Interpretative Approach: From the "Balinese Cockfight" by Clifford Geertz

 

Understanding the importance of events and rapport 

establishment: An account from the "Balinese Cockfight" by 

Clifford Geertz

Meanings are located in people’s mind, Clifford Geertz said that the location is not in mind per say , it is located in public places. It is a part of an aggregate of people. It is displayed during congregations. Because congregation sets in the context when people are together like in public events. They are set in the context, in which the symbols come to the fore, which means symbols become prominent in these public events as they communications is  clear and collective in public events in the sense that public events are highly rule bound, there are specific rules and norms. More important the event is, greater rules are associated with that event. They are performances and reversable in everyday life. In public events people are physically, mentally and emotionally participated and interacted. In all these activities the guiding symbols given prominence and significance, which is observable and noticeable.

So when we are talking about public events, they are exhibition of salient values of culture. They are the peg on which identity of a culture is hung. Social being become real in front of everyone socially. In public events people rediscover every emotion and come close to their social norms and values. So then the public events become like the mirror of our culture.

Geertz says, because all these things takes place in a public ceremony, therefore these are the occasions in which as an individual we rediscover our society every time we participant in it. The process is a flow of emotions which are associated with the public events and the emotions helps to recreate the symbolic behaviour. This process of discovering, he says can be seen by the outsiders. And when the outsider sees that, they able to interpreted the important and dominant symbols, which are the marker of the community’s culture and identity. And the viewing by the outsider is participant observation or participating purposeful viewing.

So now in interpretive analysis, we have to divide any account into parts, generally an account starts with how one is able to establish rapport in the field. How one build up a relative connection with the people. One have to give in detail account including challenges and struggles in getting close to people, these are important to write because the challenges will tell us about the people, the place and the context in which the work or interpretation had taken place. So Clifford Geertz also started with the challenges he faced in establishing rapport among the Balinese people.

Analysis of the account on rapport establishment:

The first para emerges the introduction of the people, here Balinese people. When Geertz write about the Balinese, he didn’t written that they are very serious people, they don’t really want people, they don’t accept the outsider in their place, if he did so, it might be the objective analysis of the writer. What he did is an interpretive account, where he had written his data collected in the initial phases. He came to all the stated conclusion from his own experiential encounter with the people he went to do the anthropological fieldwork. It is his personal encounter is the first informational account of the introduction. He started writing about himself, not them, how he had experienced, how they were perceiving him and his wife, like he had stated that Balinese people perceived them like intruders, nonpersons, Spectres and invisible men. They perceived them as a intruders, professional ones. He was writing from their perspective. People were considering like they were not there which means that they were not delivering any attention to them, they were completely ignoring them. He is not saying that who are they but saying what they were thinking about them.

So, he was interpreting their feelings, emotions and behaviours by thinking in the way how they were thinking. As Geertz quoted – “we were intruders, professional ones, and the villagers dealt with us as Balinese seem always to deal with people not part of their life who yet press themselves upon them: as though we were not there. For them, and to a degree for ourselves, we were nonpersons, specters, invisible men”.  So Balinese people were thinking them as ‘ invisible, non-person spectres’. They see them like intruders in the sense that they does not belong to their place. But the same time they were not paying attention to them. So firstly does not liking them to be there. Although they are intruding, their intrusions does not effecting them what they wanted them to be. In a same time, being intruders and non-visible portrays that the Balinese people were not shied. Even they were trying to be an intruder, they were not bothering them. He came to this conclusion as nobody were talking them, they were completely ignoring them, they were not even asked them why they were there in their place.

Now when they started wandering  in the village, people were not behaving like they were looking at them, they were completely ignoring like they are observing a stone or tree. They did not greeted them at all as they wanted them to know that Balinese people are not interested in the outsiders. Although they knew everything about them. So it showing that they were not shy people rather they were not interested them to be intruded in their lifestyle. In the same time they were noticing them indirectly rather acted like they were not interested. This para is the elaboration of the idea of indifference. How people are considering them as indifference. He says  it is not indifference, it is studied indifference, which means they are not indifferent. They are showing they are indifferent. Geertz concluding with that they approached someone who was doing something, they would negligently move away but they were definitely showing that they want to talk although they were saying nothing, or mumbled only ‘yes’ which he said as non-word. So the studied indifference is they noticed the author but they ignored or can be said that they were noticing them ignoringly. They had many information about the author but they were just portraying  that they were ignoring, which by Geertz is studying indifference.

