Geertz, Clifford. Religion as a Cultural System. Selections.

I. The culture concept to which Geertz adheres denotes a historically transmitted

pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions
expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate,
and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life.
II. A paradigm consists of sacred symbols which function to synthesize a people's
ethos -- the tone, character, and quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style
-- and their world view. A paradigm is presented as
representing/accommodating an actual state of affairs. It objectivizes moral and
aesthetic preferences by depicting them as the imposed conditions of life implicit
in a world with a particular structure. It supports received beliefs about the
world's body by invoking deeply felt moral and aesthetic sentiments as
experiential evidence for their truth.
How does religion tune human actions to an envisaged cosmic order and project
images of cosmic order onto the plane of human experience?
Religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish a powerful, pervasive and
long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a
general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of
factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic.
''A system of symbols which acts to...''
A symbol is used for any object, act, event, quality, or relation which serves as a
vehicle for a meaning. Cultural patterns are social events. The symbolic
dimension of social events is itself theoretically abstractable from these events as
empirical totalities.
Culture patterns are extrinsic sources of info. They are models ''for'' and ''of''. They
have an intrinsic double aspect: they give meaning to social and psychological
reality both by shaping themselves to it and by shaping it themselves. Symbols
can also be models ''of'' and models ''for'''
Two dispositions are motivated by religious activity: motivation and moods.
Motivation is a persisting tendency, a chronic inclination to perform certain sorts
of acts and experience certain sorts of feelings. Motivations are directional. Moods
go nowhere. they vary only as to their intensity and they are induced by sacred
symbols. We interpret motives in terms of their consummations, but we interpret
moods in terms of their sources.
''By formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and...''
Religion must affirm something. Man depends on symbol systems with a
dependence so great as to be decisive for his ''creatural viability,'' and as a result,
his sensitivity to even the remotest indication that they may prove unable to
cope with one or another aspect of experience raises within him great anxiety.

First of all, men seek out lucidity and experience anxiety when empirical
phenomena don't make sense. The conviction that ''the odd'' can be accounted
for must be sustained. Second, there is the problem of suffering. The question is
HOW to suffer. Religion on one hand anchors the power of our symbolic resources
for formulating analytic ideas in an authoritarian conception of the overall
shape of reality; on the other hand it anchors the power of our resources for
expressing emotions. This helps humans resist the challenge of emotional
meaninglessness from pain. Third, religion helps men deal with evil. Our symbolic
resources provide us with a workable set of ethical criteria and normative guides
to govern our action. It responds to the disquieting sense that one's moral insight
is inadequate to one's moral experience. The problem of evil is in essence the
same sort of problem as bafflement or suffering -- NO ORDER.
The religious response to each case is the formulation, by means of symbols, of an
image of such a genuine order of the world which will account for the
ambiguities of human experience. The effort behind religion is not to deny the
undeniable, but to deny the inexplicable, through symbols.
''And clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that...''
How is it that the denial mentioned above comes to be believed? Religious belief
involves a prior acceptance of authority which transforms that experience. The
religious perspective is ''he who would know must first believe.'' This perspective
differs from the common sense perspective in that it moves beyond the realities
of everyday life to wider ones which correct and complete them, and its defining
concern is not action upon those wider realities , but of acceptance and faith in
them. The religious perspective differs from the scientific perspective in that it
questions the realities of every day life in terms of non-hypothetical truths. It
differs from the aesthetic perspective in that it deepens concern with fact and
seeks to create an aura of actuality.
It is in ritual - consecrated behavior - that the conviction that religious directives
are sound is generated. It is in ceremonial form that moods and motivations
which sacred symbols induce in men and the general conceptions of the order of
existence which they formulate -- reinforce one another. Religious acts for
participants are enactment's, materializations of religion -- not only models of
what they believe, but also models for the believing of it. The acceptance of
authority that underlies the religious perspective that the ritual embodies flows
from the enactment of the ritual itself.
''that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic''
Religion is sociologically interesting not because, as vulgar positivism would have
it, it describes the social order, but because it shapes it. The movement back and
forth between the religious perspective and the common sense perspective is
actually often ignored by social anthropologists. Religious belief in the midst of
ritual, where it engulfs the total person and as a remembered reflection of that
experience in the midst of everyday life are distinct. Religion alters the whole
landscape presented to common sense, alters it in such a way that the moods

and motivations induced by religious practice seem themselves supremely

practical, the only sensible ones to adopt given the way things ''really'' are. Hence,
religion changes man and his common sense perspective.
It is the particularity of the impact of religious systems upon social systems which
renders general assessments of the value of religion in either moral or functional
terms impossible.
III. Religious concepts spread beyond their specifically metaphysical contexts to
prove a framework of general ideas in terms of which a wide range of
experiences can be given a meaningful form. A set of religious beliefs is a gloss
(makes them graspable) and a template (shapes them) for the mundane world
of social relationships and psychological events
Tracing the social and psychological role of religion is a matter of understanding
how it is that men's notions of the ''real'' induce in them and color their sense of
the practical and the moral.
The anthropological study of religion is two -stage:
1)analysis of the system of meanings embodied in the symbols which make up
religious power 2)the relating of these systems to social structural and
psychological processes.
Only when we have a theoretical analysis of symbolic action comparable in
sophistication to what we now have for social and psychological action, will we
be able to cope effectively with those aspects of social and psychological life in
which religion (or art, science, or ideology) plays a determinant role.