‘Tortoises all the way down’: Geertz, cybernetics and ‘culture’ at the end of the Cold War

Abstract

In his essay ‘The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man’, Clifford Geertz asserts that contemporary social science must ‘look for systematic relationships among diverse phenomena’. Geertz credits his approach to developments in the field of cybernetics, which pioneered the study of modern information systems to understand everything from computer systems and biological networks to human organisation. Geertz’s early formulation of culture, as a set of publicly traded symbols and their meanings, relied on cybernetic theories of ‘control mechanisms’, as discreet, ordered instructions and operational codes. In locating Geertz and the notion of culture within the historical developments and transformation of cyborg science, this paper also seeks to understand the expansive transformation of American anthropology in the Cold War period, as it shifts from the study of primitive to complex societies in the context of America’s growing global ambitions. Repositioning Geertz in this way helps contemporary readers understand Geertzian ‘culture’ beyond the limits of the cultural turn. More crucially, it better situates current anthropological interest in contingency, ontology and emergence within a broader historical and intellectual genealogy.