Showing papers on "Sociology of culture published in 2019"

The Cultural Sociology of China: Trajectory and Dynamics of a Burgeoning Field:

Abstract: In this essay, we review the burgeoning field of the cultural sociology of China. We first describe the trajectory and features of the development of the cultural sociology of China. We argue that ...

Public Ideas: Their Varieties and Careers:

Abstract: In light of ongoing concerns about the relevance of scholarly activities, we ask, what are public ideas and how do they come to be? More specifically, how do journalists and other mediators between...

Clouded judgments?: Aesthetics, morality and everyday life in early 21st century culture

Abstract: This special issue investigates the relationship between aesthetics and morality. How do the good and the beautiful, the bad and the ugly, happen in everyday life? How do these ‘orders of worth’ in...

The practice of parodying: YouTube as a hybrid field of cultural production:

Abstract: Parody is so pervasive in participatory culture that it is described as a central component of Internet vernacular. Valuable insight has accumulated about parodies as artifacts, however, little is known about their creators. Drawing on the sociology of culture, this article explores YouTube music video parodies as a field of cultural production. Through interviews with 22 YouTubers recruited from a sample of top-ranked parodies, it examines the relationship between practitioner characteristics and their evaluation of parody. Contrary to other studies of participatory culture, the field was predominantly male in its participation and norms. It presented a divide between ‘strategic’ and ‘passionate’ practitioners who used parody to different ends. Nevertheless, interviewees valued similar attributes of parody, often diverging from scholarly definitions of the genre as critical commentary. This dynamic and the genre’s popularity are explained by the hybrid qualities of the field, which encourage diverse uses...

Meaning on the move: synthesizing cognitive and systems concepts of culture

Abstract: Recent developments in cultural sociology have advanced our understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that link culture to action. They have also raised a significant question about whether human cognitive limits are compatible with theories that envision culture as a complex, codified social system. This article describes a theoretical model of culture that reconciles these approaches by focusing on the circulation of meaning through heterogeneous semiotic networks. These networks are conceived as linking cognitive and environmental locations of culture with different information processing and storage characteristics. By specifying the characteristics of these locations of culture and the semiotic mechanisms through which meaning is translated between them, the model aims to provide a theory capable of reconciling cognitive and systems concepts of culture.

How Do Ordinary Swiss People Represent and Engage with Environmental Issues? Grappling with Cultural Repertoires:

Abstract: This paper studies how ordinary people in Switzerland represent and engage with environmental issues in daily practices. Bringing together conceptual developments in cultural sociology and social p...

What social science must learn from the humanities

Abstract: Identifying a shift away from a more humanistic approach in the sociology and political science practiced in the United States since the 1950s, Jeffrey Alexander seeks to recuperate an intellectual tradition of the social sciences that places the cultural meanings and subjective dimensions of social actions at the very centre of analysis, while simultaneously considering the structure nature of social life. Opposing the ‘great divide’ between social sciences and humanities, therefore, Alexander proposes, via his strong program of cultural sociology, a conception of sociology that considers social facts not as ‘things’ but as ‘texts,’ analysing how cultural meanings are socially rooted and structure social life.

Jeffrey c. alexander on the theatricality of social life: deepening the hermeneutics of cultural sociology

Abstract: This article provides a critical examination of the cultural sociology developed by Jeffrey C. Alexander, focusing on his view of the theatricality of social life. The argument is that, while Alexander’s perspective do engage in a highly significant valuation of the performative dimension of social and political life that matches his strong program in cultural sociology to add a reflexive turn to cultural production in general, his views on theatre and politics remain somehow limited in their efforts at reaching the symbolic structures that are constitutive of these domains. In using a structural hermeneutics to define the analytical core of his methodology, Alexander loses sight of a more dialectical hermeneutics able to tackle the significant transformations affecting those symbolic structures, and exhibited by both avant-garde theatre and media infused mass democratic politics.

Bridging the Vocabularies of Dual-Process Models of Culture and Cognition

Abstract: This book explores cognitive sociology as an area of inquiry focused on culture, cognition, and the social dimensions of human thought. Highlighting differing traditions, from cultural sociological ...

Performing sport political legitimacy: A cultural sociology perspective on sport politics

Abstract: This paper concerns the performance of sport politics. We carry out a text analysis of a year-long media debate that raged in Norwegian newspapers throughout 2016. After the Medias had critiqued ho...

Toward a Cultural Sociology of Immigration Control: A Call for Research:

Abstract: The criminalization of immigration has garnered a great deal of attention in the United States and abroad. Most research, however, examines the political and legal shifts that produced the contempo...

