Interpretation Paper: Theories of Religion, Assignment 1

Institution: McGill University, Faculty of Arts, School of Religious Studies
Course: RELG 456 Theories of Religion, 3 credits, Fall 2026
Instructor: Prof. Jim Kanaris, PhD, Birks Building
Assessment item: Assignment 1, the first of two six-page interpretation assignments, carrying 20 percent of the module mark
Length: six pages, double spaced, excluding the bibliography and the notes pages
Format: the electronic assignment template posted on myCourses, without deviation
Referencing: Chicago notes and bibliography, Turabian style, footnotes at the foot of the page
Submission: through the myCourses assignment point before the start of the class in which the paper is due
Restriction: Religious Studies Majors and Honours students, or students with the instructor’s written permission

Course and Assessment Context

McGill University’s School of Religious Studies lists RELG 456 Theories of Religion as a 3-credit Faculty of Arts course offered in Fall 2026 and reserved for Religious Studies Majors and Honours students or those holding the instructor’s permission. The interpretation paper set out here is Assignment 1, the first of two six-page interpretation papers that together carry 40 percent of the module mark, each worth 20 percent. Prof. Jim Kanaris teaches the course. Course materials sit in a compiled coursepack, and the template for written work is posted on myCourses.

The catalogue description places the course across the history of the academic study of religion from its nineteenth-century beginnings to the present, with key texts by figures such as Max Müller, Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, Mircea Eliade, Claude Lévi-Strauss and Clifford Geertz. Seminar work moves through anthropology and sociology of religion, psychology of religion, philosophy of religion and hermeneutics, historical and phenomenological approaches, critical theory, postcolonial and deconstructive work, feminism, and the state of the field today. An interpretation paper therefore sits inside a course whose subject matter is method itself.

An interpretation paper is not a summary with an opinion attached. The assignment asks a student to take one coursepack reading, identify the theory of religion at work in it, reconstruct the argument that carries that theory, and test the argument against a named objection. Marks follow the identification, the reconstruction and the test. An accurate six-page précis that never names a method reads as competence and scores in the middle of the range.

The Assignment

Choose one reading from the coursepack and write an interpretation paper of six pages. Standard questions of interpretation are released on myCourses roughly a week before the due date, and every paper must answer them explicitly rather than in passing.

Eligible Readings

Select from the theorists studied in the first half of the term, and confirm the exact edition of the coursepack extract with the instructor.

• Max Müller on the science of religion and the comparative method.
• Edward Burnett Tylor on animism and the minimum definition of religion.
• Émile Durkheim on the sacred, the profane and social effervescence.
• Max Weber on asceticism, disenchantment and the sociology of religion.
• Sigmund Freud on illusion and the psychological origin of religion.
• Carl Jung on the autonomy of the unconscious and religious symbols.
• William James on mysticism and the varieties of religious experience.
• Clifford Geertz on religion as a cultural system.
• Talal Asad on religion, power and the discursive tradition.
• Wilfred Cantwell Smith on the meaning and end of the word religion.

Interpretive Questions

Answer all four in the body of the paper, and let the answers organise it rather than arriving at the end.

1. What does the author take religion to be, and what work does that definition do in the argument?
2. What method follows from the definition, and what counts as evidence under that method?
3. What does the theory explain well, judged by the evidence available to its author?
4. What does the theory rule out or leave unintelligible, and who has pressed that objection most effectively?

Requirements

1. Identify the theory of religion in the first page. Name it, define its key terms in the paper’s own words, and state what follows from it methodologically.
2. Reconstruct the argument as an argument. Set out premises and conclusion, mark where the author moves from description to definition, and say which step carries the most weight.
3. Quote the coursepack text to support each claim about the author. Give page numbers from the extract supplied, not from a different edition.
4. Separate exposition from evaluation with a visible signal at the start of a new paragraph, so a reader can tell which sentences report the author and which argue against them.
5. Bring in at least three secondary sources, two of them peer reviewed and published since 2018. Use them to press or to qualify an objection, not to decorate the opening paragraph.
6. Address one named objection in detail rather than listing several briefly. A single objection answered well scores higher than four objections gestured at.
7. Use the template. Page numbers, headings, the bibliography page and the ordering of the response sections are fixed by it, and drift from the template costs marks for form.
8. Cite in Chicago notes and bibliography. Put source details in footnotes, keep the bibliography on a separate page, and do not count either against the six-page limit.

