Showing papers in "Cultural Sociology in 2016"

Comparative Historical Sociology and the State: Problems of Method:

Abstract: Historical sociology can be understood both as a specific sub-field of sociology and as providing general conceptual underpinnings of the discipline, to the extent that it provides an understanding of the specificity of the modern state and the perceived emergence of modernity within Europe. The association of modernity with Europe (and with a European history limited to the self-identified boundaries of the continent) is commonplace and pervasive within the social sciences and humanities. What such an understanding fails to take into consideration, however, are the connections between Europe and the rest of the world that constitute the broader context for the emergence of what is understood to be the modern world and its institutions, such as the state and market. In this article, I suggest that integral to this misunderstanding, and its reproduction over time, is the methodology of comparative historical sociology as represented by ideal types. In contrast, I argue for ‘connected sociologies’ as a more appropriate way to understand our shared past and its continuing impact upon the present. I examine these issues in the context of historical sociological understandings of nation-state formation.

Towards a Critical Sociology of Dominant Ideologies: An Unexpected Reunion between Pierre Bourdieu and Luc Boltanski:

Abstract: This article aims to demonstrate the enduring relevance of Pierre Bourdieu and Luc Boltanski’s ‘La production de l’ideologie dominante’ [‘The production of the dominant ideology’], which was originally published in Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales in 1976. More than three decades later, in 2008, a re-edited version of this study was printed in book format as La production de l’ideologie dominante, which was accompanied by a detailed commentary, written by Luc Boltanski and entitled Rendre la realite inacceptable. A propos de « La production de l’ideologie dominante » [Making Reality Unacceptable. Comments on ‘The production of the dominant ideology’]. In addition to containing revealing personal anecdotes and providing important sociological insights, this commentary offers an insider account of the genesis of one of the most seminal pieces Boltanski co-wrote with his intellectual father, Bourdieu. In the Anglophone literature on contemporary French sociology, however, the theoretical contributions made both in the original study and in Boltanski’s commentary have received little – if any – serious attention. This article aims to fill this gap in the literature, arguing that these two texts can be regarded not only as forceful reminders of the fact that the ‘dominant ideology thesis’ is far from obsolete but also as essential for understanding both the personal and the intellectual underpinnings of the tension-laden relationship between Bourdieu and Boltanski. Furthermore, this article offers a critical overview of the extent to which the unexpected, and partly posthumous, reunion between ‘the master’ (Bourdieu) and his ‘dissident disciple’ (Boltanski) equips us with powerful conceptual tools, which, whilst illustrating the continuing centrality of ‘ideology critique’, permit us to shed new light on key concerns in contemporary sociology and social theory. Finally, the article seeks to push the debate forward by reflecting upon several issues that are not given sufficient attention by Bourdieu and Boltanski in their otherwise original and insightful enquiry into the complexities characterizing the daily production of ideology.

Directions for Public Sociology: Novel Writing as a Creative Approach:

Abstract: This article presents a creative direction for public sociology: novel writing. Narrativity is embedded within much contemporary sociological work, and sociologists and novelists share a number of complementary approaches for understanding and interpreting the social world. This article argues that novel writing presents sociologists with a process and medium through which they can expand their work for a more public, engaging, affective, and panoramic sociology. Here, the historical development of sociological thought is considered as well as the recent progress of public sociology. Three key strengths of sociological novels are presented: promoting public sociology and interlocutor engagement; transforming knowledge exchange from mimetic to sympractic communication; and addressing issues of scope. Two recent sociological novels are discussed: Blue by Patricia Leavy and On The Cusp by David Buckingham, both published in 2015. Finally, two linked aspects for (thinking about) writing sociological fiction a...

Taking Berger and Luckmann to the Realm of Materiality: Architecture as a Social Construction

Abstract: Although objects and buildings form an integral part of the reality of everyday life, they have seldom been explicitly discussed in social theory. This article starts by exploring how various class...

The Social Construction of Power: Reflections Beyond Berger/Luckmann and Bourdieu

Abstract: This paper emphasizes the specific theoretical potential of Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality for an analysis of the construction and constitution of power. In contrast to certain criticisms, as formulated for example by Pierre Bourdieu, which reproach the authors for being oblivious of power, it is shown that Berger and Luckmann’s theoretical apparatus indeed offers the possibility to reconstruct established power structures as part of objective reality. Furthermore, the authors open up a distinct perspective from which to systematically analyze the subjective dimension of power constitution with reference to the subjective reality of the individual actor. We argue that the investigation of power inevitably needs to be based on the idea of the dialectical relationship of objective and subjective reality. Moreover, this paper shows that it is specifically the subjective dimension of power constitution based on systems of relevance that allows for an explanation of th...

