Clifford Geertz, the most widely cited and perhaps most influential anthropologist of the second half of the 20th century, held, like many in anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies, that developing predictive models of cultural patterns was impossible. The debate over whether it is possible to predict and explain cultural phenomena with general theory is typically contested by means of philosophical and methodological arguments, but I contribute to this longstanding debate by utilizing Donald Black’s theory of partisanship to predict and explain the major findings from one of Geertz’s most celebrated empirical studies – his dazzling portrait of cockfighting on the Indonesian island of Bali.

In a follow-up article, I assess the nature and potential value of Donald Black’s paradigm of “pure sociology.”