Suggested Structure

Section 1: Locating the Theory

Approximately one page. Name the reading, the year of first publication and the intellectual setting, then state the theory of religion in one sentence and explain the terms that sentence depends on.

Section 2: The Argument Reconstructed

Approximately one and a half pages. Lay out the argument in order, quote what carries the load, and show what the author’s definition permits and forbids.

Section 3: The Method at Work

Approximately one and a half pages. Show how the method operates on one concrete case, whether that is a ritual, a doctrine, a text or a practice, and describe the kind of evidence the method accepts.

Section 4: The Objection

Approximately one page. State one objection in its strongest form, with the secondary literature that makes it strongest, then say how much of your reconstruction survives.

Section 5: Verdict

Approximately one page. Answer the four interpretive questions in sequence and close on what the theory still gives a student of religion. Notes and bibliography follow on separate pages.

Assessment Overview

Marking Criteria

Marking follows the McGill undergraduate scale. Descriptors below show what separates one band from the next on an interpretation paper.

Submission, Late Work and Feedback

Submit through the myCourses assignment point before the class in which the paper is due. The syllabus applies a late penalty of 5 percent per calendar day, weekends included, and documentation is required for medically or personally serious cases. Papers are not normally accepted after the penalty has run its course. Submit the template intact, with the file named in the format the instructor specifies, and keep a copy of the submitted file. Comments return on the marked paper, usually within two weeks, with the criterion sheet completed. Feedback on Assignment 1 is written to be used on Assignment 2, so read it before the second due date rather than after.

Academic Integrity

Submit work written for this course and cite every borrowed claim. McGill treats unattributed paraphrase as plagiarism in the same way as unattributed quotation, and the same rule covers a translation of a coursepack extract made by someone else. Reusing material from another course requires the instructor’s prior agreement and a stated relationship to the earlier work. Read coursepack extracts closely enough to quote them accurately, since a contested phrase lifted from a secondary summary rarely matches the edition supplied. Do not post coursepack material or seminar notes to study sites.

Learning Materials and References

Barrett, Nathaniel F. 2023. “Religious Symbolism and the Experience of Life as Meaningful: Addition, Enhancement, or Both?” Religions 14 (1): 88. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14010088.

Cossu, Andrea, and Matteo Bortolini. 2024. “Introduction: The Interpretation of Cultures at Fifty.” Sociologica 18 (1): 1-5. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/19491.

Hjelm, Titus. 2026. “Religious Literacy and Its Discontents: A Critical Review.” Religion. https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2025.2602592.

Kirsch, Anja, and Andrea Rota. 2024. “Religion and Utopia: A Critical Overview of the Field.” Religion 54 (3): 396-411. https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2024.2362063.

Schilbrack, Kevin. 2022. “Realism after Postmodernism in the Academic Study of Religion.” Religious Studies Review 48 (4): 513-516. https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.16196.

von Stuckrad, Kocku. 2023. “Undisciplining the Study of Religion: Critical Posthumanities and More-than-Human Ways of Knowing.” Religion 53 (4): 616-635. https://doi.org/10.1080/0048721X.2023.2258705.

Verification note. McGill’s course catalogue confirms RELG 456 Theories of Religion as a 3-credit Faculty of Arts course offered in Fall 2026, with the description quoted above and the restriction to Religious Studies Majors and Honours students or students holding instructor permission. The School of Religious Studies publishes a syllabus for the course naming Prof. Jim Kanaris and listing participation at 10 percent, two six-page assignments at 40 percent in total, a presentation at 25 percent split into 15 percent oral and 10 percent paper, a twelve-page final paper at 30 percent, and a late penalty of 5 percent per day. That posted syllabus carries no date and refers to pandemic-era delivery over Zoom, so the Fall 2026 brief assumes the weighting and page lengths are unchanged and adjusts only the delivery details. The four interpretive questions, the page allocations within the six pages and the due date for Assignment 1 are constructed for this brief because the public syllabus prints none of them. No citation style appears in the public syllabus; the School’s other published outlines specify Chicago with Turabian, so that style is assumed and should be confirmed with the instructor in the first meeting. The Hjelm entry gives a DOI and year without a settled volume and page range, so check the final pagination before submitting.

