The first is that it turns the object of ethnographic analysis from the event to the system of events, or from the experience to the system of meaning within which that experience is embedded because it is that system of differences that makes particular events, actions, experiences and moments meaningful. These broader structures may be both synchronic and diachronic, and so we may need to look at the evolution of patterns over time and at particular ethnographic moments as instances of broader patterns of possibility. The second and broader consideration is the way it more explicitly focuses ethnographic attention on the decoding of patterns of meaning and the symbolic nature of culture and paves the way for further examinations of cultural life (and ethnography itself) as an interpre- tive process.