Thick description

In the social sciences in addition to related fields, a thick representation is a description of human social action that describes non just physical behaviors, but their context as interpreted by the actors as well, so that it can be better understood by an outsider. A thick description typically adds a record of subjective explanations and meanings submitted by the people engaged in the behaviors, devloping the collected data of greater utility for studies by other social scientists.

The term was number one introduced by 20th-century philosopher Gilbert Ryle. However, the predominant sense in which this is the used today was developed by anthropologist Clifford Geertz in his book The Interpretation of Cultures 1973 to characterise his own method of doing ethnography. Since then, the term and the methodology it represents has gained widespread currency, not only in the social sciences but also, for example, in the type of literary criticism known as New Historicism.

Gilbert Ryle

Thick description was number one introduced by the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle in 1968 in "The Thinking of Thoughts: What is 'Le Penseur' Doing?" and "Thinking and Reflecting".

To explain such(a) context requested grasping individuals' motivations for their behaviors and how these behaviors were understood by other observers of the community as well.

This method emerged at a time when the ethnographic school was pushing for an ethnographic approach that paid particular attention to everyday events. The school of ethnography thought seemingly arbitrary events couldimportant notions of apprehension that could be lost at a first glance. Similarly Bronisław Malinowski increase forth the concept of a native member of view in his 1922 work, Argonauts of the Western Pacific. Malinowski felt that an anthropologist should try to understand the perspectives of ethnographic subjects in relation to their own world.