Seminar Series: Abstract

09:30
June 10 2009
Seminar Room A

Geertz and Sahlins on Agency: A Comparison
Don Gardner, Anthropology, ANU

If we think of much social theoretical work as concerned with articulating the appropriate relations among concepts of structure, process and agency (or some subset of these three), it is hard not to agree with the many commentators who have seen an important shift in anthropology’s preoccupations, after the 1960s, in favour of the last-mentioned of these. Geertz and Sahlins were two of the most important contributors to the discussions that constitute that shift, even though each did so in response to the works of third parties; the presentation will consider just how they did so and how their contributions articulated with one another — in fact or in principle. I will suggest that both of them allowed their thoughts on these issues to be clouded by mischievous but rather different conceptions of meaning.