The Structure of Literary Taste: Class, Gender and Reading in the UK:

Abstract: In Distinction, Bourdieu indicated that literary taste was just as homologous with social class as tastes in music, food or art, even if it received comparatively little attention. Recent scholarship across various nations aiming to test, update and refine Bourdieu’s thesis has generally confirmed a relationship between cultural capital and reading habits, but neglect of Bourdieu’s multidimensional view of class, as well as reliance on rather undifferentiated genre categories, has tended to limit the conclusions. On top of that, gender is often flagged as far more important to the structuring of literary taste than Bourdieu ever supposed. This article seeks to overcome the limitations of extant research and clarify the relationship between class and gender in structuring literary taste, and thus symbolic domination, by exploring data relating to reading preferences in the 2012 British Cohort Study using a Bourdieusian class scheme.

American Sociology’s Racial Ontology: Remembering Slavery, Deconstructing Modernity, and Charting the Future of Global Historical Sociology:

Abstract: Standard American disciplinary history holds that the ‘founding fathers’, inspired by ‘great men theorizing European modernity’, created a sister discipline in Europe’s image. This article proposes an alternative history, which locates the founding of American sociology in the writings of ‘pro-slavery imperialists’ Henry Hughes and George Fitzhugh. A methodologically nationalistic sociology of ‘race relations’, which isolates the study of race from issues of ‘general’ sociological concern, has substituted for sustained engagement with sociology’s colonialist and imperialist past. Racism has been made an anachronistic survivor in tradition, rather than a constitutive part of modernity. Rehabilitating this lost history is therefore vital for creating a new, global historical sociology, as is questioning the conceptual matrix that isolates the study of race and racism from issues of general sociological concern.

Rebuilding a Classic: The Social Construction of Reality at 50:

Abstract: This paper traces the eventful legacy of The Social Construction of Reality, by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, which has been widely acclaimed as a classic text in sociology, but also has been s...

Modernity, Region, and Technoscience: One Small Cheer for Asia as Method:

Abstract: This article is a historiographical and methodological intervention in the discussion of modernity, coloniality, and global history. It does two things. First, it highlights an important but neglected topic in the existing literature on modernity and globalization, viz. the significant role of science in traditional narratives of modernity. These traditional narratives have been challenged by new approaches in both history of science and history of modernity. The article goes further and provides a critique of these new approaches. It argues that they should take more into account the concepts of scale and region. Second, the article suggests a methodologically oriented and operational definition of region in the context of history of science and modernity. To illustrate this point, it discusses the potential and risks of adopting ‘Asia as method’ as an approach to global history of science and modernity.

Decolonizing the ‘Global’: The Coloniality of Method and the Problem of the Unit of Analysis:

Abstract: What should ‘global’ stand for in order to qualify ‘historical sociology’ when it aspires to move beyond its Eurocentric foundations? The answer to this question lies in the ability to investigate ...

The Five Pillars of Essentialism: Reification and the Social Construction of an Objective Reality

Abstract: Drawing on Berger and Luckmann’s discussion of reification, this paper examines the five aspects of essentialism that make the social construction of a seemingly objective reality possible. The five aspects are religion (as typically manifested in the idea of ‘God’), science (as typically manifested in the idea of ‘Nature’), reason (as typically manifested in the notion of ‘Logic’), universalism (as typically manifested in the notion of ‘Everybody’), and eternalism (as typically manifested in the notion of ‘Always’). They constitute the foundations of the process of making the merely intersubjective and conventional seem objective and inevitable.

Beyond Distinction: Theorising Cultural Evaluation as a Social Encounter:

Abstract: This article expands recent attempts to theorise the role of culture’s materiality in Pierre Bourdieu’s relational epistemology. Drawing on empirical research about the reception of rock and jazz in Italy, and focusing on the evaluative practices of Italian critics, the article theorises cultural evaluation as a social encounter between the dispositions of social actors (i.e. their habitus) and the aural, visual and narrative properties of cultural objects. The article argues that such encounters produce relational aesthetic experiences, which are neither a property of social actors (e.g. their class) nor of cultural artefacts, but emerge from interactions between the socio-historical specificity of the habitus and different cultural materials. This theoretical synthesis, it is argued, can account for meanings and affects which, albeit co-produced by embodied dispositions, are neither reducible to such dispositions nor to practices of distinction. Further, it can account for the formative power of aesthetic experiences, that is, the extent to which they create durable dispositions and attachments.