In the next para Geertz’s interpretation is based on his earlier experiences from Morocco. And here he engaged with comparative interpretation. Which shows moving back foot to comparative understanding and experience. He says what happened in Bali and Morocco and other places of Indonesia. So sometimes the interpretation depends on  earlier experiences. Like as he says, people on other places go on pounding, chatting, making offerings, staring into space, carrying baskets about while one drifts around feeling vaguely disembodied and people had poured out from all sides to take a very close look at him and often an all too probe feel as well. So in other places of Indonesia he says, people are very welcoming and interested on outsiders but in Bali  the non-salient way in which they went about their everyday life, there was no change in their everyday life, the everyday life continued the way it is, they were not showing any interest on the outsiders although they were well informed about them.  So these was an comparative experience that is flourished through his interpretation.    

The next para shows the transition which elaborates the Geertz’s interpretation that they were not shy, they were indifferent, as the transition happened and the new reality of the Balinese were gradually emerging. Once the ice is broken and author and people started interacting each other. As he was moving farther, the real nature of the Balinese were coming out and the change came out with a very important public event, which is cockfight among the Balinese. During this cockfight, Clifford Geertz and his wife started paying more attention to this particular event, as this event was a turning point of their relationships with the local people. Here we saw that we should remember always to participant in the key ceremonies, rituals and events which makes stronger the relationship with the, as there they engaged to remove many interaction barrier with the outsiders.

Now he says cockfight is illegal among  Balinese, only apart from few occasions. He described the event and how the event was perceived by them. He had contextualized the event. The context here is the elites started emphasising upon moral character of the status. When  Bali became the republic, the people themselves they prohibited this activity.  In their opinion the cockfight was primitive, backward and un-progressive. Interpretive account here brings the multiple voices. In the end Geertz had triangulated the multi voice.

In the next para the concept of prohibition was interpreted and interpreted his own experiences regarding that event. And he was comparing prohibitions, the things which were prohibited, he says they don’t disappear, only go under the table, won’t stop totally, like what happened for the Balinese Cockfight. Again elaborating on a cockfight, from a public event it became a secluded event which was held in secluded corner of the village in secrecy. So Geertz shows how the Balinese cockfight serves as a cultural text which embodies, at least a portion of, what the real meaning of being Balinese is. Despite being illegal, cockfighting is a widespread and highly popular phenomenon in Bali, at least at the time "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" was written (1972). Geertz reports that the Balinese people deeply detest animals and more specifically expressions of animal-like behaviour. However, they have a deep identification with their cocks (yes, with their cocks) and "in identifying with his cock, the Balinese man is identifying not only with his ideal self, or even his penis, but also, and at the same time, with what he most fears, hates, and ambivalence being what it is, is fascinated by- the powers of darkness".

Although gambling is a major and central part of the Balinese cockfight, Geertz argues that what is at stake is much more fundamental than just money, namely, prestige and status. Geertz distinguishes "deep fights", with high wages, and "shallow fights", usually with low wages of both gambling and prestige. Following Bentham, Geertz defines a "deep fight" is one in which the stakes are so high the people lose their rationality. In the case of the Balinese cockfight, a deep fight is one in which results are unpredictable, the odds are more even and the bets are more balanced. With bets fairly even in the case of a deep fights, financial gain is not the centre of the event, but rather everything which is expressed in the concept of "status". Cockfighting is a fight for statues, with bets serving only to symbolize the risk. But it is a momentary gain or lost, the statues is only gained or lost momentarily following the fight but is maintained in the long run, with cockfights assisting in making sure of that.

Participants of the "deep fights" are usually dominant members of society. However the fight, according  to Geertz, is not between individuals but is rather a simulation of the social structure of kinship and social groups. People never bet against a cock from their own reference group. Fighting always takes place between people (and cocks) from opposing social groups (family, clan, village etc.) and is therefore the most overt manifestation of social rivalry, and a way of addressing these rivalries. The Balinese cockfight is, as Geertz puts it, a way of playing with fire without getting burned. Social tensions are represented through the cockfight, but after all, it's just a cockfight.

Geertz also notes that the higher the status of the participants in the cockfight, the deeper the cockfight is, and the deeper it the more a person identifies with his cock and the more the financial aspect of gambling associated with the fight is marginal in comparison with the symbolic aspects of it. The "deep play" of the Balinese cockfight, says Geertz, is like artworks which illustrate an essential insight into our very existence.  It is a symbolic manufactured representation of something very real in our social life. It channels aggression and rivalry into an indirect symbolic sphere of engagement. The fights both represent and take part in forming the social and cultural structure of the Balinese people which are dramatized through the cockfight .

Thus, Geertz have interpreted the importance of the event in their society by stating that, despite of the fact that it has been banned and prohibited by the authority, if they were caught, they will be punished by the police, they still continued to find a reason for this event to be continued and take place even in secrecy, which shows how important it is for them. Rituals or events such as the Balinese cockfight, Geertz concludes, are a form of text which can be read. It is a society's manner of speaking to itself about itself, and is therefore of prime interest for the anthropologist.