Abstract
The introduction to the symposium sets out a methodological framework for the apprehension of Southeast Asian rituals, languages, and literary texts so that they are at once open to cross-cultural comparative analysis and recorded in social and symbolic contextual detail. Philosopher Paul Ricoeur's use of the term “interpretation” is central here: he urges students of cultures to combine attention to structural features of language and culture (for example, grammatical patterns) with inquiries into social contextual features (for example, speech usage in real communities). Moving back and forth between the two sorts of analysis allows researchers to bring the insights of the one pole to the investigation of the other; the full hermeneutic process constitutes interpretation. This style of inquiry, a modification of the sort of interpretive social science developed by Geertz and Becker, allows Southeast Asianists to draw on careful ethnography to make crucial “course corrections” in anthropological and linguistic theory building in general.