Perceptual Construction: Rereading The Social Construction of Reality Through the Sociology of the Senses:

Abstract: In this paper, I bring Berger and Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality into conversation with the relatively new subfield of the sociology of the senses to argue that greater attentiveness to sensory perception can enhance our understanding of the mechanisms of the social construction of reality. When read with this sensitization, one finds implicit references to the senses throughout their discussion, but nowhere is sensory perception explicitly theorized as a part of the social construction process. Drawing specifically on their analysis of primary socialization, face-to-face interaction, language and relevance structures, and the fundamental dialectic of externalization, objectivation, and internalization, I demonstrate that processes of perceptual construction – specifically sensory attention and disattention – are key mechanism of social construction underlying many of Berger and Luckmann’s arguments. A more explicit focus on sensory perception not only clarifies and strengthens many of thei...

Post-Bourdieusian Moments and Methods in Music Sociology: Toward a Critical, Practice-Based Approach

Abstract: Bourdieu’s work has been hugely influential in sociological research on music and society, especially in shaping research on the relationship between social inequalities and music. Recent sociologi ...

The Sociology of Fancy-Schmancy: The Notion of ‘Farterism’ and Cultural Evaluation Under the Regime of Radical Suspicion

Abstract: Critical sociology suggests that taste judgments are not independent of the social, as actors use them to claim social value. This article demonstrates that this critical perspective has gained currency among laypersons, transforming everyday struggles over cultural evaluation. I discuss the new discursive category ‘farterism’, which emerged in Israel in the 1990s to denounce vain pretence and became ubiquitous in everyday evaluation. I analyse online user-generated reviews on films and restaurants alongside broadsheet newspaper articles to explore how this category is used in different contexts by different actors, which aesthetic surface characteristics are most associated with it and why, and how farterism critique reshapes the relationship between lay judgments and established market (prices) and field/art-world (status) hierarchies. Farterism critique is often used to fend off symbolic violence, but cultural elites use it too, despite their interest. I discuss the implicit ethic behind farterism crit...

Is Thinking with ‘Modernity’ Eurocentric?:

Abstract: In recent times it has been argued that thinking with the concept of ‘modernity’ entails, or at least makes one prey to, Eurocentrism. Those who are troubled by this have sought to rethink the concept such that one can ‘think with’ modernity, while avoiding, or even challenging, Eurocentrism. This article surveys some such attempts, before moving on to argue that the question of whether modernity is principally a European phenomenon or not cannot be adequately framed without considering the knowledge within which the question comes to be posed; for the knowledge through which we represent and understand modernity is itself, in its origins, European (and modern), and thus the relations between this knowledge and the ‘real’ that it purports to characterize, also need to be interrogated. Doing so, the article suggests, complicates the task of understanding modernity in non-Eurocentric terms, and leads to the recognition that the concept of modernity is not simply a means by which we describe, grasp or appreh...

Seeking Self-Verification: Motives for Private and Personal Chefs’ Boundary Work

Abstract: Drawing on interviews with private and personal chefs, this study highlights the interplay between internal and external forces shaping boundary work. Private and personal chefs’ social and profess...

Moral Panic and Reading: Early Elite Anxieties About the Media Effect

Abstract: From its inception the medium of writing has been a source of moral concern. The growth of the printed media reinforced these apprehensions. Fears about the media effect on the behaviour of readers became recurring phenomena – in some cases provoking reactions characterised as a moral panic. These periodic outbursts of disquiet can be best understood as panics about the potential impact of the media on public morality. Such reactions were not simply media panics but panics about the effects of the media. The focus of anxiety was not on any particular issue but on the threat to moral authority posed by the media on the outlook and behaviour of the public. By its very existence the media appeared to represent a potential threat to the moral order. Exploring the moral dimension of this reaction is essential for the study of moral panics.

Between Certainty and Trust: Boundary-Work and the Construction of Archaeological Epistemic Authority:

Abstract: The discovery of a rock art site in 2008 by an amateur archaeologist spurred a wave of public interest in archaeology in Maragateria, Spain. As new discoveries took place, alternative archaeologica...

Global Historical Sociology: Theoretical and Methodological Issues – an Introduction

Abstract: The ongoing collective effort to turn historical sociology into a globally oriented research programme implies a profound reconsideration of its conceptual and terminological premises, as well as a constant critical gaze over the colonial geopolitics of knowledge sociological thinking draws legitimation from. Three strategies are here discussed canonization, re-signification and re-conceptualization.

An Interview with Peter L. Berger: Chamber Music at a Rock Concert

Abstract: In this interview, Peter Berger, co-author of The Social Construction of Reality, reflects on the making and reception of the book half a century after its first publication. It begins with Berger describing the plans he had with Thomas Luckmann for ultimately unwritten sections of the book and the unfulfilled project of a second book co-authored by them. He answers some questions on the intended meaning of the concept construction, on the intellectual and extra-theoretical elements that influenced the book, and on the connections between his sociology of knowledge and his later work on religion and economic development. The interview moves on to explore Berger’s current work in the development of a ‘theory of pluralism.’ Finally, Berger ponders on his long-lasting but tense relationship with the discipline of sociology.

