A Description and Analysis of Clifford Geertz’s “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese

Cockfight” (1973).

By Stuart Hardman

“Archimedes said that he could move the world if he could

find a point whereon to rest his machine. Who has not felt
the same aspirations…?”1 ([Wordsworth 1807] cited in
Peritz 1993: 380)

1
This quote is from Wordsworth‟s supplementary note to “Ode: Intimations of Immorality.
In terms impact Geertz‟s (1973) collection of essays, The Interpretation of Cultures,
marks a definite point of departure of the “interpretive” or” “literary turn” in
contemporary anthropology (Bošković 2002: 1). “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese
Cockfight” (abbreviated to “Deep Play” from now on) (Geertz 1973: 412-453) as the last
essay in this collection is a brilliant ethnographic example, in the essay form, of his
theoretical shift from functionalism to interpretive anthropology. As such it has been
characterised by being the site of sometimes heated and often polemical debates and is
regarded as “indispensable reading for most of the anthropology courses throughout the
world” (Bošković 2002: 1).

So as to explore why interpretive anthropology became popular when it did I

situate Clifford Geertz's (1973) seminal essay within both the „historist‟ 2 and „presentist‟3
perspectives. Heretofore, in the „historicist‟ sense, I briefly explore Kuhn‟s (1962) notion
of the paradigm, its impact on the social sciences and also the socio-political ferment in
which it gained popularity. Then, in the „presentist‟ perspective, I analyse the
descriptions, arguments and the meta narrative of the essay itself and refer principally to
some theoretical developments in Dell Hymes‟s edited collection of essays, Reinventing
Anthropology (1974), to show how Geertz‟s „thick description‟ was part of a ground
swell of theoretical changes within anthropology and ultimately that “Deep Play” is very
much more than an ethnographic essay about the Balinese villagers. It is also, I argue,
exemplary of the overall theme of The Interpretation of Cultures (Geertz 1973), that is a
theoretical shift towards interpretive anthropology. I conclude the discussion by
reviewing three major criticisms (namely the posititivist, materialist and post modernist
critiques respectively) of Geertz's (1973) essay and his Interpretive Anthropology over
the years.

2
The historicist perspective was introduced to Anthropology by George Stocking (1965, 1992) and is an
introduction of a second critique regarding the formulation of theories, namely not only the struggles within
the discipline but also of the struggles around the discipline. Theoretical proclamations are therefore in this
view embedded in the social milieu surrounding the discipline itself and not purely on factors within the
discourse community or discipline (Kelly 2004)
3
The presentist perspective is an interpretation of the relevance of theoretical formulations of the past on
present-day concerns within the discipline of Anthropology (Kelly 2004).

2
 “down the rabbit hole”4

“Well! I‟ve often seen a cat without a grin,” thought Alice; “but a grin
without a cat! It‟s the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!”
(Carroll [1865] 1998).

Geertz's Interpretive anthropology is premised upon Saussurian semiology in which

meaning (or representation) is possible, due to the arbitrariness of the sign, only within a
“system of differences” (Boskovic 2005: 4). Meaning, therefore, can be interpreted
because it is “only through differences that we are aware of different things, and [are]
able to compare them” (Boskovic 2005: 4). Alice's, somewhat psychedelic, 'trip' into and
subsequent adventures in Wonderland aptly demonstrates how signs are context specific.

Geertz in his essay, “Deep Play,” responds to the „post colonial‟ fieldwork
experience with an essentially constructionist theory of knowledge. This because it had
become increasingly apparent to him that the ground supporting scientific positivism in
the social sciences could no longer be imagined as „solid.‟

„Being There’5
The “epistemological” revolution in the social sciences was part of a growing conviction
that questioned whether the natural science model of the classical period in anthropology
was ever going to deliver on its lofty promises. This revolution was largely premised

