Local Knowledge
by Clifford Geertz
Clifford Geertz is a much travelled American, who is probably the greatest anthropologist of the last 60 or 70 years. He is good at distinguishing between the idea of celebrity and renown. People were renowned partly by virtue of their position, as the monarch was, and partly by virtue of their accomplishments. But celebrity is a different sort of creature when it comes along in the middle of the 18th century.
