Interpretive and Ritual Theory in Anthropology

Anthropological theory centered on interpreting cultural meaning and ritual process on their own cultural terms rather than reducing them to universal structures or functions, Clifford Geertz thick description, an interpretive method reading culture as a text, cultural relativism, the principle that a practice should be understood within its own cultural context rather than judged by an outside standard, and Victor Turner concept of liminality, the ambiguous transitional state at the middle stage of a ritual. Belongs here: an interpretive or ritual-process theory from the anthropological tradition specifically. Does not belong here: a general structuralist or functionalist theory shared across sociology and anthropology, grouped under Structuralism and Poststructuralism or Structural-Functionalist Theory.