As A Religious And Cultural System

This dissertation mainly focuses on the culture theory and religious thought of Clifford Geertz form the perspective of Religious Studies. Geertz introduces the new methodology of cultural interpretation into the field of Religious Studies. This methodology provides a novel perspective to Anthropology of Religion. The culture theory constructed by Geertz subjects to the framework of Hermeneutics. This theory includes many aspects of humanities, especially religion. First of all, this dissertation sorts out four aspects of the origin of Cultural Hermeneutics:early Anthropology and Social Theories in America; Max Weber’s theory of social action; Parsons’Structural Functionalism; and Ryle’s "Concept of Mind". Among these four aspects, early Anthropology creates the atmosphere of Cultural Anthropology, which benefits to the forming of Geertz’s culture theory. At the same time, Greetz inherits and develops the theories of Max Weber and Parsons. In addition, Ryle’s "Concept of Mind" is the philosophical foundation of Greetz’s Cultural Hermeneutics.This dissertation emphasizes on Greetz’s culture theory and religion as the cultural system. Greetz thinks that human always live in the network of meaning, which is cultural system. Religion is an important part of culture. It is helpful to understand Greetz’s cultural theory comprehensively by analyzing how cultural system forms, exist and how does it influence human behaviour. The second part of this dissertation forms an integrated and theoretical description by "interpreting the important concepts of "culture","deep description","ethnography" and "local knowledge". The third part starts with the definition of religion by Greetz, and analyzes the religion as a movement mechanism of cultural system specifically. In addition, this part illustrates the application of Greetz’s theory with his field work. At last, this part summarizes several kinds of main critiques.