Initial response: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight

I've got a lot of bad things to say about this piece. Geertz is an old-school anthropologist...the kind that should be obsolete. He wants to sit around and take notes on a culture like an olympic judge and then hold up his score. There's a hundred possible reasons the Balinese originally distanced themselves from him, but I'd put my money on the fact that he distanced himself in his approach to the culture. It's almost nerve-wracking when he briefly notes all of his other studies on the Balinese, which are probably far more interesting, before returning to the subject of cock-fighting. Cock-fighting isn't even specific to the Balinese culture.

Also, he's really not funny. I feel like, at the end, I don't know anything about the Balinese. I feel like I just read some fairly "sophisticated" piece of obsolete anthro-trash. I'll write more later.