Model Paper: Reading Geertz as a Theory of Religion

Geertz answers the question of what religion is by describing what it does, and the description doubles as a methodological programme. His well-known formula treats religion as a system of symbols that establishes powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and lending those conceptions an aura of factuality. Two features of that sentence carry the paper. Symbol and meaning place religion in the domain of interpretation rather than in the domain of instinct or social function, and the pairing of moods with motivations binds felt disposition to practical conduct, which is why a ritual can be studied as evidence about how a people holds its world together. Barrett presses the formula further in religious symbolism and the experience of life as meaningful (Barrett 2023, 2), arguing that Geertz and Bellah both treat symbolism as a source that adds transcendent meaning to an experience already felt as problematic. The claim is a claim about direction of explanation, and it turns a definition into a testable premise. A paper that names Geertz’s theory as interpretive anthropology and then explains that direction has done the identification work the rubric rewards. A paper that labels him a symbolic anthropologist and moves on has used a phrase where an argument was needed.

The strongest objection to the formula came from Asad, and the fiftieth anniversary of The Interpretation of Cultures shows how the dispute has aged. Asad argued that a definition of religion as a cultural system carries a modern, largely Christian, shape, and that treating meaning as the object of study pushes institutional discipline, authority and power out of view. Cossu and Bortolini, opening a retrospective symposium on The Interpretation of Cultures at Fifty (Cossu and Bortolini 2024, 1), note that the book has become a classic that specialists quote without rereading, which is itself a warning for a six-page paper. An honest interpretation paper says what survives the objection. The interpretivist programme survives as an argument for taking practitioners’ own categories seriously, and it does not survive as a complete account of why a symbol system holds, since endurance depends on institutions that the definition cannot see. Writing that sentence plainly, with a quotation on either side of it, is worth more than a page of hedging.

When the Field Changes Its Mind

A second layer of scholarship shows that the dispute about Geertz is a local case of a wider argument about what the field is for. von Stuckrad proposes a study of religion built around critical posthumanities and more-than-human ways of knowing, and the article on critical posthumanities and more-than-human ways of knowing sets naturalistic approaches beside biosemiotics and agential realism (von Stuckrad 2023, 616). Read against Geertz, his proposal relocates meaning from human symbols to relations that include non-human agents, which would make the moods and motivations formula look narrowly humanist. Schilbrack gives a different repair, defending a critical realist account in which the category of religion names a real social practice with real effects (Schilbrack 2022, 513). A student can use the pair to show that objections to Geertz come from opposite directions, one asking for more politics and one asking for more ontology. Naming that split turns a critical paragraph into an argument about the field. Use it in Section 4, where the objection belongs, rather than in the opening.

Identification Is Not Summary

The question students ask most often about this paper is how to identify a theory rather than describe a reading, and the test is simple. A description says what the author claimed; an identification says what kind of claim it is and what would count against it. Kirsch and Rota demonstrate the move at the level of a subfield, since their overview of religion and utopia treats the definition of an analytical concept as the first problem rather than a preliminary (Kirsch and Rota 2024, 396). Their point transfers directly: before a theorist can study anything, the theorist decides what belongs in the category. Hjelm adds the applied version of the same lesson in a critical review of religious literacy, tracing how a policy term travels far from the scholarship that produced it (Hjelm 2026). A paper that names the definitional move at the top, quotes the definition, and states its cost has answered the first requirement in a page. Three habits separate a strong identification from a weak one:

1. Quote the definition verbatim, then paraphrase it in language the author did not use.
2. State what the definition excludes, since exclusion is where the method lives.
3. Name the discipline the method belongs to and the evidence that discipline accepts.

Defining terms in your own words also forces a genuine understanding, and a marker notices within a paragraph whether the paraphrase is understood or borrowed.

Where Six Pages Go Wrong

Four failures account for most of the lost marks on this assignment, and all four are fixable before submission. The first is a biography of the theorist that eats the first page without naming the theory. The second is quotation without analysis, where a long block from the coursepack stands in for a claim the student should have made. The third is an objection taken from a secondary source and reproduced without a page reference, which makes the critique impossible to check. The fourth is a template half used, with the response sections reordered so the reader cannot find the answers. Run these checks:

1. The theory is named and defined on page one.
2. Every quotation is followed by a sentence that says what it shows.
3. The objection carries a citation to the scholar who makes it.
4. The four interpretive questions are answered in the order the template sets.

