Clifford Geertz often cites Max Weber as the pioneering 'interpretive' social scientist. But the approaches of Weber and Geertz to interpretation differ sharply. Both associate interpretation with meaning, but they diverge on the nature of meaning, on the relationship between meaning and cause, and on the consequent relationship between interpretation and explanation. While both use 'meaning' not only as intent but also as significance, or meaningfulness, they diverge on the origin of meaningfulness, on the form meaningfulness takes and on the threats to meaningfulness.
1999 Academic Press
In the key statement from his programmatic essay, 'Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture', Clifford Geertz invokes Max Weber's interpretive approach to culture and consequent pursuit of meaning:
The concept of culture I espouse . . . is essentially a semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it to be therefore not an experimental science in search of law but an interpretive one in search of meaning. (Geertz 1973, p. 5) The issue is not whether interpretation and meaning go hand in hand. The subject of interpretation is meaning, so that to interpret anything is to determine its meaning. The issue is what meaning is-a term that, together with interpretation, is used by social scientists and philosophers in an array of ways. 1