Methodology and Theatricality in Negara by Clifford Geertz
This article addresses the methodology deployed by Geertz in Negara's historical ethnography of the theater-state in Bali during the nineteenth century. To do so, it reconstructs the complexities and difficulties of this research, based on the author's singular gaze, from an analysis of th...
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| Formato: | Artículo revista |
| Lenguaje: | Español |
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Escuela de Antropología - FHyA
2023
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| Acceso en línea: | https://revistadeantropologia.unr.edu.ar/index.php/revistadeantropologia/article/view/220 |
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| Sumario: | This article addresses the methodology deployed by Geertz in Negara's historical ethnography of the theater-state in Bali during the nineteenth century. To do so, it reconstructs the complexities and difficulties of this research, based on the author's singular gaze, from an analysis of the use of sources, the comparisons between past and present and the emergence of Geertz's own "intertextual" anthropological authority. From there, it focuses on the theatrical metaphor with which the methodological difficulties of the text are solved and the and the politics of Bali are interpreted. Such metaphor is developed through three key dimensions: space -with its divisions and relationships, such as outside/inside or core/periphery-, the symbolic -in the specular play of scenarios and status symbols- and power -(re)produced with pomp in rituals and ceremonies-. This theoretical-methodological centrality of the theatrical metaphor is as much a contribution to the dense Geertzian description as to historical-anthropological study, although it finds its limitations in that which cannot be analyzed by means of such a metaphor. |
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