4
Carroll, L. 1998. Aliice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. New York: Grosset and Dunlap
Publishers.
5
„Being there‟ is a metonym for quite a few points of interest within this essay. Firstly the anthropological
method of participant observation is premised upon the somatised presence of the individual field
researcher among the subjects, as well as within their meaning frameworks. It is also about „being there‟ in
the text because a constructionist standpoint necessitates an authorial presence in the text itself. This is
contrary to the author vacated narrative style as followed by the empirical science model which
presupposes a firm footing upon which the construction of knowledge can impel itself. In Works and Lives
(Geertz 1988) Geertz analyses the construction of ethnographic validity through various narrative styles.
His own narrative style implicitly acknowledges a constructionist theory of the construction of knowledge
in “Deep Play” which in this essay I argue was necessitated by an increased need for reflexivity on the part
of the ethnographer/anthropologist. In addition to this in this essay the presentist and historicist
perspectives shift the analysis to the historical and contemporaneous disciplinary, inter-disciplinary and
socio-political ferment within which Geertz‟s new theoretical pronouncements were postulated and became
popular. „Being there‟ in this sense sensitises the analysis to factors outside of the academic discipline of
anthropology and allows us to explore links between the society and the discipline of anthropology which
is in keeping with the overall theme of this essay, namely a shift toward a constructionist theory of
knowledge within anthropology. The last reference that I want to introduce here is that of the novel Being
There by Jerzy Kosinki (1971). This is discussed in footnote 7 (which follows directly).

3
upon an interpretation of Thomas Kuhn‟s (1962) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
which “seemed to provide a blueprint for reconstitution any practice as a science” (Fuller
1992: 241).6

6
Fuller (1994) sardonically compares Thomas Kuhn with the ambivalently comical Chance or Chauncey
Gardner (played by late Peter Sellers in his last role) from the film Being There (1979) (one of my favourite
films). The book (1971) and the screenplay for the film of the same title were both written by Jerzy
Kosinski. Fuller uses this comparison because Kuhn is notorious for disavowing most of the consequences
wrought by his text insofar as these consequences have appeared “radical” and “anti-positivist” (Fuller
1994: 241).

The central character of the film Being There, Chance who later is mistakenly called Chauncey
Gardner, is the ward of a wealthy Washingtonian recluse. In the beginning of the movie, Chance, a kindly
man of childlike simplicity, is cast out onto the streets of Washington following the death of his employer.
After a secluded life of gardening and watching television Chance is thrust into a new world in which he
cannot „find his feet‟. Almost everything he does in the film is a subject to misunderstanding. For example
his references to gardening are misinterpreted as sage-like economic pontifications and his references to
television, „I like to watch‟, as a kinky a sexual innuendo (Rothschild 1988: 57-59). These
misunderstandings are poetically interpreted and reinterpreted by the other protagonists in the film as
Taoist-like koans until he is eventually put forward as a candidate for the presidency of the United States at
the end of the film.

Herein lies the comic element of the film (besides a fairly blatant comment on the American
Political system), Chauncey (Chances public persona) never quite realises what it is that he is saying that
makes all the bigwigs hold him in such high regard. His periodic protestations relating to his mistaken
identity are, needless to say, ignored or reinterpreted. It is significant that his obscure past and peculiar
manner (in which his attention is child-like because he is totally engaged with the present and in this world
of surfaces he is interpreted as being pure and innocent) are glossed over by all the protagonists of the
misunderstanding.

For a wonderful analysis of the novel I recommend Herbert B. Rothschild, Jr‟s (1988) Jerzy
Kosinski‟s “Being There: Coriolanus” in Post Modern Dress. Rothschild (1988) suggests that Kosinski
intended for us to regard Chance as a biblical “Adam, a prehistorical, pre-self-conscious being” who is
expelled form “the garden” (i.e. the Garden of Eden) (Rothschild 1988: 54). What makes Kosinski‟s
American Adam, Chance, an interesting protagonist is the analysis of the character‟s self reflective
consciousness through his love for “the garden” and television. For Chance, “[s]witching channels is like
wandering in the garden, defying temporal sequence and isolating [himself] in a reality without ethical
structure” (Ibid). He goes on to suggest that the protagonist

“[i]n his manifestation as Chance the gardener, he embodies our vestigial

consciousness of undifferentiated existence. In his manifestation as Chauncey
Gardner he seems a completed being, the end of longing. The in-between
state, the realm of becoming, the domain of history and ethics has been
finessed. The possibility of that act of avoidance, that jump from
undifferentiation to self-completion, is the illusion of freedom in advanced
capitalistic societies” (Ibid: 62).

This is exemplified in the character of Rand‟s delight in taking Chance‟s metaphor a „gardener‟ to be a
perfect description of a „real businessman‟ (Ibid: 59). As the following analysis reiterates:

“Onto Chance‟s undivided language Rand projects his desire to view his
activities as primarily undivided. For him, momentarily, advanced capitalism
is indistinguishable from subsistence agriculture: no division of labour, no

4
 “Kuhn discuss[ed]… the special character of the scientific
community, …converting cognitive virtues into moral ones, qualities
of understanding to qualities of trust. Thus in the place of scientists
holding beliefs on the basis of defeasible evidence, Kuhn finds
scientists committed to a vision of reality on the basis of intuitive
judgement (Fuller 1992: 260).