Page discipline follows from structure, and a paper that spends a page too long on setting ends with four hundred words for the argument.

Conclusion

Pick the reading you can argue with, not the one with the shortest coursepack extract, because six pages disappear quickly once a reconstruction starts. Read the extract twice, once for the argument and once for the definition, and mark the sentence that does the defining before writing anything else. Keep quotation short enough that a comment can follow it in the same paragraph. Name the objection with a scholar attached, then say what survives, since a critique that leaves nothing standing is rarely true and always harder to grade well. Check the template before the writing and again before the submission, because form carries marks here and the sections are not negotiable. Footnotes take ten minutes and save the citation criterion, so write them as you draft rather than at the end. Assignment 2 rewards the same habits on a harder text, which makes this one the cheaper place to learn them.

Theories of Religion: Clifford Geertz’s Interpretive Theory of Religion

Selected reading: Clifford Geertz, Religion as a Cultural System (1966; subsequently published in The Interpretation of Cultures, 1973).

Approach: Critical interpretation of religion through symbolic anthropology, with Talal Asad’s critique of Geertz as the principal objection.

The supplied model paper identifies Geertz as a suitable reading, and his interpretive approach offers a clear basis for addressing all four assessment questions. The paper below reconstructs his definition, examines the method that follows from it, evaluates its explanatory strengths and develops Asad’s criticism of the relationship between religious meaning, historical authority and power.

Source limitation: The actual myCourses coursepack extract and compulsory assignment template were not supplied. Consequently, exact quotations and page references to the assigned extract cannot be verified. The paper uses identifiable published scholarship and does not invent coursepack quotations or page numbers. Those details must be checked against the prescribed edition before submission.

Interpretation Paper

Introduction: Identifying Geertz’s Theory of Religion

Clifford Geertz’s Religion as a Cultural System, first published in 1966, presents religion as a system of symbols through which people interpret existence and establish convictions about the nature of reality. His approach belongs to interpretive anthropology, a method that examines how people create, communicate and maintain meaning through cultural practices. Geertz argues that religious symbols give meaning to human experience because they connect ideas about the world with the feelings and conduct of those who accept them. Religion therefore requires interpretation rather than an explanation based exclusively on psychological needs or social organisation (Geertz, 1973).

The central argument is that religious symbols shape how people understand reality and provide emotional support for the way they live. Geertz defines religion through five connected features: symbols, conceptions of existence, moods, motivations and an aura of factuality. Symbols communicate ideas that extend beyond their immediate physical form. They may include sacred objects, stories, rituals, images and religious language. Conceptions of existence refer to beliefs about the organisation and purpose of life, whereas moods and motivations describe the feelings and intentions that religious beliefs encourage. The aura of factuality explains why religious ideas appear convincing to believers rather than remaining abstract possibilities.

Geertz’s definition also establishes the methodological direction of his theory. Researchers must examine religious symbols within their cultural settings and interpret the meanings that practitioners attach to them. Religious behaviour cannot be understood fully through observation alone because the same action may carry different meanings across communities. Nathaniel Barrett (2023) develops this discussion by examining how religious symbolism contributes to people’s experience of a meaningful life. His analysis supports the importance of studying symbolic meaning while questioning whether religious symbols necessarily add a separate transcendent dimension to ordinary experience.

Reconstructing the Argument: Religion as a Symbolic System

Geertz’s argument begins with the assumption that human beings depend on symbolic systems to understand their surroundings. Culture provides inherited meanings through which people communicate their understanding of life. Religion forms part of this cultural process because it connects particular beliefs and practices with broader explanations of existence. Geertz consequently treats religious symbols as vehicles through which communities express and sustain their understanding of reality (Geertz, 1973).

The argument proceeds through a relationship between worldview and ethos. A worldview refers to a community’s understanding of how reality operates, including beliefs about human existence, morality and the supernatural. Ethos describes the characteristic feelings, values and patterns of conduct associated with that community. Religious symbols connect these dimensions. A belief about divine authority, for example, may establish expectations concerning obedience, responsibility and moral conduct. Correspondingly, repeated moral practices may strengthen the believer’s conviction that the religious worldview represents the actual structure of existence.

