Abstract

Abstract An ethnographic conception of mind suggests an outside-in view of thinking. Though most of us consider thinking something that happens in the head, private and out of sight, social psychologists like Vygotsky and anthropologists like Geertz have stressed the public and social nature of thought. For Vygotskians, thinking is understood to be a form of “inner speech” derived from a conversational environment (Vygotsky, 1962). From this perspective, thinking is thoroughly social in nature—no matter how private it may seem. For Geertz, much of human thinking and feeling is modeled for individuals through public “templates” that are part of the everyday social landscape (Geertz, 1973b). Geertz’s most famous example of a social template is the Balinese cockfight, which he interpreted as a way in which Balinese model for themselves important aspects of (male) status rivalry in a format that is socially safe because it is considered merely a kind of play, albeit a particularly “deep” and psychologically engaging sort of play (Geertz, 1973f).

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