Editing Thick description (section)

== Gilbert Ryle ==

Thick description was first introduced by the British philosopher [[Gilbert Ryle]] in 1968 in "The Thinking of Thoughts: What is 'Le Penseur' Doing?" and "Thinking and Reflecting".<ref>Ryle, Gilbert. [1968] 1996. "[https://web.archive.org/web/20080410232658/http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/CSACSIA/Vol11/Papers/ryle_1.html The Thinking of Thoughts: What is 'Le Penseur' Doing?]" ''Studies in Anthropology'' 11:11. {{ISSN|1363-1098}}. Archived from the [http://lucy.ukc.ac.uk/CSACSIA/Vol11/Papers/ryle_1.html original] on 10 April 2008. Retrieved 25 June 2008.</ref><ref>{{Cite journal |last=Ryle |first=Gilbert |date=1968 |title=Thinking and Reflecting |url=https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S0080443600011511/type/journal_article |journal=Royal Institute of Philosophy Lectures |language=en |volume=1 |pages=210–226 |doi=10.1017/S0080443600011511 |issn=0080-4436|url-access=subscription }}</ref><ref>{{Citation |last=Kirchin |first=Simon |title=Thick Concepts and Thick Descriptions |date=2013-04-25 |work=Thick Concepts |pages=60 |editor-last=Kirchin |editor-first=Simon |url=https://academic.oup.com/book/5816/chapter/149029835 |access-date=2024-10-13 |publisher=Oxford University Press |doi=10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199672349.003.0004 |isbn=978-0-19-967234-9 |quote=Gilbert Ryle was the first to use the phrase 'thick description' [...]  A thick description is a more specific sort of description that one needs in order to categorize an action, personality trait, or other such thing. Ryle used this phrase in two papers from the late 1960s, although the idea runs through much of his work|url-access=subscription }}</ref> 

# thin, which includes surface-level observations of behaviour; and
# thick, which adds context to such behaviour.

To explain such context required 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 [[Ethnography|ethnographic]] school was pushing for an ethnographic approach that paid particular attention to everyday events. The school of ethnography thought seemingly arbitrary events could convey important notions of understanding that could be lost at a first glance.{{sfnp|Yon|2003|p=?}} Similarly [[Bronisław Malinowski]] put forth the concept of a ''native point 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.