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Journal ArticleDOI

Performing Cultural Sociology: A Conversation with Jeffrey Alexander

01 Nov 2008-European Journal of Social Theory (SAGE Publications)-Vol. 11, Iss: 4, pp 523-542
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the intellectual evolution of Jeffrey Alexander's work, from early attempts in rethinking the theoretical logic of sociology to his latest pragmatic turn in terms of a theory of social performance, and explain the points of agreement and European Journal of Social Theory 11(4): 523-542
Abstract: Traditionally, sociologists have referred to the study of culture that concerns their discipline as ‘sociology of culture’. Since the mid-1980s Jeffrey Alexander has been turning the discipline on its feet, coining a new term: ‘cultural sociology’. The purpose of this upheaval is to redefine the sociological understanding of meaning in relation to social action as well as to rework both meaning and social action as categories for social research in general (see Alexander, 2007). Alexander’s work seeks to construct above and beyond Parsons’ theoretical edifice. This implies that, for Alexander, culture is a structure analytically different and autonomous from society, which is, in turn, understood as the internal environment of action. Consequently, Alexander regards culture as an ‘independent variable’ for sociological analysis (Alexander and Smith, 2003). His rethinking of culture stresses the need for a new sub-discipline within sociology, while reinvigorating other fields such as politics, economics or law due to its emphasis on the creative and performative character of meaning. In this sense, Alexander’s ‘strong program’ in cultural sociology, is also a strong bet for the social sciences. In the last two decades cultural sociology has become an increasingly institutionalized field within American sociology. Alexander has played a major role in advancing his own theoretical paradigm while shaping generations of graduate students under its workings. It is no wonder that the ‘strong program in cultural sociology’ is an unvarying reference among different schools of cultural analysis (Kurasawa, 2004). Alexander’s work has been the object of several critical reviews generating as much adhesion as rejection (i.e. Collins, 1985; Colomy and Turner 1998; Emirbayer, 2004; Fuhrman, 1986; Inglis et al., 2006; Joas, 2005; Kurasawa, 2004; McLennan, 2004, 2005; Mouzelis, 1999; Poggi, 1983; Wallace, 1984). In the present interview Jeffrey Alexander discusses the intellectual evolution of his work, from early attempts in rethinking the theoretical logic of sociology to his latest pragmatic turn in terms of a theory of social performance. Moreover, he contextualizes his cultural sociology and explains the points of agreement and European Journal of Social Theory 11(4): 523–542
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The role and significance of the concept of the sacred in sociological work was discussed in a public conversation with Jeffrey C. Alexander as discussed by the authors, who emphasises the significance of cultural structures of meaning for social life.
Abstract: Over the past 20 years, Jeffrey C. Alexander has been a leading social theorist and a pioneer of the ‘strong program’ in cultural sociology, which emphasises the significance of cultural structures of meaning for social life. Following an introductory overview of his work, this article records a public conversation with Alexander about the role and significance of the concept of the sacred in his sociological work. Issues addressed in this conversation include situating Alexander's interest in the sacred in his intellectual biography (including his significant intellectual influences), the mistrust of the concept of the sacred within the wider sociological community, the universality of cultural structures of sacred meaning, the limitations of sociological analysis focused on sacred meaning and methodological approaches to the study of the sacred.

13 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors incorrectly attributed to Ferdinand de Saussure (1) the postulate that a narrow theory of meaning can be found in the work of a sociologist, which is incorrect.
Abstract: Cultural analysts in sociology typically cite the work of Ferdinand de Saussure to motivate a narrow theory of meaning. In so doing, sociologists incorrectly attribute to Saussure (1) the postulate...

9 citations


Cites background from "Performing Cultural Sociology: A Co..."

  • ...In an interview, Alexander goes much further by claiming, “there is strong evidence that Saussure attended Durkheim’s lectures at the Sorbonne and drew directly upon some of these core ideas” (Cordero et al., 2008: 527)....

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  • ...He remained far from Paris until becoming the chair of education at the Sorbonne in 1902, 11 years after Saussure returned to Geneva....

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  • ...Taken together, we can dismiss claims “that Saussure attended Durkheim’s lectures at the Sorbonne” (Cordero et al., 2008: 527).10 Aside from claims of direct interaction, there is also conjecture that Saussure’s approach to language is indirectly “Durkheimian” in some substantive way....

