Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight

Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight

"Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" is an essay included in the book The Interpretation of Cultures by anthropologist Clifford Geertz. Considered the most seminal work of Geertz, the essay addresses the meaning of cockfighting in Balinese culture.

Cockfights were generally illegal in Indonesia when Geertz was doing his fieldwork there in the 1950s. The first cockfight that he and his wife viewed was broken up by the police. The experience of hiding from the police in the courtyard of a local couple allowed Geertz to break the tension between himself and the villagers, and perform all of the interviews and observation which make up The Interpretation of Cultures.

The essay describes how cocks are taken to stand in for powerful men in the villages, and notes that even the double-entendre sense of the word "cock" exists in the Balinese language as much as in English.[1]

The last half of the essay describes the rituals of betting and concludes that the cockfight is the Balinese comment on themselves, as it embodies the network of social relationships in kin and village that govern traditional Balinese life.

The title of the essay is explained as a concept of Jeremy Bentham, who defines "deep play" as a game with stakes so high that no rational person would engage in it. The amounts of money and status involved in the very brief cockfights make Balinese cockfighting "deep play." The problem of explaining why the activity prevails is what Geertz sets out to solve in the essay.

See also

References

  • Geertz, Clifford. "Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" in The Interpretation of Cultures, Basic Books, 1973.

Footnotes

  1. ^ Geertz, Clifford. "Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" in The Interpretation of Cultures, Basic Books, 1973.

Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно сделать НИР?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Cockfight — Fighting cocks redirects here. For other uses, see Fighting cocks (disambiguation). Cock fight in London, circa 1808 …   Wikipedia

  • Beijing 2008 Olympic Games: Mount Olympus Meets the Middle Kingdom — Introduction officially  Games of the XXIX Olympiad        The Games of the XXIX Olympiad, involving some 200 Olympic committees and as many as 13,000 accredited athletes competing in 28 different sports, were auspiciously scheduled to begin at 8 …   Universalium

  • Clifford Geertz — Born August 23, 1926(1926 08 23) San Francisco Died October 30, 2006(2006 10 30) (aged 80 …   Wikipedia

  • sports — /spawrts, spohrts/, adj. 1. of or pertaining to a sport or sports, esp. of the open air or athletic kind: a sports festival. 2. (of garments, equipment, etc.) suitable for use in open air sports, or for outdoor or informal use. [1910 15; SPORT +… …   Universalium

  • Dramatis personæ — For the poetry collection, see Dramatis Personae. Dramatis Personae, Leo, the Royal Cadet Opera based on Royal Military College of Canada Dramatis personæ (Latin: persons or characters of the drama ) is a phrase used to refer collectively, in the …   Wikipedia

  • symbol — Most generally, any act or thing which represents something else. More particularly, the smallest meaning unit in the semantic fields of rituals , dream, or myth . In psychoanalysis , a symbol is an act or object representing a repressed… …   Dictionary of sociology

  • Symbol — Most generally, any act or thing which represents something else. More particularly, the smallest meaning unit in the semantic fields of rituals , dream, or myth . In psychoanalysis , a symbol is an act or object representing a repressed… …   Dictionary of sociology

  • Hahnenkampf — in Indien An den Füßen des Tieres werden Sporne befestigt …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Ethnography — Anthropology Fields Archaeology Biological anthropology Cultural anthropology Linguistic anthropology Social anthropology …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
… Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”