views on “Interpretivism” are definitely regarded as important. He is widely
admired in the humanities as a great stylist. He is seen as a champion of
the artistic rendering of significant details and an opponent of “grand the-
ory” involving over-arching law-like generalizations. That has also made
him acceptable to many Symbolic Interactionists, even those with no inter-
est in Bali. But no one has taken his account in “Deep Play” and fully ana-
lyzed what he said in terms of the broader interpretation of Bali as a
traditional,Gemeinschaft-like society. Surprisingly, almost everyone accepts
his statements about thick description even though the essay on “Deep
Play” does not really stick to his pronouncements. No one seems to ques-
tion his implicit assumptions about social change and “developmentalism”
(Bakker, 1995; Geertz, 1965; Bateson, 1970 [1949]; Thornton, 2011).
Indeed, most of Geertz’s anthropological work is not based on thick
description at all. He did fieldwork and he became deeply immersed in var-
ious cultures, especially in Indonesia and Morocco, but his findings are
often based on a much wider ethnographic and sociological methodological
approach and theoretical comprehension of broader issues. Geertz is hardly
ever a pure inductivist. Thick description is only a small part of what
Geertz does in most of his work. For example, his important bookNegara,
which provides an interpretation of the nineteenth century background, is
based primarily on a reading of texts. Geertz could not do any kind of eth-
nography, thick or otherwise, in the nineteenth century! In itGeertz (1980,
pp.87, 198200)mentions the cockfight and lists the 1973 “Deep Play”
article, but also cites two “classical” Dutch writers (who have been largely
forgotten) on the link between the cockfighting ring (thewantilan) and the
market system (tenten): van Bloemen Waanders (1859) and Liefrinck
(1877). He does not, however, link the ethnography of deep play with the
broader historical background. For that we get some clues by looking at
what Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles and his research team have to say about
games (Raffles, 1817/1965a) and specifically about Bali (Raffles, 1817/
1965b). Today, as mentioned, in the Republic of Indonesia cockfighting is
illegal. But, apparently in colonial days they were not illegal. We know that
since taxes were levied on the cockfights, which were often held on the
afternoon on market days. They were probably heldlegallyin a cock ring
near the marketplace and at temple rituals even inprecolonialdays as well.
It was only with political independence that the cockfight in Bali became
illegal. Geertz chose to run; but, in the nineteenth century there would not
have been any Dutch or Balinese police to inhibit deep play. Prohibiting
the cockfight, like prohibiting polygamy in Utah, is part of the quest for
“modernity” in the global, finance capitalist system (Thornton, 2011).^2 An
Geertz’s “Thick Description” and a Balinese Temple Ritual 85