The goals of understanding and partial truths therefore began to seem more realistic
than explanation and prediction.

The socio-political turmoil of the sixties was also a catalyst for this apparent
paradigmatic shift. In this atmosphere of academic reflexivity the connections between
the academy and the larger society began to be consciously explored. Penetrating
questions about the ethics of America‟s societal values7 and the legitimacy of political
authority8 inevitably spread to a scrutiny of previously unexamined assumptions in New
Criticism9 in the humanities and, simultaneously, within Anthropology in the social

division of interests, no division of ethical claims. Kosinski‟s joke on Rand

undercuts Rand‟s brief for capitalism and the desire to escape history and
ethics that has lain at the heart of the capitalist apologetic from its
beginnings” (Ibid: 59).

What interests me here is that for the ethnographer it is the world of relationships (or
intersubjectivity), not a world of being that must be the grounds for the production of knowledge. In such a
world to eliminate relativity is tantamount to destroying it altogether (Ibid: 53). In his interpretive
anthropology it is Geertz the ethnographer who “commits himself to a condition of becoming, with all its
attendant risks” (Ibid) with regard to the validity of knowledge. This is because it is only a social science
which is committed to reflexively analysing power, history and ethics which can survive in a 'post modern'
(and post-colonial) world.
7
Sewell (1997) compares Cliffod Geertz with Ruth Benedict for their social and moral philosophical
involvement in current social problems (within the U.S.A) (Sewell 1997: 35).
8
This era is characterised by the ending of the MCcarthy era and the start of the into the Kennedy era.
9
Geertz, as we can see in Interpretation of Cultures (1973), was influenced by Kenneth Burke who‟s
insight that “wherever you find a doctrine of „nonpolitical‟ [a]esthetics affirmed with fervor, look for its
politics” ([Burke 1969: 28] cited in Clifford 1987: 6) suggests the ethos of behind this apparent ground
swell which swept through Academia, at least within the Humanities in America. Clifford (1987) argues
that Burke was also reacting to
“[t]he public loss of faith in America‟s institutional values [which] had a
ripple effect that eventually found its way into the university, casting doubt
on the neutrality and ethical status of our critical and rhetorical dogma [in
English Studies]. In retrospect, the flood of theoretical articles and books in
both fields during this time is cogently explained by Elizabeth Bruss‟
observation that theories proliferate only when established rationales are in
doubt, when traditional guidelines have broken down. Bruss goes on to list
the social causes for this disenchantment: a sense of personal isolation,
frustration with aloof social structures, mysterious politics and a valueless
technological pursuit of mastery. She notes that intellectuals were suspicious
of “fixed hierarchies, received traditions and covert understandings of all

5
sciences. Geertz, because he had started out in the humanities (English and Philosophy),
was perfectly situated, as a scholar, to take full of advantage of the turmoil around him.
The „literary turn‟ in anthropology caused “in Foucault‟s sense, a rupture - not simply a
sudden leap in thinking but a radically new way of looking at knowledge” (Clifford 1987:
6).

In Local Knowledge (1983) Geertz “clearly explains that he is not interested in

cultural understanding alone - ethnographic understanding of a Balinese custom, say”
(Kleine 1990: 4). Geertz instead, as we can see in The Interpretation of Culture (1973),
“began to explore, hermeneutically, a new country: the nature of understanding itself”
(Ibid). In his quest to understand understanding, Geertz joins other social constructionists
in asserting that knowledge is socially constructed by means of human discourse, and that
10
knowledge is inter-subjective and dynamic rather than objective and static” (Ibid). He
has helped map the changes that 'postmodern' life and thought have entailed. As an
articulate scholar whose work transcends the boundaries of his own discipline, he is also
a self-conscious stylist who has been insistent on his call to confront that “divorce
between sense and sensibility” (Geertz 2000: 41).

“Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight.”

„Focusing on the text.‟

The polemical title of The Interpretation Cultures (Geertz 1973), contrary to many of his
statements subsequently, suggests a rejection of general theorising about culture, and a
rejection too of broad comparative claims. This is because the overall theme of the book,

sorts” (Bruss 1982: 18). It is not hard to see explicit parallels between these
social grievances and the discourse of English studies in 1965” (Clifford
1987: 6).
10
“Developing such a discourse is, as Bakhtin notes, not a project for a single voice, crying in the
wilderness: “Language is not a neutral medium that passes freely and easily into the private property of the
speaker‟s intentions; it is populated – overpopulated - with the intentions of others. Expropriating it, forcing
it to submit to one‟s own intentions and accents, is a difficult and complicated process” (Bakhtin 1981:
294)” (Clifford 1987: 6).

