Questions of Meaning

Abstract

This article argues that the common distinction between action and meaning that is often used in anthropological discussions of culture and its analysis is based on serious confusions regarding the nature of social action. The latter are exemplified in Geertz’ misinterpretation of the work of Ryle on thick description, one that divides behavior into meaningless and meaningful and assumes that the latter is different from the former in that it contains a component that is missing in the former. This assumes that behavior and meaning are two separate phenomena, but they are not. The intentionality of action is an immediate aspect of action and not something that can be interpreted in terms of a code or paradigm, i.e. a separate interpretative domain. Interpretative discourse is not the underlying meaning of action, but an action in its own right, with its own internal rules, just as is all action. Anthropology then need not, as certain anthropologists (e.g. Sperber, Le savoir des anthropologues, 1982) have argued, be condemned to remain a knowledge of cultures.