thick description

In the social sciences and related fields, a thick description is a description of human social action that describes not just physical behaviors, but their context as interpreted by the actors as well, so that it can be better understood by an outsider. A thick description typically adds a record of subjective explanations and meanings provided by the people engaged in the behaviors, making the collected data of greater value for studies by other social scientists. The term was first introduced by 20th-century philosopher Gilbert Ryle. However, the predominant sense in which it is used today was developed by anthropologist Clifford Geertz in his book The Interpretation of Cultures (1973) to characterise his own method of doing ethnography. Since then, the term and the methodology it represents has gained widespread currency, not only in the social sciences but also, for example, in the type of literary criticism known as New Historicism.

In the social sciences and related fields, a thick description is a description of human social action that describes not just physical behaviors, but their context as interpreted by the actors as well, so that it can be better understood by an outsider. A thick description typically adds a record of subjective explanations and meanings provided by the people engaged in the behaviors, making the collected data of greater value for studies by other social scientists. The term was first introduced by 20th-century philosopher Gilbert Ryle. However, the predominant sense in which it is used today was developed by anthropologist Clifford Geertz in his book The Interpretation of Cultures (1973) to characterise his own method of doing ethnography. Since then, the term and the methodology it represents has gained widespread currency, not only in the social sciences but also, for example, in the type of literary criticism known as New Historicism.

See also

Claude Lévi-Strauss Contextualism Cultural studies Indexicality Symbolic anthropology

References

Footnotes

Bibliography

Hammersley, M. (2008) 'On thick description: Interpreting Clifford Geertz', in Questioning Qualitative Inquiry: Critical Essays, London, Sage.

External links

Robinson, Paul * Ryle, Gilbert. [https://web.archive.org/web/20141221022028/http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/CSACSIA/Vol14/Papers/ryle_1.html What is le Penseur doing? — lecture by Ryle (1971), and later published in his collected papers.

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