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Journal ArticleDOI
01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: The Meanings of Social Life as mentioned in this paper is a collection of substantial papers on various topics analyzed from a cultural sociological perspective, with the programmatic text “The Strong Program in Cultural Sociology” (Alexander and Smith, 2003) leading the way.
Abstract: During recent decades, Jeffrey C. Alexander has been occupied with studying social life from a cultural perspective, developing a cultural sociology concerned with the shaping or constitutive impact of cultural formations and discursive practices on other aspects of social life. In 2003 he published the highly influential book The Meanings of Social Life, which is a collection of substantial papers on various topics analyzed from a cultural sociological perspective, with the programmatic text “The Strong Program in Cultural Sociology” (Alexander and Smith, 2003) leading the way. Ten years have passed. When Alexander was in Oslo in May 2013 giving the Vilhelm Aubert Memorial Lecture,1 I met up with him at the Institute for Social Research to discuss the institutionalization of cultural sociology as a school of social research.

8 citations


Cites background from "Performing Cultural Sociology: A Co..."

  • ...HL: In 2008 you said in an interview that your Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale could not “possibly afford to start a journal or to financially sponsor visiting fellowships” (Cordero, Carballo, and Ossandón, 2008: 512)....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Zelizer's work is not simply a cultural counterbalance of the mostly structural "new economic sociology" as mentioned in this paper, but an original angle to the study of economic life, and it has been argued that sociologists learn to focus on the frictions in which economic life unfolds.
Abstract: This short text could work both as a long footnote that contextualizes the interview with Viviana Zelizer published in this issue, and as a very brief beginner’s guide to Zelizer’s economic sociology. The premise is that a good way of introducing Zelizer’s contribution to the study of economic life is by situating her oeuvre in the context of recent research. The main argument is that Zelizer’s work is not simply a cultural counterbalance of the mostly structural “new economic sociology”. She has constructed an original angle to the study of economic life. From this perspective, sociologists learn to focus on the frictions in which economic life unfolds.

