ABSTRACT

This chapter focuses on understanding the processes of scholarly innovation and intellectual positioning by comparing the creation and reception of two collections of essays published in the early 1970s: Robert N. Bellah's Beyond Belief and Clifford Geertz's The Interpretation of Cultures. It contributes to a growing body of studies on the dynamics of success and the mechanisms of consecration and classicization focusing on two works that had been carefully devised to become iconic cultural objects, The Interpretation of Cultures and Beyond Belief. In fact, only the former gained this enviable status, whereas the latter has been condemned to a subtle form of sociological amnesia. In 1970 Clifford Geertz was appointed as the first professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. Almost immediately he asked Bellah if he would like to join forces and create a full-fledged School of Social Sciences with the support of the IAS director, former Harvard economist Carl Kaysen.