The relationship between worldview and ethos carries the greatest weight in Geertz’s argument. Religious symbols make a particular way of life appear appropriate because they connect moral expectations with an account of reality. They also make that account appear convincing because believers experience it through established practices and emotional commitments. The argument therefore moves from describing religious symbols to explaining their influence on human understanding and behaviour. Its central conclusion is that religion establishes lasting dispositions by presenting culturally constructed meanings as descriptions of an apparently real and ordered world.

However, Geertz does not claim that every symbolic system automatically qualifies as religion. His definition requires symbols to establish powerful and enduring moods and motivations while presenting a general conception of existence as factual. The distinction matters because a cultural symbol may communicate identity or history without necessarily performing the religious function that Geertz describes. His definition therefore provides an analytical boundary, although the boundary also raises questions about who determines which practices qualify as religious.

The Interpretive Method and Religious Evidence

Interpretive anthropology studies religion through the meanings that people communicate in their cultural practices. Geertz compares the anthropologist’s task to interpreting a text. A researcher examines observable actions, language and symbols, then reconstructs the meanings that make those actions intelligible within a particular community. The method does not treat religious practices as isolated behaviours. Instead, it investigates the relationship between the practice, the beliefs surrounding it and the wider cultural setting.

Religious rituals provide a useful example. Consider a Christian Eucharistic celebration, during which participants share bread and wine in remembrance of Jesus Christ. An external observer might describe the ceremony as a repeated communal activity involving particular objects and spoken words. Geertz’s method requires a deeper interpretation. The bread and wine communicate beliefs about Christ’s sacrifice, divine grace and the relationship between believers and God. Participants may experience the ritual as an encounter with sacred reality rather than as a symbolic performance alone. The ceremony also reinforces shared religious commitments and gives practical expression to the community’s understanding of Christian existence.

Such an interpretation requires several forms of evidence. Researchers examine ritual language, sacred texts, participants’ explanations, historical traditions and patterns of religious behaviour. Ethnographic observation also helps establish how people respond to religious symbols during worship and other communal activities. Geertz’s method gives particular importance to the relationship between observable practices and the meanings that participants associate with them. Consequently, an adequate interpretation must explain why a religious symbol matters within its specific cultural setting.

Barrett (2023) adds an important qualification to this approach. His examination of religious symbolism questions the assumption that symbolic activity necessarily supplies meaning to an otherwise problematic human experience. Religious symbols may also deepen or enhance meanings that people already experience through ordinary social and personal life. The distinction complicates Geertz’s explanatory account because it suggests that religious symbolism may operate through several processes rather than a single movement from existential uncertainty to symbolic reassurance.

Geertz’s approach nevertheless explains an important aspect of religious experience. It shows how religious commitments become connected to everyday decisions and shared understandings of reality. Religious beliefs influence conduct because practitioners experience them as meaningful accounts of the world. Interpretive analysis therefore helps explain why rituals and sacred symbols can retain significance beyond the immediate occasions on which communities perform them.

The Principal Objection: Talal Asad on Religion and Power

Critical evaluation: Talal Asad’s critique presents a serious challenge to Geertz’s interpretive theory because it questions whether religious symbols can be understood separately from the historical conditions that give them authority. In Genealogies of Religion, Asad (1993) argues that modern definitions of religion emerged within particular European historical circumstances. Those definitions reflect changes in Christian institutions, political authority and the relationship between religion and secular society. Consequently, scholars cannot assume that a definition developed within modern Western thought applies equally to every religious tradition. Geertz’s emphasis on symbolic meaning risks treating religion as a universal cultural phenomenon without giving sufficient attention to the historical processes that establish its boundaries.

Asad’s strongest objection concerns the relationship between meaning and power. Religious symbols do not acquire authority through shared interpretation alone. Religious institutions, teachers, political authorities and established traditions influence which interpretations communities accept. They also shape the practices through which believers learn religious discipline. For example, Christian interpretations of the Eucharist depend on particular theological traditions and institutional teachings. Different Christian denominations may disagree about the meaning of the bread and wine, the nature of Christ’s presence and the authority to administer the sacrament. Such differences demonstrate that religious meaning develops within relationships of authority rather than through symbolic interpretation alone.

