Top 36 Quotes by Clifford Geertz

My instincts are always against people who want to fasten some sort of hegemony onto things.

I'm writing a review of three books on feminism and science, and it's about social constructionism. So I would say I'm a social constructionist, whatever that means.

Anthropology in general has always been fairly hospitable to female scholars, and even to feminist scholars.

I think feminism has had a major impact on anthropology.

I had a hard time convincing students that they were going to North Africa to understand the North Africans, not to understand themselves.

I don't feel that an atmosphere of debate and total disagreement and argument is such a bad thing. It makes for a vital and alive field.

Anthropology never has had a distinct subject matter, and because it doesn't have a real method, there's a great deal of anxiety over what it is.

Younger anthropologists have the notion that anthropology is too diverse. The number of things done under the name of anthropology is just infinite; you can do anything and call it anthropology.

Two people have been really liberating in my mind; one is Wittgenstein and the other is Burke. I read Burke before he was a secular saint, before everyone was reading him.

I've often been accused of making anthropology into literature, but anthropology is also field research. Writing is central to it.