The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man

Abstract"It is in a systematic review and analysis of the varying styles of becoming human—of the Plains Indian's bravura, the Hindu's obsessiveness, the Frenchman's rationalism, the Berber's anarchism, the American's optimism, to list a series of tags I would not like to have to defend—that we will find out what it is to be man."Clifford Geertz is professor of anthropology, the University of Chicago. His article is based upon a lecture presented in the series of "Monday Lectures" begun at the University of Chicago in the spring of 1965, which is published in full in New Views of the Nature of Man (University of Chicago Press, 1965).