6
as mentioned earlier, is of a transition from functionalism to semiotics. Geertz's
Interpretive Anthropology finds a bridging aphorism in stating that symbols in cultural
behaviour are “models of” culture rather than “models for” culture ([Geertz, 1973: 89-
123] cited in Gusfeld and Michalowicz 1984: 427). In other words, from a cultural
standpoint, symbolic activities represent performances and representations expressing
perceptions of social life (Ibid). They however do not necessarily affect behaviour (Ibid).
Symbols therefore provide the “basic categories for recognising, expressing and
understanding society” (Ibid).

Functionalism in this view lacks depth in particularity about why cultures differ.
As Levi-Strauss has remarked in his famous critique of the functionalist theories of
totemism: “natural species are chosen not because they are good to eat, but because they
are good to think [with]” ([Levi-Strauss, 1963: 89] cited in Gusfeld and Michalowicz
1984: 427). Geertz argues that functionalism is a reductive formula that cannot professes
to account the substance of phenomena (Geertz 1973: 453). Throughout “Deep Play” he
compares functionalist explanations to symbolic interpretations. To this end he sets up
the ethnographic site as a perfect model for a standard functionalist monograph: “A small
[Balinese town], about five hundred people, and relatively remote, it was its own world”
(Geertz 1973: 412).

Then - while describing the difficulties he and his wife (Hildred Geertz)
experienced prior to 'breaking the ice' with their ethnographic subjects, he hints that he
rejects psychological understandings too (Geertz 1973: 413) He does so when states that
he has never, in psychological terms, been quite able to fathom the crossing of “some
moral or metaphysical shadow line” into inter-subjectivity (i.e. friendship/rapport)
(Geertz 1973: 413). Earlier, in the opening essay of the collection: “Thick Description:
Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture,” he argued that the theory of culture proposed
as in “ethnoscience, componential analysis or cognitive anthropology, [which] holds that
culture is composed of psychological structures by means of which individuals or groups
of individuals guide their behaviour, [is] the main source of theoretical muddlement in
contemporary anthropology [circa 1973]” (Ibid: 11). He argues that the cognitivist aim to

7
analyse these psychological structures by the “formal methods similar to those of
mathematics and logic”…is as destructive…use of a concept as are the behaviourist and
idealist fallacies to which it is a misdrawn correction” (Ibid).

Criticisms of functional, cognitivist and structural theoretical issues implicitly lurk

in the under tow of Geertz's thick prose and link the meta-narrative of the essay to the
aforementioned theme of the collection of essays. Geertz's critique of Structuralism will
be introduced later after a describing of the police raid, the events preceding it and the
Geertz's reaction to it. This serves in “Deep Play” to highlight the some of problems
inherent in conducting fieldwork in a post-colonial situation. I‟ll get back to those issues
directly after describing the police raid.

At their first cockfight, while in the crowd, Geertz describes how he and his wife
were “fused into a single body around the ring, a superorganism in the literal sense”
(Ibid: 414). Then upon the arrival of the police they instinctively acted as a member of
that „superorganism‟ by joining in “[a]s its components scattered in all directions” (Ibid).
Later they again sided with the villagers against a police interrogator when they
pretended, along with the inhabitants of a household who were also escaping from the
police, not to have been at the cockfight (Ibid). Only after this enactment (or
performance) of their “solidarity” (Ibid: 416) with the villagers against a „common
enemy‟ was the village was a “completely different world” for them (Ibid). In performing
meaningful acts they were instantly transformed from “non-entit[ies],” into accepted
members of village life. (Ibid: 414). It is “rapport” achieved in this public fashion which
is posited by Geertz as allowing him a “kind of immediate, inside-view grasp of an aspect
of peasant mentality” (Ibid: 416).

Among the issues which are implicit in the events described above are firstly, the
performativity of the act of solidarity. Geertz later on calls cockfights “an example of
...Burke‟s definition of a symbolic act, as “the dancing of an attitude,”” (Ibid: 451).
Describing their acceptance as being achieved through this same kind of performitivity, I
feel, is part of Geertz‟s cunning. Using this example in such a way foregrounds his later

8
emphasis of how social acceptance is gained through performitivity. Prior to this
fortuitous event the lack of social acceptance of the ethnographers would have posed
major problems for research premised upon participant observation.