Calling Participation to Account: Taking Part in the Politics of Method

Abstract: The Taking Part Survey is the UK government’s flagship research instrument for cultural policy appraisal. It was developed by the Department of Culture Media and Sport and its non-departmental public bodies to provide measurable indicators of cultural participation for the purposes of policy performance management under the New Labour administrations of 1997–2010. In this chapter, we re-examine the historical emergence and significance of Taking Part, using the accounts of civil servants, researchers and policymakers involved in its development to unpack and expose the underlying narrative of the survey itself. Drawing on approaches from cultural sociology, cultural policy studies and science and technology studies, we counter the official presentation of Taking Part as a neutral technocratic tool for evidence generation. In its place, we reveal the complex social and political life of the participation survey as an expression of a particular set of organisational histories and cultures, arguing that this form of evaluation measure has been complicit in a process that has worked to restrict democratic accountability and to reinforce narrow understandings of participation in cultural policy. Concluding on a more positive note, we observe that recent shifts in the policy environment offer an opportunity to repurpose Taking Part, using the range of data of it contains and the continuity of measurement it provides to develop a broader appreciation of people’s everyday cultural lives.

Between the spirit and the letter: durkheimian theory in the cultural sociology of jeffrey alexander

Abstract: Emile Durkheim`s work forms the cornerstone of Alexander’s cultural sociology, to the point where it becomes virtually impossible to discern precisely where the process of reinterpretation stops and the construction of a new theory begins. In this article I aim to show the cardinal points of Alexander`s reading of Durkheim’s work, discussing how certain concepts and arguments are carefully selected in order to establish the bases of the strong program in cultural sociology, including in its ‘performative turn.’ In so doing, I highlight both strong and weak points in his reading of Durkheim’s texts, showing that there is an important expression of its ‘spirit’ even when he is not faithful to its ‘letter.’ In short, Alexander’s approach to Durkheim, a translation capable of actualizing its potentialities, purges his work of positivistic premises and adapts his theory to a comprehension of the social world, understood as a mesh of socially created and shared meanings.

Cultures of Transnationality in European Migration: Subjectivity, Family and Inequality

Abstract: Transnational mobility in the EU has become a key factor for supranational integration, equal life chances and socioeconomic prosperity. This book explores the cultural and social patterns that shape people’s migration, the historical and contemporary patterns of their movement, and the manifold consequences of their migration for themselves and their families. Exploring the links between social and spatial mobility, the book draws attention to the complexity of moving and staying, as ways in which social inequalities are shaped and reinforced. Grounded in research conducted in Germany and Poland, the book develops the concept of "cultures of transnationality" to analytically frame the variety of expectations involved in migration, and how they shape migration dispositions, opportunities, and outcomes. Cultures of Transnationality in European Migration will be of broad interest to scholars and students of transnational migration, European development, cultural sociology, intersectionality and subjectivity. Specifically, it will appeal to scholars interested in the cultural ramifications of moving and staying as well as those interested in the interplay of gender, ethnicity and class, in the making of social inequality.

Not So Distinct After All: Assessing Social Stratification of News Users on the Web

Abstract: Studies in journalism and cultural sociology have long identified differences in the types of news consumed by people from diverse sociodemographic backgrounds. Relying on population surveys, they ...

Routes to a Western Undergraduate Degree: Chinese Families’ Mobilization of Capital and Flexible Citizenship

Abstract: Chinese parents typically employ four different strategies by which they assist their children in pursuing Western education so that their families might achieve a kind of “flexible citizenship” (Ong, 1999). While the concrete outcome of these Chinese students is to obtain an undergraduate qualification in the West, the literature shows that Chinese families strategically pursue this objective for increased social capital and social status. What remains unclear is how social mobility and capital accumulation and exchange work similarly and differently across four different pathways that are identified in this research while flexible citizenship is formed. This research will address the following question: How do transnational schooling pathways constitute and advance flexible citizenship? This will require weaving together Bourdieu’s form of capital/notion of habitus and Ong’s cultural anthropology, including the concept of flexible citizenship and the lens of “neoliberalism as exception” (Ong, 2006) to understand Chinese families’ strategies in four educational routes. This research will contribute to the field of cultural sociology of education by providing empirical evidence of the theorization of Chinese students and how they understand their own “Chinese-ness” from a class perspective.

