Thick Description for Publicly Engaged Scholars in the 21st Century: The Last Interview With Clifford Geertz

• In Event: Roundtable Session 56
  In Roundtable Session: Pliability of Methods!!

Abstract

In the last interview before his death in 2006, anthropologist Clifford Geertz explained to our team that the essential aim of social anthropological research is to understand the ways in which people make and communicate meanings of their lived realities in diverse ways. This presentation draws on thick description (Geertz, 1973), an ethnographic approach that we employed to mine and unearth “thick” conceptual understandings that exist within our extensive videotaped corpus. We asked two questions applicable to this call: What autobiographical stories might be of interest to the general public? How have the scholars’ unique lived experiences contributed to their current critical viewpoints on democracy in the 21st century?

Authors

• Karyn A. Cooper, University of Toronto

• Naomi Rebecca Hughes, University of Toronto

• Robert E. White, Saint Francis Xavier University