Secondly, it follows that this passage of events also serves to highlight the
difficulties of conducting objective research in the post-colonial milieu. The problem of
access to ethnographic subjects is addressed within the essay. Geertz shows that the
Balinese villagers, as ethnographic subjects, were exercising their agency. They had
detailed and accurate knowledge of his identity and his project and showed this
effectively by conspiring to conceal that knowledge from him. This changed only after
the police raid.

The agency of ethnographic subjects is directly linked some of the reasons why
functionalism has come under criticism. The hegemonic fashion in which a positivist
theory of the construction of knowledge deprives the subjects of ethnographic research
representation is addressed by Geertz in “Deep Play”. A few of those issues will be
introduced at this point by linking them to arguments introduced by Dell Hymes' (1974)
collection of essays entitled Reinventing Anthropology.

Hymes (1974), in Reinventing Anthropology, explains that “scientific colonialism is

a process whereby the center of gravity for acquisition of knowledge about a people is
located elsewhere” ([Hymes, 1974: 49] cited in Kleine 1990: 5)). In other words,
anthropologists who study alien cultures in an effort to know about them must inevitably
construct that knowledge within the discourses of their own cultures (Ibid). Thus what
traditional anthropologists know about the knowledge of the natives is known not through
the discourse studied but through a meta-discourse with the natives and ultimately
through a written discourse with other colonial scientists (Ibid). In terms of the
colonization metaphor traditional anthropologists, despite good-intentions and correctives
like triangulation, end up exporting and distributing their own versions of the native
knowledge that they study, and in doing so they distort it (Ibid). Hymes (1974) suggests
that because traditional anthropology is a colonial institution, “each anthropologist must

9
reinvent it, as a general field for him or herself‟ ([Hymes, 1974: 48] cited in Kleine 1990:
5).

In “Up the Anthropologist- Perspectives Gained from Studying Up,” also in

Hymes (1974), Laura Nader suggests that the kind of scientific colonialism that concerns
Hymes is the result of a power imbalance between anthropologists and natives (Kleine
1990: 6). In “Deep Play” Geertz says that after the police raid the villagers asked why
they had not “simply pulled out their distinguished visitor status passes” (Geertz 1973:
416). This clearly shows that the villagers have a sense of the power structures involved
with the ethnography being undertaken. As a corrective Nader (1974) suggested that
anthropologists begin to study “up” (Kleine 1990: 6). She points out that when
anthropologists begin to study “up,” they quickly discover that they are relatively
powerless and that participant observation becomes difficult, if not impossible (Ibid).

Before moving onto the “thick description” of the Balinese cockfight, I will outline
Geertz‟s criticisms of structuralism as this 'sets the scene' for his interpretive model
because, as Geertz would argue, knowing the limits of knowledge is still a form of
knowledge.

In “Deep Play” Geertz says that “Levi-Strauss‟ Structuralism is not the same thing”
as symbolic or interpretive anthropology (Ibid: 449). Instead of using myths, totem rites,
marriage rules, etc. “as texts to interpret, Levi-Strauss takes them as ciphers to solve,
which is very much not the same thing” (Ibid). Geertz argues that Levi-Strauss seeks not
to
“understand symbolic forms in terms of how they function in concrete
situations to organise perceptions (meanings, emotions, concepts and
attitudes); [instead] he seeks to understand them entirely in terms of
their internal structure” (Ibid)

Geertz argued that “culture is not a power, something to which social events,
behaviors, institutions, or processes can be causally attributed; it is a context, something
they can be intelligibly – that is thickly described” (Ibid: 14). The analysis of culture, he

10
argues, is not an “experimental science in search of law but an interpretive on in search of
meaning” (Ibid).

Levi-Strauss‟ Structuralism raises new issues precisely because it is not predicated

on the ethnographic research. In “Anthropology in Question” Stanley Diamond argues
that both anthropologist and native are victims of “contemporary, imperial civilization”
([Hymes 1974: 401] cited in Klein 1990: 7)). Diamond associates the scientific relativism
of Claude Levi-Strauss with a dehumanizing social discourse (Ibid). Levi-Strauss reduces
his subjects to objects by claiming objective structural knowledge of alien cultures (Ibid).
Diamond argues that when this happens the anthropologist is also reduced to an object
(Ibid). As a result, he or she too becomes an alienated victim (Ibid). In other words,
Diamond believes that “objective” structural anthropology is a dehumanizing construct of
our own civilization that must be radically critiqued:

“Unless the anthropologist confronts his own alienation, which is only

a special instance of a general condition, and seeks to understand its
roots, and subsequently matures as a relentless critic of his own
civilization, the very civilization which objectifies man, he cannot
understand or even recognize himself in the other or the other in
himself.” ([Hymes 1975: 40] cited in Klein 1990: 7).