Biography and Form of Life. Toward a Cultural Analysis ofNarrative Interviews

Abstract: This paper introduces the concept of form of life, socially shaped and shared meaning structures of actors situated in material contexts, as a tool for the cultural-sociological analysis of biographies and life trajectories. Following the principles of structural hermeneutics, such an analysis of life-forms treats the interview text as manifestation of a deeper holistic meaning structure, embodied in narratives, binaries and metaphors, without suppressing the contradictions and tensions inherent in every form of life. Finally, the empirical applicability of our approach is illustrated with examples from the qualitative strand of a broader longitudinal panel study as well as an in-depth case study.

Boundary violations and adolescent drinking: Observational evidence that symbolic boundaries moderate social influence.

Abstract: Scholars of social influence can benefit from attending to symbolic boundaries. A common and influential way to understand symbolic boundaries is as widely shared understandings of what types of behaviors, tastes, and opinions are appropriate for different kinds of people. Scholars following this understanding have mostly focused on how people judge others and how symbolic boundaries align with and thus reproduce social differences. Although this work has been impressive, I argue that it might miss important ways in which symbolic boundaries become effective in everyday social life. I therefore develop an understanding of how symbolic boundaries affect people’s ideas and decisions about themselves and their own behavior. Based on this, I argue that focusing on boundary violations—that is, what happens if people express opinions or enact behavior that contravenes what is considered (in)appropriate for people like them—might offer an important way to understand how symbolic boundaries initiate and shape cultural and social change. Using data from Add Health, I demonstrate the utility of this line of argument and show that boundary violations play an important role in channeling social influence. Conservative/Evangelical Protestants and to a lesser degree Catholics, but not Mainline Protestants are highly influenced by the drinking of co-religionists. I consider the implications for cultural sociology.

Cognitive Sociology and the Cultural Mind

Abstract: This chapter introduces key debates and directions in cognitive sociology. It discusses cognitive sociology approaches ranging from cultural to social to embodied perspectives and identifies important tensions between competing cognitive sociology traditions. It highlights cultural cognitive sociology approaches that emphasize cultural, social, and organizational variation as well as embodied cognitive social science approaches that challenge cultural sociology and that emphasize the importance of neuropsychological dual-process models of cognition. It discusses the implications of these controversies and addresses attempts to synthesize the neurocognitive and the cultural. It concludes by introducing the chapters that constitute this volume.

The Sacred, Profane, Pure, Impure, and Social Energization of Culture

Abstract: In this chapter, I argue that the Durkheimian theory of the sacred is a crucial yet not fully recognized resource for cognitive sociology. It contains not only a theory of culture (which is acknowledged in contemporary sociology), but also a vision of culture-cognition relations. Thus, Durkheimian cultural sociology allows us to understand the crucial role the sacred/profane opposition plays in structuring culture, perception and thought. Based on a number of theories, I also show how another opposition—between the pure and impure modes of the sacred, allows us to explain dynamic features of the sacred and eventually provides a basic model of social change. While explicating this vision and resultant opportunities for sociological analysis I also criticize “cognition apart from culture” approaches established within cognitive sociology. I argue, thus, that culture not only participates in cognition but is an intrinsic ingredient of the human mind. Culture is not a chaotic and fragmented set of elements, as some sociologists imply to a greater or lesser degree, but a system; and as such it is an inner environment for human thought and social action. This system, however, is governed not by formal logic, as some critics of the autonomy of culture presuppose, but by concrete configurations of emotionally-charged categories, created and re-created in social interactions.

Social Activism and the City: Cultural Sociology and Radical Politics in 21st Century Cyprus

Abstract: This article discusses alternative cultural communication processes in the context of urban activism in inner Nicosia, as manifested in the last two decades. It examines a variety of cultural and social practices and their political implications in terms of their interaction with the surrounding space and wider society. The city’s division, the growth of the immigrant population and the attempted regeneration of inner Nicosia set the context for a variety of practices of contestation of nationalist and commercialist cultures, challenging them in the fields of culture and lifestyle. Through an overview of the key dimensions of activist interventions in the public space in the last two decades, the article argues that there are both elements of connection across issues, movements and processes as well as continuity across time. By examining practices rooted in social dynamics and expressing dissenting political and cultural worldviews, a more nuanced cultural sociology of the Greek Cypriot community may be constructed which goes beyond generalist images emanating from the mainstream public sphere. Through their diversion from mainstream ideas, politics and everyday life, the urban movements presented here engaged in redefining the meaning of the inner city and the life in it and registering it for more than a decade as an alternative place.

Beyond a socio-centric concept of culture: Johann Arnason's macro-phenomenology and critique of sociological solipsism:

Abstract: This essay unpacks Johann Arnason’s theory of culture. It argues that the culture problematic remains the needle’s eye through which Arnason’s intellectual project must be understood, his recent sh...

