essay with a discussion of a religious ceremony of far more importance
than the largely secular cockfight. I touch on a central feature of Bali-
nese society not emphasized by Geertz: the temple anniversary festival.
It is called anodalan(Belo, 1966 [1953a]; Eiseman, 1990; Geertz,
2004). But the problem is not just restricted to the “Deep Play” essay.
Geertz’s other work is often also not based primarily on ethnographic
thick description. It concerns historical and sociological generalizations.
Those are often based on archives and general fieldwork. Geertz also
benefits from reading of Dutch research not available in English. The cel-
ebrations which take place at a temple are “deeper” than more immedi-
ate, largely secular games like a cockfight. Geertz’s oeuvre is well worth
reading, but his notion of “thick description” needs to be seen in a
broader, comparative historical sociological context. That involves Inter-
pretive research paradigms that Geertz, as a symbolic anthropologist,
distanced himself from, including Symbolic Interactionism and Weberian
verstehende Soziologie.
Keywords:Geertz; thick description; deep play; comparative historical
sociology (CHS); odalan; BaliINTRODUCTION: PLAY, DEEP PLAY, DEEPER PLAY
The main points raised in this discussion concern the method or technique
called thick description. Thick description can be considered another way of
describing what nineteenth century contributors like Wilhelm Windelband
and Wilhelm Dilthey sometimes called “idiographic description” (Bakker,
2009 ). Most North American Symbolic Interactionists today avoid the
phrase “idiographic description” and use Geertz’s phrase thick description,
instead. What can be called thick description has been used in many settings
in Indonesia (Bakker, 1992; Kinseng, 1994). There is an enormous literature
about Indonesia in general and Java in particular (Anderson, 1972). But
one important case is certainly the island of Bali. In this paper I will discuss
strengths and weaknesses of Geertz’s famous attempt at the application of
that technique to the study of one phenomenon in Bali. Thick description is
the famous use of the phrase by Geertz himself. Ironically, he does not actu-
ally present a solid ethnographic thick description himself. There is very lit-
tle real thick description in his essay “Deep Play,” especially after the first
80 J. I. (HANS) BAKKER