Having commented on the meta-discourse, which addresses Geertz's criticisms of

functionalism, cognitivism and structuralism, it should be evident that Geertz‟s 'thick
descriptions' and doubly 'thick'. He is able to critique other theories and increase our
understanding of another culture in one, excuse the pun but it is irresistible and intended,
„fowl‟ swoop!

Now “in” (i.e. having achieved a degree of intersubjectivity) Geertz could set about
writing about the semiotics of the Balinese cockfight. His method, “thick description”,
had been theoretically premised in the opening chapter of The Interpretation of Cultures
(1973). What is important about Geertz‟s “thick description” is that it positions the
ethnographer, through the cockfight, to look at Balinese life “as the Balinese themselves
do – also through the medium of its cockfight” (Geertz 1973: 452). Geertz saw the other

11
models or theories of cultural analysis as “intrinsically incomplete” (Ibid: 29). He argued
that:

turning culture into folklore and collecting it, turning it into traits and
counting it, turning it into institutions and classifying it, turning it into
structures and toying with it…are escapes. The fact is that to commit
oneself to a semiotic concept of culture and an interpretive approach
to the study of it is to commit oneself to a view of ethnographic
assertion as… „essentially contestable.‟ Anthropology, or at least
interpretive anthropology, is a science whose progress is marked less
by a perfection of the consensus than by a refinement of debate. What
gets better is the precision with which we vex each other.” (Ibid)

This statement is premised an earlier and now famous statement on his

understanding of culture:

“Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in

webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those
webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science
in search of law but an interpretative one in search of meaning. It is
explication I am after, construing social expression on their surface
enigmatical.” (Ibid: 5)

This clearly shows that he believes the aim of anthropological inquiry, and its
representation in ethnography, is the understanding of the local forms and frames of
understanding, the symbolic codes and meaningful conventions that make life possible.

“Thick Description” is a term borrowed by Geertz from Gilbert Ryle to describe

and define the aim of interpretive anthropology (Ibid: 6). Starting from the assumption
that culture is based on the symbols that guide community behaviour and that those very
symbols obtain meaning from the role which they play in the patterned behaviour of
social life, “thick description” is developed by looking at both the whole culture and the
parts of the culture (such as laws). They cannot be studied separately because of the
intertwined nature of culture and behaviour. By analyzing culture, one develops a “thick
description” of a culture which details „what the natives think they are up to.‟ This “thick
description” is therefore an interpretation of what the natives are thinking, made by an
outsider who cannot think like a native (Murphy 2005).

12
 Thick description is possible because, as Geertz argued, “Culture is public because
meaning is” (Ibid: 12). Meanings are therefore the collective property of a particular
people. We cannot discover what is of significance for a culture or understand its systems
of meaning when, as Wittgenstein noted, “[w]e cannot find our feet with them.” (Ibid:
13). The ethnographer must therefore attempt to grasp and interpret those meanings by
striving to understand how and why behaviour is shaped in particular contexts, and not
others. This can best be achieved through participant observation (i.e. being there).

What Geertz's penetrating analysis of the Balinese villagers‟ social milieu shows
them to be is contrary to what they appear to based upon surface appearances. On the
surface the Balinese villagers appear as “the world‟s most poised people” and who in
mutual social friendships tend to be “warm, gay, sensitive, sympathetic, though being
Balinese, always precisely controlled” (Ibid: 413). What the Balinese imaginatively
experience is however what Goffman (1961) has termed “a status bloodbath” (Ibid: 436).
It is because of “the Balinese talent for practical fantasy... [that] the blood ...spilled is
only figuratively human” (Ibid). Geertz calls this status hierarchy “[a] peculiar fusion of
Polynesian title ranks and Hindu castes” in which “the hierarchy of pride is the moral
backbone of the society” (Ibid: 447).

“Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight”, is then a “thick description” which
sets out to primarily describe how the Balinese villages make sense (or imaginatively
feel) their frameworks of status hierarchy. Geertz, in this regard, says that “[t]o connect –
and connect, and connect – the collision of roosters with the divisiveness of status is to
invite a transfer of perceptions from the latter, a transfer which is at once a description
and a judgement” (Ibid: 448). This is possible because the cockfight is a significant
symbol in which the rules that govern behaviour are discernable to the outsider through
observing the behaviour of the participants. This observed behaviour is not arbitrary; it is
thickly coded by rules experienced as sentiments by the Balinese villagers. Reading these
codes like texts, the anthropologist is able to gain access into the meaning frameworks of
the Balinese villagers. Geertz can therefore describe the cultural institutions and

13
sentiments that would otherwise be hidden through interpreting the experiences and
behaviours of the Balinese villagers and linking them to the contingent contexts in which
these actions are meaningful.

The Balinese, Geertz also shows, live their life in a different temporal „atmosphere‟
than (it is presumed) most westerners do:

“Life [for them] …is less a flow, a directional movement out of the
past, through the present, toward the future than an on-off pulsation of
meaning and vacuity, an arrhythmic alteration of short periods when
“something (that is, something significant) is happening, and equally
short ones where “nothing” …is [happening]” (Ibid: 445).

The cockfight, for Geertz, is not “an imitation of the punctuateness of Balinese
social life, nor a depiction of it, nor even an expression of it; it is an example of it,
carefully prepared” (Ibid: 446). He therefore describes the cockfight as a kind of
“sentimental education” which shows what “the cultures ethos and his private
sensibility...[would] look like when spelled out externally in a collective text” (Ibid: 449).

Benthams concept of “deep play,” which describes “play in which the stakes are so
high that it is, from a utilitarian standpoint, irrational for men to engage in it at all” (Ibid:
432), is the key in the essay which opens lock to reading the cockfight as a significant
text to be thickly described. Viewed in utilitarian or functionalist terms the actual
behaviour of the participants would simply seem irrational. However when thickly
described in context, the behaviour of the bettors reveals they are not irrational. As
Geertz says:
“the cockfight is … deliberately made to be a ...simulation of the
social matrix, the involved system of cross-cutting, overlapping,
highly corporate groups – villages, kin groups, irrigation societies,
temple congregations, “castes” – in which its devotees live. And as
prestige, the necessity to affirm it, defend it, celebrate it, justify it, and
just plain bask in it (but not given the strong ascriptive character of
Balinese stratification, to seek it), it is perhaps the central driving
force in the society, so also – ambulant penises, blood sacrifices, and
monetary exchanges aside – is it of the cockfight”. (Ibid: 436).

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 The evidence for this is displayed through “the graduated correlation of “status
gambling” with “deeper fights,” in contrast to ““money gambling” with shallower ones.
…. Bettors themselves form a sociomoral hierarchy in these terms.” (Ibid: 435).
Therefore reading the sociomoral hierarchy through the dramatisation of status concerns
becomes possible and Geertz cites many of the rules showing this. The rules cited range
from “1) A man virtually never bets against a cock owned by a member of his own kin
group…[to] …17) Finally, the Balinese peasants ...[are aware of the activation of]...
village and kin group rivalries and hostilities, but in “play” form” (Ibid: 437-440).

Geertz therefore has ingeniously shown that the „function‟ of the cockfight is
interpretive “it is a Balinese reading of Balinese experience, a story they tell themselves
about themselves” (Geertz 1973: 448). He has done this by avoiding all the pit falls of the
methods which that he earlier critiqued. He also argues that his method is applicable in
western cultures too when he states that the cockfight allows the Balinese individual, as
art does for us, to “see dimension his own subjectivity [often] with their bodies as with
their eyes” (Ibid: 451). It is “an example of ...Burke‟s definition of a symbolic act as “the
dancing of an attitude”” (Ibid).

Therefore to understand the Balinese as only “enveloped in etiquette, a thick

cloud of euphemism and ceremony, gesture and illusion,” is to partially misunderstand
them, for “[j]ealousy is as much part of Bali as poise, envy as grace, brutality as charm”
(Ibid: 447). Without “the slaughter in the ring... a depiction of how they imaginatively
are” (Ibid: 446-7) to themselves would be less complete.

“Literary Turns, Slippery Bends”11

Having completed the textual analysis of “Deep Play” I now to discuss three major
theoretical positions from which Geertz's essay, and interpretive model, have been
criticised.

