ABSTRACT
This chapter grinds remarks exclusively in Clifford Geertz's six volumes of collected essays, whose depth and range provide the reader both an excellent cross-section of his ideas and a solid platform for engaging his other scholarly work, which is prolific. It offers just a few examples of consumer culture theory (CCT) work enabled and informed by his writing. The chapter organizes this entry according to the following sequence: ontology, epistemology, axiology and praxis. It concludes by imagining the direction in which Geertz's thought may nudge our field in the near future. Geertz's meaning-based approach influenced early semiotic forays in CCT. Of particular interest to consumer researchers, Geertz pronounces the spurious division between meaning and materiality as ripe for revision, if not retirement, noting their inextricable inter-penetration. The interplay of these domains has been a staple of CCT research since the field's inception. The conversational ethos of interpretive research is a hallmark CCT tradition.
