Clifford Geertz, one of the most influential thinkers of our time, here
discusses some of the most urgent issues facing intellectuals today. In
this collection of personal and revealing essays, he explores the nature
of his anthropological work in relation to a broader public, serving as
the foremost spokesperson of his generation of scholars, those who came
of age after World War II. His reflections are written in a style that
both entertains and disconcerts, as they engage us in topics ranging
from moral relativism to the relationship between cultural and
psychological differences, from the diversity and tension among activist
faiths to "ethnic conflict" in today's politics.
Geertz, who once considered a career in philosophy, begins by explaining
how he got swept into the revolutionary movement of symbolic
anthropology. At that point, his work began to encompass not only the
ethnography of groups in Southeast Asia and North Africa, but also the
study of how meaning is made in all cultures--or, to use his phrase, to
explore the "frames of meaning" in which people everywhere live out
their lives. His philosophical orientation helped him to establish the
role of anthropology within broader intellectual circles and led him to
address the work of such leading thinkers as Charles Taylor, Thomas
Kuhn, William James, and Jerome Bruner. In this volume, Geertz comments
on their work as he explores questions in political philosophy,
psychology, and religion that have intrigued him throughout his career
but that now hold particular relevance in light of postmodernist
thinking and multiculturalism. Available Light offers insightful
discussions of concepts such as nation, identity, country, and self,
with a reminder that like symbols in general, their meanings are not
categorically fixed but grow and change through time and place.
This book treats the reader to an analysis of the American intellectual
climate by someone who did much to shape it. One can read Available
Light both for its revelation of public culture in its dynamic, evolving
forms and for the story it tells about the remarkable adventures of an
innovator during the "golden years" of American academia.
