Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight Lesson Plan

What are Clifford Geertz and his wife studying in Bali, Indonesia? Why are they studying this?

Clifford Geertz and his wife were both academic anthropologists, meaning that they were paid to research and publish about culture in America and a variety of more far-flung settings. The two went in the 1960s to Bali in order to study religion, kinship structures, and cultural practices specifically.

While there, however, Geertz would put to pen an important new theory about the nature of culture which he would later have a very significant impact on the field of anthropology. The essay "Deep Play" is therefore not only a study of the Balinese cockfight, but also a study of...