‘Culture’ in Sociology and Cultural Studies

Abstract: This chapter examines the various ways in which the concept of culture has been understood in sociology and in cultural studies. The centrality of this concept to nineteenth-century sociology, in several of its forms, is outlined, along with its influence on some kinds of Marxism. The subsequent use of notions like ‘subculture’, ‘counterculture’, ‘organizational culture’, and ‘occupational culture’ in twentieth-century Anglo-American sociology is also examined. There is also mention of more recent developments in the sociology of culture and of several versions of cultural sociology. In the second half of the chapter, the rather different trajectory of British cultural studies is explored, noting how it deployed, indeed blended, a range of conceptions of culture, against the background of its commitment to be a transdisciplinary form of cultural politics.

Contribución al análisis sociológico de la creatividad y la digitalización del campo cultural: creación, intermediación y crisis

Abstract: The so-called transition to the digital paradigm is eroding the autonomy of the cultural field achieved during the XIX and XX Centuries, subjugating them to economic and technological dynamics. However, the hegemonic discourse tends to interpret this as an overall positive process for the creative domain, focusing on the increase in information resource and creativity tool availability. However, an analysis of the theories and concepts of the sociology of culture reveals a more ambivalent balance. While the notion of authorship and creation can be interpreted from a more cooperative and relativistic view it is arguable whether this concept can be eliminated altogether. Also, although cultural intermediaries should be analyzed from a more complex and active role, one can hardly conceive the cultural system without them. In short, the article aims to contrast discourses about the transition to digital with classical and contemporary theories of the sociology of culture, in order to draw future lines for sociological research on the impact on agents and the cultural industry as a whole. The aim of this analysis is to generate a neutral perspective that takes into account the social and systemic effects of technology on the creativity of cultural sectors.

Cultuursociologie: Een veld zonder doxa?

Abstract: Cultural sociology is somewhat a vague sub-discipline of sociology. It is partly defined by its topic, but certainly not completely. Hence, cultural sociologists spend some of their precious time bickering about what grants them the right to call themselves a specific branch of sociology. This essay argues that cultural sociology is in fact a subfield, but one not defined by topic or a specific reading of that topic but more by its praxis, i.e. a way of doing sociology.

Jeffrey alexander and the development of cultural sociology

Abstract: Alexander's work has had a major impact on cultural sociology and the development of sociological theory more generally. His work in cultural sociology provides a large and useful toolkit for sociologists interested in doing empirical work on meaning and society. His theory of the civil sphere provides a template for scholars interested in studying the processes by which society itself become an object of interpretation and evaluation. All of these intellectual contributions have been supported by a generous style of theoretical practice, which combines solidarity, ritual, and a commitment to a "hermeneutics of faith".

From journalism to cultural sociology (and back via parsons). an interview with jeffrey alexander

Abstract: Along with a general introduction to Jeffrey Alexander’s sociology, in which I comment on some of the main lines taken by his sociological output over the years (social theory and metatheory, neofunctionalism, cultural sociology and the political sociology of civil society), I present here an unpublished interview with the author, conducted in October 2014 in Rio de Janeiro. During this interview, we talked about various aspects of his personal and intellectual trajectory, highlighting especially continuities and discontinuities over his theoretical journey, from the revisions of the classics of sociology to his more recent formulations on the civil sphere, passing through the place of the Parsonian legacy in his work.

Social imaginaries and the limits of differential meaning

Abstract: Elaborating on theories of the social imaginary, this contribution addresses the shortcomings of a differential conception of meaning, which is widespread in the social and cultural sciences. After a brief literature review, a preliminary concept of the social imaginary and its sociological relevance will be outlined drawing on the works of Taylor and others. The theoretical argument of this article, the fundamental difference and complementarity between the differential logic of the symbolic and the fuzzy logic of the imaginary, will be developed in a discussion of structuralism and one of its most fervent critics: Castoriadis. The latter developed his account of the social imaginary as a critique of Marxist reductionism, of the structuralist analysis of language and totemism, and of “ensemblistic-identitarian logic” in general. The implications of Castoriadis’ “imaginary significations”—a “magma” of meaning not exhausted by the differential order of signs—will be demonstrated discussing two contemporary sociological theories informed by structuralism as well as poststructuralism: Luhmann’s system theory and the cultural sociology of Alexander and Smith. The social imaginary, as a reservoir of meaning and condition for the emergence of new meanings, not only illuminates the blind spots in these theories, but also has the potential to transform our thinking about culture and society.