An intellectual autobiography of one of the largest cultural anthropologists of the 20th century, the founder of the so-called symbolic, or “interpretive” anthropology. The book is based on the author’s many years of experience living and working in two cities – Pare (Indonesia) and Sefrou (Morocco). Over the years of observation, these countries, and the world as a whole, and the anthropologist himself, and the entire international intellectual context have changed. Is it possible, in this case, to find the starting point of observation from where these multi-level changes are visible? The figure of the researcher becomes such an observational center in the book. Applying his famous method of “thick description” to his own life, Geertz shows how private and everyday practices relate to the broader social and political context, how the observer himself gives order and logic to events, identifying and interpreting these relationships after the fact. As a result, a book about personal experience of studying transformations in the “developing” countries of Asia and Africa becomes a brilliant excursion into the theory and practice of cultural anthropology, a reflection on the possibilities and purpose of the humanities.