11
(Handelman 1994: 341)

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 Firstly the positivists have criticised him for “abandoning the scientific values of
predictability, replicability, verifiability and law-generating capacity” ([Shankman 1984]
in Sewell 1997: 35) in favour of the more “glamorous” and “alluring” qualities of the
interpretive method (Ibid). Many believe that Geertz stands or falls on his style of
expression. For example Colson (1975) argues that “[h]is anthropology is an art, not a
science” (Colson 1975: 637) and that he is therefore not a good model for lessor talent
anthropologists. Still other apologists see an important place for „humanistic
anthropologists‟ descended from the „idealist‟ tradition in anthropology (Boas, Benedict,
Sapir). Although I agree that Geertz‟s style is a significant factor in his authority, I
believe for a scientist authority is the key – placing this authority beyond criticism doesn't
solve anything. I find the interpretive versus scientific polemic unconvincing because
“[r]ealising that interpretation and judgement are inherent in all science, [Feyerabend]
advocates more criticism – not the construction of interpretive analyses that are beyond
criticism” (O‟Mera 1989: 359). Besides all this, describing himself as an “inveterate
fox,”(Ede 1992: 5) I believe, with O‟Mera (1989), that Geertz often distorts the English
language with euphemisms, “circumlocutions and his programmatic statements to the
contrary, however, Geertz gives believable explanations of much of Balinese behaviour”
(O‟Mera 1989: 364).

Secondly the materialists have criticised him for neglecting history, power and
social conflict (e.g. Roseberry 1982; Asad 1989). Marxism however reflects historically
specific Western assumptions about material and economic needs and therefore cannot be
properly applied to non-Western societies in which utilitarianism has not become as
dominant ([Sahlins 1976; Spencer 1996: 538] cited in Murphy 2005).

Lastly, for the purposes of this discussion, the postmodernists have accused him of
not pushing his own interpretive ethnographies to critical interpretation (e.g.
[Crapanzano] in Clifford and Marcus (eds) (1986); Clifford 1988; etc.) (Sewell 1997: 35).
Handelman (1994) in his brilliant essay, “Critiques of Anthropology: Literary Turns and
Slippery Bends,” argues that disciplines in the humanities, hungry for theory and power,
have called into question “the very game of anthropology” ([Spivak commenting of Lavie

16
(1990)] cited in Handelman 1994: 365). He however insists that ethnography or „being
there‟ is what marks anthropology apart not only from the humanities but also other
social sciences (Ibid: 366). In other words anthropological research necessarily starts with
somatic experiences and should therefore resist usurpation from disciplines solely
predicated on existing texts, like history and cultural criticism. The power of history and
literary theory to unconditionally deconstruct ethnographic practices arises out of their
“ability to appropriate the past, turning objects into subjects… [- his] temporal
displacement [empowers them] to master the past” (Ibid). For anthropology to be able to
deconstruct itself from within, a move away from synchronic models (e.g. functionalism),
increased historical sensitivity and an increased focus on textuality have been necessary.
To this end I believe that Geertz‟s work has rather saved anthropology than opened the
door to so called „postmodernism‟ which will lead to the demise of anthropology. The
following quotation highlights how the post modernist tendency to extend reflexivity to
its logical extreme has its own attendant problems:

“A postmodern anthropologist is interviewing her informant. [F]inally

the informant says: „Okay, that‟s enough about you; now‟ let‟s talk
about me.‟” (Goldman-Segall 1995: 3).

This discussion has, I trust, shown how and why “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese
Cockfight,” has become a seminal work of ethnographic writing. Geertz, with his dense
and prosaic writing style, has drawn attention to subtle meta-discourses and the issues
they raised within contemporary anthropology at that time. He is the master of the caress
as opposed to the push – where, as Emmanuel Levinas describes, the caress is a non-
objectifying gesture (Crosswhite 1992: 15). Geertz‟s work is an example of how to hold
the tension between the absolute objectification of positivism and the collapse into
“postmodernism” and its paralyzing relativism. He is an anti-anti-relativist who believes
that "if we wanted home truths, we should have stayed at home." (Geertz 2000: 65).

Words: 6372 (excluding references)

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Carroll, L. [1865] 1998. Aliice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. New
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Clifford, J., 1988. The Predicament of Culture. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
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Clifford, J., and George E. M. (eds) 1986. Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of
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Clifford, John., 1987. Ideology into Discourse: A Historical Perspective. Journal of

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Web Pages:

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Students. The University of Alabama, Department of Anthropology College of Arts and
Sciences, Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropologies (prepared by Hammerstedt S., and
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29/07/2005).

Kelly, W. W., 2004. Anthropology 500b, Notes for Session One and Two: Historicising
the discipline and theorising its history. Yale, Department of Anthropology:
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29/07/2005).

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