IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/dbk/perspe/vyip202457id202457.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Culture as a constitutive dimension of social life: theoretical proposals of Raymond Williams and Clifford Geertz. Convergences and divergences

Author

Listed:
  • Yilena Montero Reyes

Abstract

Clifford Geertz, in his seminal work “The Interpretation of Cultures” (1973), proposes that culture should be understood as a system of symbolic meanings that are interpreted rather than seeking laws through experimentation. Geertz stresses that culture is a web of meanings and that anthropology should focus on the interpretation of these symbolic meanings. His semiotic perspective holds that culture is a text that people read and create to make sense of their experiences. On the other hand, Raymond Williams criticizes the base-superstructure model, arguing that culture is an active meaning-making process that permeates all social actions. Williams argues that cultural practices are both social and material and that the economy is intrinsically linked to culture. Both authors agree that culture is fundamental to understanding social actions and history. Geertz focuses on symbolic interpretation, while Williams stresses the relationship between culture and economics, proposing a view of cultural materialism that incorporates cultural production as an essential part of social life. Culture, according to Williams, must be seen as an integral process that includes conflict and change, and not simply as isolated products of society. In abstract, the work of Geertz and Williams provides a profound understanding of culture as a web of symbolic meanings that must be interpreted in order to understand social dynamics and historical processes

Suggested Citation

Handle: RePEc:dbk:perspe:v::y::i::p:202457:id:202457
DOI: 10.56294/pa202457
as

Download full text from publisher

To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
3. Perform a
for a similarly titled item that would be available.

More about this item

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:dbk:perspe:v::y::i::p:202457:id:202457. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Javier Gonzalez-Argote (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://pa.ageditor.ar/ .

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.