c ovom broju Diskrepancije predstavljamo jednog od najutjecajnijih americkih drustvenih teoreticara druge polovice dvadesetog stoljeca. Jeffrey C. Alexander jos od svog cetverotomnog djela “Teorijska logika u sociologiji” razvija originalnu i utjecajnu teorijskoistraživacku tradiciju. Od uspostavljanja neofunkcionalizma kao teorijskog pravca do trenutnog rada na strogom programu u kulturnoj sociologiji, njegov je utjecaj bio sve snažniji, međutim, rijetko prelazivsi nacionalne granice Sjedinjenih Americkih Država. U knjizi “Znacenja drustvenog života” , njegovom glavnom djelu iz podrucja kulturne sociologije, sakupljeni su reprezentativni radovi koje je objavljivao posljednjih nekoliko godina u razlicitim strucnim casopisima. Cilj mu je bio demonstrirati mogucnosti strogog istraživackog programa u kulturnoj sociologiji, uzevsi u obzir lingvisticki obrat u filozofiji, novo otkrivanje hermeneutike, strukturalisticku revoluciju u humanistici, simbolicku revoluciju u antropologiji i kulturni obrat u americkoj historiografiji. Teme kojima se bavi protežu se od Holokausta, preko informacijske tehnologije i civilnog drustva, do sociologije zla. U ovom cemo prikazu ukratko navesti osnovne nalaze njegovih teorijskih i empirijskih studija predstavljenih u osam poglavlja, izostavivsi, međutim, programatsko prvo poglavlje prevedeno u sklopu temata “Strogi program u kulturnoj teoriji” . U drugom se, najduljem, poglavlju u knjizi (O socijalnoj konstrukciji moralnih univerzalija: “Holokaust” od ratnog zlocina do traume drame) Alexander bavi Holokaustom. Bez obzira sto je Holokaust jedna od najucestalijih tema u drustvenim znanostima nakon Drugog svjetskog rata, Alexander iz jedne nove, strogoprogramske kulturne perspektive, pokusava prikazati kako je teklo diskurzivno uspostavljanje “specificnog i situiranog historijskog događaja...koji je pretvoren u poopceni simbol ljudske patnje i moralnog zla” . Ta je kulturna transformacija, tvrdi Alexander, postigla takav status jer je izvorni historijski događaj, traumatican samo za određenu grupu (Židove), tijekom posljednjih pedeset godina bio redefiniran kao traumatican događaj za cjelokupno covjecanstvo. Polazeci od teorije nužno kulturno konstruirane kolektivne traume, kojom se posebno bavi u trecem poglavlju, preko pracenja razvitka progresivnog narativa koji se odvijao u americkom drustvu neposredno nakon rata, uokvirivanja masovnih ubojstava putem identifikacije sa žrtvama i prociscenja americkog drustva koje se kroz njega odvijalo, Alexander pokazuje kako je Holokaust zadobio svoju svjetsko-povijesnu univerzalnost kroz simbolicki generiranu, emocionalno nabijenu participaciju nežrtava u traumi-drami masovnog ubojstva Židova. Detaljnom je analizom masovnih medija i mnogobrojne relevantne literature uspio naslikati uvjerljiv portret trajektorija jednog “apsolutno zlog” događaja, smjestivsi u srediste analize kulturne strukture koje su bile kljucne u njegovoj konstrukciji. Trece je poglavlje, naslovljeno “Kulturna trauma i kolektivni identitet” , Valerio Bacak

The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology

Using as data the events and persons commemorated in the United States Capitol, this inquiry demonstrates how the significance of historical events changes from one generation to the next according to a changing infrastructure of societal problems and needs. Before the Civil War, two historical periods, colonization and revolution, produced the only events and heroes on whose commemoration a deeply divided Congress could agree. Once the unity of the nation was brought about by force of arms, the pattern of commemoration changed. Belated recognition was given to the events and heroes of the postrevolutionary period and to outstanding regional, as opposed to national, figures. The commemoration of office incumbency was superimposed on that of extraordinary military and political achievement, thus celebrating the stable institutional structures into which the charisma of the nation's founders finally became routinized. These and other changes in the Capitol's commemorative symbolism reflect the Civil War's solution to the antebellum problems of integration and pattern maintenance. The bearing of these findings on different theories of collective memory is discussed.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2578232.pdf

The Social Context of Commemoration: A Study in Collective Memory

Andre Breton often insisted that surrealism was not a body of doctrines, or a definable idea, but an activity. The present essay is an exploration of ethnographic activity, set, as it must always be, in specific cultural and historical circumstances. I will be concentrating on ethnography and surrealism in France between the two world wars. To discuss these activities together—at times, indeed, to permit them to merge—is to question a number of common distinctions and unities.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0010417500013554

On Ethnographic Surrealism

tN THIS PAPER I want to explore the problem of what is in| volvedincategorizingactsand beliefsasreligious, or ritual, or magicoXreligious, with the purpose not onlyofclearing the way for subsequent treatment of my own empirical data concerning the toI)agaa of Northern Ghana, but also of clarifying certain aspects of the analysis of social systems in general. For some writers such an investigation has appeared a profitless enterprise. At the beginning of Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, a book which as its subtitle suggests owes much to the work of Durkheim as well as to the English anthropologists, Jane Harrison comments on the erroneous approach of those inquirers who start with a general term religion of which they had a preconceived idea, and then try to fit into it any facts that come to hand. Instead she proposes no initial definition, bllt remarks that 'we shall collect the facts that admittedly are religious and see from what human activities they appear to have sprung' (I9I2: 29). It is yet more tempting for the inquirer into societies farther removed from our own tradition than that of ancient Greece to adopt a similar approach, and quietly to overlook the definitional problems. The dangers, however, outweigh the advantages. In refusing to define her field of discourse, Jane Harrison was far from escaping the problem she perceived; she was merely taking refuge in an implicit rather than an explicit judgment of what constitutes the 'admittedly religious'. It goes without saying that such hidden decisions may influence the investigation of particular events. It might be possible to examine the mortuary institutions of the LoDagaa without raising the wider issues were it not that the analysis of the specific data must depend, to some extent at least, upon the position which the investigator takes with regard to them. Moreover, the difficulties which arise from a failure adequately to delimit one's universe of discourse become much more complicated when comparative studies are involved. With these matters in mind, therefore, I shall try and deal with some of the general problems connected with the examination of what have variously and

Religion and Ritual: The Definitional Problem

The contemporary night-time economy has transformed British town centres into liminal spaces where transgression does not subvert normative space, but establishes public drunkenness as integral to a negotiated order. The focus of this paper is the wider dialectic surrounding contemporary 'binge drinking', and in particular the relationship between aesthetic processes aimed at encouraging alcohol-related excitement and excess, and those that seek to exert a measure of rational control over the drink 'problem'. It is the logic of the market that informs governmental policy on alcohol, and the binge drinker is central to the spectacle of the night-time economy as a form of self gratification which also embodies forms of repression.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2007.00159.x

Joseph G. Green join(

Papers

Man and the Sacred