A confusion of tongues

Abstract

When we maintain that an anthropologist offers `thick descriptions' of the life of people, do we mean that it is in any way descriptive? Or, instead, that it is purely interpretative, like the creative reading of a text by a literary critic? According to Gilbert Ryle, who invented the term, a `thick description' is just a `thin description' made complex by the addition of adverbial information. According to Clifford Geertz, the anthropologist has no access to `thin descriptions', he deals with conflicting views and interpretations given by the participants of `social discourses' and has to address a permanent `confusion of tongues'. Contemporary use of this term appears to rest upon a hidden conflict between two philosophies of anthropology.