheim,
c;eza;
Turner,
Victor
W.
Further Readings
Olson, C. (1966). Projective verse. In
R.
Creeley (Ed.),
Selected writings (pp.
15~26).
New York,
NY:
New
Direc~ions.
!Original
work
published 1950)
Tedlock,
B.
(1982). Time and the highland
:vfaya.
Albuquerque~
University of New
~fexico.
--.
( 1987).
Dreaming:
Anthropological and
psychological interpretations. Cambridge,
UK:
(~ambridge
University
Press.
--.
(1992).
The
beautiful and
the
dangerous:
Encounters
with
the
Zuni
Indians.
New York,
NY:
Viking.
--.
(2005)/Woman in the shaman's body. New York,
NY:
Bantam.
Tedlock,
B.,
& Tedlock,
D.
!Eds.).
(1975).
Teachings
of
the American
earth:
Indian
religion
and philosophy.
New
York,
NY:
Liveright.
Tedlock,
D. (Ed.). (1972). Finding the
center:
Narrative
poetry
of
the
Zuni
Indians.
New
York,
NY:
Dial
Press.
--.
(1983). The spoken word and the work
of
interpretation.
Philadelphia:
University
of
Pennsylvania
Press.
--.
(1985). The Papal
Vuh:
The Mayan book
of
the
dawn
of
life.
New
York,
NY:
Simon &
Schuster.
--.
(2003
).
Rabina/ A
chi:
A
Mayan
drama
of
war and
sacrifice.
()xford~
UK:
Oxford University Press.
--.
(2010). 2000
ye,1rs
of
Mayan
literature. Berkeley:
lJniversity
of
California
Press.
THICK DESCRIPTION
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 (cui-
tural anthropology's principal method
of
inquiry)
is
fundamentally a project
of
thick description and his
definition
of
culture (anthropology's chief organiz-
co:nce:otl
as of
s1gmt1rca11ce
description a more
or
complete
of
anthropologists
should
do--that
is, endeavor to identify and represent the
cultural contexts in which behaviors
and
the mean·
ings behind them are embedded in order
to
figure
out
what
people are really
up
to.
Cultural
anthro·
pologists 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
ethnogra·
phers 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 articula-
tion
by
the philosopher Gilbert Ryle, (b) a discussion
of
the debates
and
criticisms surrounding Geertz's
application
of
thick description, and
(c)
an
elabora·
tion
on
its significance and legacy.
Gilbert Ryle and Thick Description
Although Geertz introduced tbick description as
an
important concept in anthropology, he in fact bor·
rowed
both
the term
and
the best
known
exam-
ple for explaining it from the
Oxford
philosopher
Gilbert Ryle.
Through
a series
of
thought exercises,
Ryle juxtaposed the idea
of
a
"thin
description"-
that
is, a surface-level explanation
of
a directly
observable
act-with
a "thick description," which
additionally presents the intentions of social actors
as well as the reasons for and meanings behind their
behavior. The most famous
of
these exercises consid-
ers the thinly described contracting of
au
eyelid
as
either
an
involuntary twitch
or
an
intentional wink.
Ryle demonstrates
that
a contracting eyelid only
becomes recognizable
and
understood as a wink
with an awareness
of
the cultural context and cir·
cumstance--both the social codes through which a
wink rakes
on
meaning and the various situations
that might prompt its
use.
Methodologically, this dis·
tinction highlights the importance
of
ethnographic
embeddedness. In other words, simply being present
to observe and record an act will
not
suffice--anv
video camera can document a contracting eyelid;
th~
researcher must be familiar enough with the social
environment
to
(at least attempt to) understand the
meanings
that
actors attribute
to
their actions.
Criticisms
of
Thick
Description
Jescriptir>n prirnarily
Cf>me
two
camps. Anthropologists
to
more