5 citations

References
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Book
01 Jan 1958

1,313 citations

Book
01 Jan 2006
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss the role of race and gender in the Civil Rights Movement and the conditions for civil repair in the construction of a black civil society in the South.
Abstract: Introduction PART I. CIVIL SOCIETY IN SOCIAL THEORY 1. POSSIBILITES OF JUSTICE 2. REAL CIVIL SOCIETIES: DILEMMAS OF INSTITUTIONALIZATION Civil Society I Civil Society II Return to Civil Society I? Toward Civil Society III 3. BRINGING DEMOCRACY BACK IN: REALISM, MORALITY, SOLIDARITY Utopianism: The Fallacies of Twentieth-Century Evolutionism Realism: The Tradition of Thrasymachus Morality and Solidarity Complexity and Community Cultural Codes and Democratic Communication PART II. STRUCTURES AND DYNAMICS OF THE CIVIL SPHERE 4. DISCOURSES: LIBERTY AND REPRESSION Pure and Impure in Civil Discourse The Binary Structures of Motives The Binary Structures of Relationships The Binary Structures of Institutions Civil Narratives of Good and Evil Everyday Essentialism The Conflict over Representation 5. COMMUNICATIVE INSTITUTIONS: PUBLIC OPINION, MASS MEDIA, POLLS, ASSOCIATIONS The Public and Its Opinion The Mass Media Public Opinion Polls Civil Associations 6. REGULATIVE INSTITUTIONS (1): VOTING, PARTIES, OFFICE Civil Power: A New Approach to Democratic Politics Revisiting Thrasymachus: The Instrumental Science of Politics Constructing and Destructing Civil Power (1): The Right to Vote and Disenfranchisement Constructing and Destructing Civil Power (2): Parties, Partisanship, and Election Campaigns Civil Power in the State: Office as Regulating Institution 7. REGULATIVE INSTITUTIONS (2): THE CIVIL FORCE OF LAW The Democratic Possibilities of Law Bracketing and Rediscovering the Civil Sphere: The Warring Schools of Jurisprudence The Civil Morality of Law Constitutions as Civil Regulation The Civil Life of Ordinary Law Legalizing Social Exclusion: The Antidemocratic Face of Law 8. CONTRADICTIONS: UNCIVILIZING PRESSURES AND CIVIL REPAIR Space: The Geography of Civil Society Time: Civil Society as Historical Sedimentation Function: The Destruction of Boundary Relations and Their Repair Forms of Boundary Relations: Input, Intrusion, and Civil Repair PART III. SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN THE CIVIL SPHERE 9. SOCIAL MOVEMENTS AS CIVIL TRANSLATIONS The Classical Model The Social Science of Social Movements (1): Secularizing the Classical Model The Social Science of Social Movements (2): Inverting the Classical Model The Social Science of Social Movements (3): Updating the Classical Model Displacing the Classical Model: Rehistoricizing the Cultural and Institutional Context of Social Movements Social Movements as Translations of Civil Societies 10. GENDER AND CIVIL REPAIR: THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD THROUGH M/OTHERHOOD Justifying Gender Domination: Relations between the Intimate and Civil Spheres Women's Difference as Facilitating Input Women's Difference as Destructive Intrusion Gender Universalism and Civil Repair The Compromise Formation of Public M/otherhood Public Stage and Civil Sphere Universalism versus Difference: Feminist Fortunes in the Twentieth Century The Ethical Limits of Care 11. RACE AND CIVIL REPAIR (1): DUALITY AND THE CREATION OF A BLACK CIVIL SOCIETY Racial Domination and Duality in the Construction of American Civil Society Duality and Counterpublics The Conditions for Civil Repair: Duality and the Construction of Black Civil Society Duality and Translation: Toward the Civil Rights Movement 12. RACE AND CIVIL REPAIR (2): THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT AND COMMUNICATIVE SOLIDARITY The Battle over Representation: The Intrusion of Northern Communicative Institutions Translation and Social Drama: Emotional Identification and Symbolic Extension The Montgomery Bus Boycott: Martin Luther King and the Drama of Civil Repair 13. RACE AND CIVIL REPAIR (3): CIVIL TRAUMA AND THE TIGHTENING SPIRAL OF COMMUNICATION AND REGULATION Duality and Legal Repair The Sit-In Movement: Initiating the Drama of Direct Action The New Regulatory Context The Freedom Rides: Communicative Outrage and Regulatory Intervention Failed Performance at Albany: Losing Control over the Symbolic Code Birmingham: Solidarity and the Triumph of Tragedy 14. RACE AND CIVIL REPAIR (4). REGULATORY REFORM AND RITUALIZATION The First Regulatory Repair: From Birmingham to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Second Regulatory Repair: Rewinding the Spiral of Communication and Regulation The End of the Civil Rights Movement: Institutionalization and Polarization PART IV. MODES OF INCORPORATION INTO THE CIVIL SPHERE 15. INTEGRATION BETWEEN DIFFERENCE AND SOLIDARITY Convergence between Radicals and Conservatives Recognition without Solidarity? Rethinking the Public Space: Fragmentation and Continuity Implications for Contemporary Debates 16. ENCOUNTERS WITH THE OTHER The Plasticity of Common Identity Exclusionary Solidarity Forms of Out-Group Contact Nondemocratic Incorporation Internal Colonialism and the Civil Sphere Varieties of Incorporation and Resistance in Civil Societies 17. THREE PATHWAYS TO INCORPORATION The Assimilative Mode of Incorporation The Hyphenated Mode of Incorporation The Exception of Race: Assimilation and Hyphenation Delayed The Multicultural Mode of Incorporation 18. THE JEWISH QUESTION: ANTI-SEMITISM AND THE FAILURE OF ASSIMILATION Jews and the Dilemmas of Assimilative Incorporation Anti-Semitic Arguments for Jewish Incorporation: The Assimilative Dilemma from the Perspective of the Core Group Initial Jewish Arguments for Self-Change: The Assimilative Dilemma from the Perspective of the Out-Group The Post-Emancipation Period: Religious and Secular Modes of Jewish Adaptation to the Dilemmas of Assimilation New Forms of Symbolic Reflection and Social Response in the Fin de Siecle: The Dilemmas of Assimilation Intensify The Crisis of Anti-Semitic Assimilation in the Interwar Period: Resolving the Dilemmas of Assimilation by Going Backward 19. ANSWERING THE JEWISH QUESTION IN AMERICA: BEFORE AND AFTER THE HOLOCAUST The Failure of the Project: Jewish Exclusion from American Civil Society Responding to Nazism and Holocaust: America's Decision to be "With the Jews" Beyond the Assimilative Dilemma: The Postwar Project of Jewish Ethnicity Making Jewish Identity Public: The Multicultural Mode of Jewish Incorporation The Dialectic of Differentiation and Identification: A Crisis in American Jewry? 20. CONCLUSION: CIVIL SOCIETY AS A PROJECT NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX

1,120 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: On Justification: Economies of Worth by Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevenot as mentioned in this paper is a well-known French book that does not fit into any single research paradigm.
Abstract: On Justification: Economies of Worth. By Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thevenot. Translated by Catherine Porter. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. 400p. 39.50 paper.Those interested in any of a variety of fields—reasoning about justice, the foundations and mechanics of social interaction, rational action, value formation, norm change, or conflict—will find rich potential in this ambitious and challenging book by sociologist Luc Boltanski and economist/statistician Laurent Thevenot, which does not fit into any single research paradigm. Published in France more than 15 years ago, the book is available in this English translation and ought to have a significant impact on social theory generally.

813 citations

Book
01 Jan 1987

691 citations

Book
01 Jan 2003
TL;DR: In this paper, Jeffrey C. Alexander jos od svog cetverotomnog djela “Teorijska logika u sociologiji” razvija originalnu i utjecajnu teorískoistraživacku tradiciju, rijetko prelazivsi nacionalne granice Sjedinjenih Americkih Država.
Abstract: 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

578 citations