Part 1 "Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun...," writes Clifford Geertz, Father of Interpretive and Symbolic Anthropology. Geertz was adapting from Max Weber, emphasizing that culture isn’t something external to us; it’s the meaning-making structures humans create (language, rituals, symbols, institutions) and then live within. The “webs of significance” metaphor suggests that we are both the makers of culture and constrained by it. Geertz’s “webs of significance” show that meaning is never fixed but constructed, contingent, and unstable . These webs overlap, clash, and shift with context, making truth a matter of discourse and power rather than universal essence. In this sense, culture is not a stable structure but a fluid play of interpretations. In this story, the webs become more literal. They are symbolic of competing systems of meaning. The spider spins its own “web of significance,” and neither is inherently truer than the other; i...
Writings in Anthropology & Public Health