Geertz's article is divided into two parts; The Raid and Of Cocks and Men, respectively. The Raid introduced us to his experience during his fieldwork in April of 1958. He described the problem that he met during the fieldwork; the indifference that his subjects express towards him. This indifference in particular was the wall that limits the scope of his observation. The methods that can be used to gather data are rendered useless due to the fact that he is either ignored or given the response of yes as the "ultimate nonword" "(Geertz 1973:413). He even compared the Balinese experience to the rest of Indonesia and Morocco, both of which field gave him an all-too-probing feel, the opposite of the subjects in Bali (Geertz 1973:413). The difference of treatment by Geertz's subjects during his fieldwork experiences provides an insight of the difference between the cultures of the mentioned locales. He may have encountered these differences due to the fact that he is an outsider anthropologist, and people from these cultures treat outsiders differently; some of probing curiosity, and some of controlled curiosity.
He also wrote his prejudices in this article as stated in the following quotes: ".everyone ignored us in a way only a Balinese can do" "(Geertz 1973:412), and "When you first meet a Balinese, he seems virtually not related to you at all.Then.he decides.that you are real, and then he becomes a warm, gay, sensitive, sympathetic, though, being Balinese, always precisely controlled, person" "(Geertz 1973:413). In this portion of his article, he expresses his ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is defined as the tendency to judge the beliefs and behaviours of other cultures from the perspective of one's culture(Robbins et al. 2014:19). Geertz did just that when he expressed how he was treated in a certain "Balinese"" way without mentioning how he got acquainted with his subjects in a relatively 'certain' way.
