So what is “deep play”? Geertz uses the concept of “deep play,” which
he finds in Bentham’s (1931, 1962, 2009, pp. 130133) TheTheory of
Legislation. Bentham argues that high-stakes gambling is a form of “deep
play.” The term has been used in other contexts (Ackerman, 2000; Dugaw,
2000). Geertz uses it to begin a narrative of his encounter with a group of
men and boys in Bali.^1 They were men who were engaged in an illegal cock-
fight. (Note that it was only men and boys who engaged in the cockfight.)
After a police raid he quickly joins a rather high status man and sits down
to have tea with him in that man’s family compound, pretending that noth-
ing whatsoever has happened. When the police come along he feigns ignor-
ance. Given that Geertz became a very well-known professor at the
prestigious Princeton Center for Advanced Studies, it is amusing to read
that as a young researcher he was on the edge of illegal activities. It is remi-
niscent of Jeff Ferrell’s quasi-illegal activities involving “dumpster diving”
(Ferrell, 2005).
The connection to Jeremy Bentham (Parekh, 1998) makes it clear that to
someextent Geertz is indebted to the Utilitarian notion of costs and bene-
fits. To some extent he even neglects to be critical of assumptions about
social change that have to do with a kind of “progressive evolutionism” or
“developmentalism” (Thornton, 2011, pp. 263270). In a strictly
Utilitarian framework one must make calculations of costs and benefits.
Modern neoclassical microeconomics is based on marginal utility calcula-
tions of that sort. However, some modern economists claim that main-
stream economics has passed beyond Utilitarianism and the neoclassical
approach altogether (Colander, 2000). Geertz’s use of Bentham’s insight
about deep play does not get at the broader situation in Indonesia either in
terms of gambling (Raffles, 1817/1965a) or religious aspects of Balinese cul-
ture. It is pretty well accepted in modern global capitalism that one should
be careful with whatever money one has. It costs a person a great deal to
bet their whole fortune and then lose it altogether. But that Utilitarian
approach should be contrasted with the approach found in many societies
that are not completely permeated by Utilitarianism. The philosophical
idea of wealth is discussed in Georg Simmel’s famous book first published
in 1900The Philosophy of Money. Simmel (1978)discusses the symbolic sig-
nificant of money in a way that goes far beyond simple economic exchange
and that lends itself to a more Symbolic Interactionist notion of symbols,
in general all semiotic signs (Merleau-Ponty, 1964; Howe, 2001; Fine,
2001). We cannot pause to discuss the implications of starting with
Simmel’s framework rather than Bentham’s more widely accepted frame-
work when discussing high-stakes gambling or religious ritual “play.” But
Geertz’s “Thick Description” and a Balinese Temple Ritual 83