對他而言，如果我們是緊緊遵守行為主義的教條，換言之僅觀察行為本身，我們可能沒有辦法區辨這兩個動作哪裡不同。畢竟，他們都不過是眨眼的動作罷了。但關鍵就在這裡，我們之所以能夠知道這兩個動作不一樣，就在於我們掌握了這兩個男孩-行動者-的意圖（intention;或另一個格爾茨喜歡的短語：what they are up to）。其中一個正運用了「擠眉弄眼」這一有特定意義結構支撐的行動在傳遞某些想法、意圖；而另一個僅僅是單純的模仿。
著作
"Religion as a Cultural System". In Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion. Ed. Michael Banton. pp. 1–46. ASA Monographs, 3. London: Tavistock Publications. 1966
"An inconstant profession: The anthropological life in interesting times" (2002), Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 31, pp. 1–19 Viewable at hypergeertz.jku.at （页面存档备份，存于互联网档案馆）
著作编年
1957 Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example. American Anthropologist 59(1):32-54.
1959 Form and Variation in Balinese Village Structure. American Anthropologist 61:991-1012.
1959 The Javanese Village. In Local, Ethnic, and National Loyalties in Village Indonesia. Ed. G. William Skinner. pp. 34–41. New Haven: Southeast Asian Program, Yale University.
1960 Religion of Java. Glencoe: Free Press.
1961 The Rotating Credit Association: A "Middle Rung" in Development. Economic Development and Cultural Change 10:241-263.
1962 Studies in Peasant Life: Community and Society. In Biennial Review of Anthropology 1961. Ed. Bernard J. Siegal. pp. 1–41. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
1962 The Growth of Culture and the Evolution of Mind. In Theories of the Mind. Ed. J. Scher. pp. 713–740. New York: Free Press.
1963 Agricultural Involution: The Process of Agricultural Change in Indonesia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
1963 Peddlers and Princes: Social Change and Economic Modernization in Two Indonesian Towns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1963 (editor) Old Societies and New States. New York: Free Press.
1963 The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States. In Old Societies and New States. Ed. Clifford Geertz. pp. 105–157. Glencoe: Free Press.
1964 Ideology as a Cultural System. In Ideology and Discontent. Ed. David Apter. pp. 47–76. New York: Free Press.
1965 The Social History of an Indonesian Town. Cambridge: MIT Press.
1965 Modernization in a Muslim Society: The Indonesian Case, 201-211, in Robert O. Tilman (ed), Man, State, and Society in Contemporary South East Asia. London: Pall Mall.
1966 Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali: An Essay in Cultural Analysis. Southeast Asia Program, Cultural Report Series. New Haven: Yale University.
1966 Religion as a Cultural System. In Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion. Ed. Michael Banton. pp. 1–46. ASA Monographs, 3. London: Tavistock Publications.
1966 The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man. In New Views of the Nature of Man. Ed. J. Platt. pp. 93–118. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
1967 Politics Past, Politics Preset: Some Notes on the Contribution of Anthropology to the Study of the New States. European Journal of Sociology 8(1):1-14.
1967 The Cerebral Savage: On the Work of Claude Levi-Strauss. Encounter 48(4):25-32.
1967 Tihingan: A Balinese Village. In Villages in Indonesia. Ed. R. N. Koentjaraningrat. pp. 210–243. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
1967 Under the Mosquito Net. New York Review of Books, September 14.
1968 Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 136 pp.
1968 Thinking as a Moral Act: Dimensions of Anthropological Fieldwork in the New States. Antioch Review 28(2):139-158.
1972 Religious Change and Social Order in Soeharto's Indonesia. Asia 27:62-84.
1972 The Wet and the Dry: Traditional Irrigation in Bali and Morocco. Human Ecology 1:34-39.
1972 Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight. Daedalus 101(1 Winter).
1973 The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic.
1973 Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture. In The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. Clifford Geertz. pp 3–30. New York: Basic Books.
1976 From the Native's Point of View. In Meaning in Anthropology. Eds. Keith H. Basso and Henry A. Selby. pp. 221–237. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
1977 Found in Translation: On the Social History of the Moral Imagination. Georgia Review 31(4 Winter):788-810.
1977 Curing, Sorcery, and Magic in a Javanese Town. In Culture, Disease, and Healing: Studies in Medical Anthropology. Ed. David Landy. pp. 146–153. New York: Macmillan Publishing.
1979 [with Hildred Geertz and Lawrence Rosen] Meaning and Order in Moroccan Society: Three Essays in Cultural Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. See his own contribution on "Suq: The Bazaar Economy in Sefrou" (pp. 123–225).
1980 Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
1983 Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. New York: Basic Books.
1983 Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power. In Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. Clifford Geertz. pp. 121–146. New York: Basic Books.
1983 "From the Native's Point of View": On the Nature of Anthropological Knowledge. In Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. Clifford Geertz. pp. 55–70. New York: Basic Books.
1983 Notions of Primitive Thought: Dialogue with Clifford Geertz. In States of Mind. ed & comp Jonathan Miller. pp. 192–210. New York: Pantheon.
1984 Anti-Anti-Relativism. 1983 Distinguished Lecture. American Anthropologist 82:263-278.
1984 Culture and Social Change: The Indonesian Case. Man 19:511-532.
1986 The Uses of Diversity. In Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Vol. 7. Ed. Sterling M. McMurrin. pp. 251–275. Cambridge and Salt Lake City: Cambridge University Press and University of Utah Press.
1988 Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
The four studies included in the book are:
"The World in a Text: How to Read Tristes Tropiques" (pp. 25–48).
1989 Margaret Mead, 1901-1978. Biographical Memoirs 58:329-341. National Academy of Sciences.
1990 History and Anthropology. New Literary History 21(2 Winter):321-335.
1991 The Year of Living Culturally. New Republic, October 21, 30-36.
1992 "Local Knowledge" and Its Limits: Some Obiter Dicta. Yale Journal of Criticism 5(2):129-135.
1993 "Ethnic Conflict": Three Alternative Terms. Common Knowledge 2(3 Winter):54-65.
1994 Life on the Edge. [Review of Tsing, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen]. New York Review of Books 41(7 April ):3-4.
1995 After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist. [The Jerusalem-Harvard Lectures]. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.
1995 Culture War. [Review essay on Sahlins, How "Natives" Think and Obeyesekere, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook]. New York Review of Books 42(19 November 30):4-6.
2000 Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
2010 Life Among the Anthros and Other Essays edited by Fred Inglis (Princeton University Press; 272 pages)
