The distinguished
anthropologist Clifford Geertz has developed a very similar conception in his
reformulation of culture as "the symbolic dimensions of social action." Geertz
amplifies: "The concept of culture I espouse ... is essentially a semiotic one.
Belie,ing, with Max Weber, that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance
he himself has spun, I take culture to be those webs" ( 1973: 5).