Asad therefore challenges the assumption that researchers can understand religion primarily by interpreting the meanings that practitioners attach to symbols. His argument requires scholars to examine who establishes those meanings, which institutions maintain them and how religious authority influences individual conduct. The critique exposes a weakness in Geertz’s account because the symbolic relationship between worldview and ethos does not fully explain how particular worldviews become dominant. It also raises questions about the treatment of religious traditions whose practices have developed through colonial encounters, political conflict or institutional change.

Recent scholarship continues to examine this disagreement. Cossu and Bortolini (2024) revisit Geertz’s intellectual influence and explain how The Interpretation of Cultures remains an important reference point in interpretive social science. Their discussion demonstrates that Geertz’s work continues to generate debate about the relationship between meaning, interpretation and explanation. Susen (2024) also reassesses Geertz’s contribution and considers the continuing relevance of interpretive analysis. More directly, Vereni (2026) revisits the disagreement between Geertz and Asad, arguing that the significance of religious meaning should remain part of anthropological analysis even when scholars recognise the influence of power and institutional authority. These discussions support a qualified assessment rather than the complete rejection of Geertz’s approach.

Response to the objection: Asad identifies a genuine limitation, although his criticism does not make Geertz’s method irrelevant. Interpretive anthropology can explain how believers understand religious symbols, while historical and institutional analysis can explain how particular interpretations gain authority. The two approaches address different dimensions of religious life. A study of the Eucharist, for instance, can examine what the ritual means to participants and how denominational institutions establish its accepted interpretation. Combining these perspectives produces a fuller account than either approach provides independently. Geertz remains useful for interpreting religious experience, but his theory requires historical and political analysis when scholars investigate the formation and maintenance of religious authority.

Verdict: The Value and Limits of Interpretive Anthropology

Geertz understands religion as a cultural system of symbols that establishes lasting moods and motivations through conceptions of a general order of existence. His definition makes symbolic meaning the foundation of religious analysis. Interpretive anthropology follows from that definition because researchers must examine how religious symbols communicate beliefs and shape human conduct. Religious texts, rituals, sacred objects and participants’ explanations provide evidence for such investigations. The theory explains particularly well how religious worldviews become meaningful within everyday experience and why believers associate particular practices with a larger understanding of reality.

However, Geertz’s account leaves important questions about historical change, institutional authority and political power insufficiently addressed. Asad’s objection demonstrates that religious meanings do not develop independently of the institutions and historical circumstances that sustain them. Religious authorities may influence which beliefs receive acceptance, while political conditions may shape the public expression of religious identity. Barrett’s (2023) analysis also suggests that religious symbolism can enrich existing experiences of meaning rather than simply resolve existential uncertainty.

Geertz nevertheless makes a lasting contribution to the academic study of religion. His approach requires researchers to take religious meanings seriously instead of reducing religious behaviour to psychological or social functions. The theory also provides a method for examining how beliefs become connected to practical conduct. Its limitations emerge when symbolic interpretation stands alone as an explanation of religious life. A stronger account combines Geertz’s attention to meaning with Asad’s examination of historical authority and power. Such an approach preserves the explanatory value of interpretive anthropology while recognising that religious traditions develop within changing social and institutional conditions.

References

Chicago notes and bibliography is the required referencing system for this assignment. The following list uses Chicago-style bibliography entries rather than APA or Harvard formatting.

Asad, Talal. 1993. Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. https://doi.org/10.1353/book.16014.

Barrett, Nathaniel F. 2023. “Religious Symbolism and the Experience of Life as Meaningful: Addition, Enhancement, or Both?” Religions 14 (1): 88. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel14010088.

Cossu, Andrea, and Matteo Bortolini. 2024. “Introduction: The Interpretation of Cultures at Fifty.” Sociologica 18 (1): 1–5. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/19491.

Geertz, Clifford. 1973. “Religion as a Cultural System.” In The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays, 87–125. New York: Basic Books. Originally published in 1966.

Susen, Simon. 2024. “The Interpretation of Cultures: Geertz Is Still in Town.” Sociologica 18 (1): 25–63. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/18664.

Vereni, Pietro. 2026. “What Power Does Not Explain: Clifford Geertz and the Anthropological Problem of Religion.” Rivista di Antropologia Contemporanea, no. 1: 125–146. https://doi.org/10.48272/121526