Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author

Noted anthropologist Clifford Geertz analyzes the writings of anthropologists, specifically ethnographers. What makes a reader take an account seriously, he argues, is the ability of the researcher to capture on paper the experience of having been to a place, not just his ability to report facts. Geertz compares the literary styles of Claude Levi-Strauss, Edward Evans-Pritchard and Bronislaw Malinowski, among others, and calls upon present-day ethnographers to enliven and substantiate their work by paying attention not only to what they write, but how they write as well. Work and Lives won a National Book Critics Circle Award in 1988.