Uncovering Cultural Meaning: Problems and Solutions

Todd Jones

In his highly influential The Interpretation of Cultures, anthropologist Clifford Geertz argues that the study of culture ought to be not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. One of the problems with this stance is that it has never been completely clear what is meant by meaning. I argue that the best way of making sense of social scientific practice is to see interpretivists as looking at typical mental reactions people in a cultural tend to have to certain acts and artifacts. While some interpretive social scientists engage in this practice with great sensitivity and ingenuity, such ascriptions tend to be very problematic for numerous reasons. In this paper I discuss the source of these problems and possible ways around them.