The Interpretation of Cultures

The workings of religion as a cultural system and working a way towards analysis and reinvention
The fourth chapter in Clifford Geertz book, "Religion as a Cultural System," is an attempt to elaborate the idea and formulation of religion using an anthropological perspective.
As the chapter begins by taking a short retrospect on the work that anthropological studies have done towards religion since the end of the Second World War, I have inferred that I could only see very little nice remarks about the endeavors in shedding light on religion using anthropological frameworks. This initial part designates that since the Second World War, anthropological work has seemed to mince in its efforts to advance the theoretical ground by which they discuss the broad idea of religion. I can totally agree with the claims that these efforts have been stucked on the ideas forwarded in the past and there seems to be no tangible expression of a desire to push these further and test them in order to develop them in line with the present context. Second, and tangential to the first one, is that efforts to expound on religion using an anthropological framework has severely lagged when it comes to the tapping of emerging thinkers that might be proven useful in exhausting the topic. These efforts have been limited not just to the thinkers they invoke and adapt but also on the breadth and scope of its vision when it seeks to write about religion. The failure to take into account other disciplines like law, literature and philosophy which one must consider if he wishes to come up with a more refined and more detailed elaboration has taken its toll in the potential of widening the area of observation of anthropology regarding religious studies. These shortcomings have more or less resulted to an approach to religion that is very limited; one that seems to be preferring the safety of staticity and not aiming for the spirit of contradiction and conflict where theoretical and professional growth can spring. I sensed that with this approach, given the fact that the same scholars shall be engaged in the work and there is no openness to the developments in other academic fields, the anthropological elucidation of religion was undeniably on an unpromising start.
In an effort address these somewhat dejecting conclusions, I observed that the chapter just noted about the efforts of anthropological studies in elaborating on religion. What it emphasizes is to look at the "cultural dimension of religious analysis (89)." But as if wary of the emergence of possible clamors for clarifications with regards to the term "culture," the chapter was expedite in casting aside the blur and define where he is coming from when he uses the term. The word "culture" was being used in this manner: "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 (89)." I see this as a good way to proceed on the chapter since terms shall not be left hazy and problematic if one wishes to propound a clear set of theses. In this definition, I easily saw this qualification that the heart where culture and religion meet, where they can be used to shed light on each other, is there in the symbolic fabric where we negotiate the way we perceive and make sense of our world. This, right in the middle of this heart, is precisely where I located the opportunity to expand and exhaust the idea of religion which anthropological studies have scarcely done in the past. By looking at religion as a concrete object through the practices and cultural activities by which it is lived, transmitted and perpetuated, it can have a likewise more concrete grasp of how it operates, and more specifically, how it comes in contact with humans and how they work through or within them. I could assert that it is in this field of the symbolic where negotiations of meanings and senses are endlessly forged that religious studies can be best studied. It is in this rather slippery but consequently fertile ground of meaning and signification processes can religion be looked at as a cultural phenomenon and where anthropological studies can thrive if it intends to produce a stouter account and explanation of religion according to its own terms.
From thereon, we can proceeded in discussing the manner by which culture and religion do not merely coincide but square with each other and how anthropology can enter in the apertures to explicate more rigorously this connection. The chapter seems to be working well for me since it is in only in this logical manner of proceeding can it betoken the ideas it is trying to transmit. For instance, "sacred symbols function to synthesize people's ethos—the tone, character, and quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style and mood—and their world view—"(89). Here, I share the affirmation on how the symbols through which religion primarily and most efficiently operates (since, to begin with, given its cardinal spiritual aspect, it is through these symbols that it makes itself at least tangible, graspable to its would-be devotees), can unite one, lump together in a singular worldview all the manifested behaviors, attitudes and predilections of individuals. In other words, the cultural dimension of religion can be first, perceived and proven, and second, gauged in the behaviors of people who are supposed to be subscribing in a religious creed. How do the people treat and react to the sacred symbols abounding in their way, the figurines and sculptures, for instance? How are their actions and decisions influenced or shaped by these symbols, if ever they are so? Only if we can give answers to these questions, even only in extrapolation, can we have a fair assessment of the success by which the sacred symbols carry out the "synthesizing" function expected from them.
Next to this, when the people`s ethos has been shaped and defined, it is due time to sustain and render them reasonable. From reading, I can say that this can be achieved by "representing a way of life ideally adapted to the actual state of affairs the world view describes" (90). In an effort to consummate a tricky, perfect harmonization, "the world view is rendered emotionally convincing by being presented as an image of an actual state of affairs peculiarly well-arranged to accommodate such a way of life" (90). These complimenting operations, described as a process of "confrontation and mutual confirmation, (90)" work to reduce into being commonsensical the moral and aesthetic preferences an individual might take in the face of an "unalterable" reality. In addition to that, it buttresses the credibility of the supposed shape of reality by betokening how they invoke and inspire moral and aesthetic sentiments which can be argued to spring out of this reality. Is this not most obvious in our present times when the mainstream media work to support the present state of things in an obvious effort to perpetuate them.
What we see here is a potentially dangerous, precisely because elaborate operation of religious push on the cultural sphere: the represented world view aligns with the represented way of life and the represented way of life confirms the represented world view. It is at this point that I encountered the basic definition of religion which he would go on discussing in the rest of the chapter:
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