Social Construction as Fantasy: Reconsidering Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s The Social Construction of Reality after 50 Years:

Abstract: Ever since Berger and Luckmann published their treatment of the sociology of knowledge in 1966, older versions of the subfield have languished, been forgotten, or misrepresented, as if The Social Construction of Reality (SCR) eliminated the need to study its predecessors in Wissenssoziologie. By considering Berger’s subsequent statements about the book, along with remarks recently made by Luckmann, and then returning to the text itself, this article shows that some of the main suppositions on which SCR rests are foreign to the sociology of knowledge in its original forms, and that a number of these premises do not seem as plausible in today’s social world as they may have in the early 1960s when their authors formulated them. The unintended scholarly results of SCR’s surprising publishing success are evaluated.

The Social Construction of Reality, A Four-Headed, Two-Fingered Book: An Interview with Thomas Luckmann:

Abstract: First published in 1966, The Social Construction of Reality, by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, marked the beginning of a significant transformation in social theory and the sociology of knowledge. In this interview Luckmann relates the working dynamic of writing the book four-handed and details his further collaborations with Berger. He then describes their expectations on the possible impact of the book and his view on how it was actually received. The interview concludes with Luckmann noting some misunderstandings of so-called ‘constructivism’ and clarifying the intended meaning of the term social construction.

Resources for a Journey of Hope: Raymond Williams on Utopia and Science Fiction

Abstract: Raymond Williams had an enduring interest in science fiction, an interest attested to: first, by two articles specifically addressed to the genre, both of which were eventually published in the journal Science Fiction Studies; second, by a wide range of reference in more familiar texts, such as Culture and Society, The Long Revolution, George Orwell and The Country and the City; and third, by his two ‘future novels’, The Volunteers and The Fight for Manod, the first clearly science-fictional in character, the latter less so. This article will summarise this work, and will also explore how some of Williams’s more general key theoretical concepts – especially structure of feeling and selective tradition – can be applied to the genre. Finally, it will argue that the ‘sociological’ turn, by which Williams sought to substitute description and explanation for judgement and canonisation as the central purposes of analysis, represents a more productive approach to science fiction studies than the kind of prescrip...

‘Reality’ Television Critique in Israel: How ‘Quality’ Became ‘Morality’

Abstract: ‘Reality’ television is a global and highly popular television phenomenon. Despite its public and academic critique as cultural ‘trash’, the genre enjoys great economic legitimacy. In recent years, other ‘trashy’ television genres, such as soap operas, have gained aesthetic-artistic legitimacy alongside their economic legitimacy. Taking a Bourdieusian approach and using the discourse about Israeli ‘reality’ shows as a case study, this article addresses the question of whether a similar process is evident in television critics’ attitudes towards reality television. Using quantitative and qualitative content analysis of reviews of ‘reality’ shows between 2003 and 2014, the article shows that the main question debated in such reviews is the genre’s morality rather than its aesthetic value: for Israeli critics, it is the moral attributes of these shows, not their aesthetic or artistic worth, which determine their ‘quality’.

The Practical Use of Other Realities: Taking Berger and Luckmann into the Wild

Abstract: The sociology of knowledge that followed The Social Construction of Reality shifted from the study of rarified ideas to practical activity, focusing on the stabilization of a sense of shared reality. The opposite side of this shift in emphasis has received much less attention – activities that place reality into a state of play and, in so doing, call attention to its ephemerality. I discuss three empirical areas where the practical use of other realities is central to the sociology of knowledge. First, I document cases in which skilled practitioners, such as airline pilots, safety engineers, and athletes, use simulation to prepare for events that are understood as highly uncertain and risky. Next, I describe how other realities are mobilized epistemologically, such as through experimentation in technoscience and experimentalism in unrealized or ‘unbuilt’ art and architecture. Finally, I consider autotelic and transcendent social experiences through fantasy and technological mediations like augmented reali...

Linguistic capital and development capital in a network of cultural producers: Mutually valuing peer groups in the ‘interactive fiction’ retrogaming scene

Abstract: This article reports on a mixed-methods study of the cultural valuing of ‘interactive fiction’ or ‘text adventure games’: a formerly commercial videogame genre sometimes associated with electronic ...

(Book Review) Narrative criminology : understanding stories of crime

Abstract: A review of Narrative Criminology: Understanding Stories of Crime, edited by Lois Presser and Sveinung Sandberg (New York University Press, 2015).

The Cultural Pragmatics of Political Apology

Abstract: In recent decades, research on ‘political apology’, wherein the state apologizes to victims of its past wrongs, has multiplied, as redress movements based on human rights have proliferated around t