Science Quote by Clifford Geertz

Geertz’s half-finished jab lands precisely because it breaks off where academic politeness usually stitches things together. “Most anthropologists are doing straightforward ethnography, and should” feels like a sentence caught mid-correction: a recognition of the field’s bread-and-butter labor, paired with an implied but unstated “but…” that Geertz doesn’t even need to spell out. The ellipsis is the point. It invites the listener to supply the missing clause: and should keep doing it; and should stop pretending it’s theory-free; and should admit that “straightforward” is a comforting fiction.

The intent is quietly disciplinary. Geertz, who helped steer anthropology toward interpretive, text-like readings of culture, is signaling that ethnography isn’t the problem. The problem is what “straightforward” smuggles in: the fantasy of neutral observation, the idea that fieldnotes are raw data rather than crafted accounts, the belief that description can be innocent. His best work insists that description is already interpretation; calling it straightforward is a way to dodge responsibility for the meanings you attribute and the power you wield in attributing them.

Context matters: late-20th-century anthropology was caught between scientistic aspirations (clean methods, general laws) and the rising “crisis of representation” (who gets to speak for whom, and with what authority). Geertz threads that needle with a sly, clipped realism. He grants the legitimacy of patient, local ethnography, while undercutting any self-congratulation that it’s merely “reporting.” The unfinished cadence is a nudge: do the work, but don’t pretend it’s simple.