‘The Post-Classical Sociological Theory of Culture: Symbolic or Cognitive?’, preliminary study for Discourse and Knowledge (Liverpool 2000) written in 1999 but never published. (original) (raw)
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Sociological Approaches to Culture 2017-2018
This course provides students with an outlook of the genesis, institutionalization and current trends in cultural sociology. There will be a particular focus on the development of this field in the past four decades, which have seen the rise, the stabilization and the internal criticism of the so called "cultural turn" in the social sciences and the humanities. The two main objectives are a) to familiarize students with a growing, diverse, and exciting body of literature that approaches cultural analysis with the goal to contribute to general sociological theory; and b) to prepare students for doing their own cultural research. These two aspects -at least in my vision -always walk hand in hand, linking theory and metatheory to empirical analysis. Many of the questions, approaches, and articles that will be discussed in the course successfully bridge these two sides of cultural sociology, and should therefore be read both as important contributions to a culturally oriented social theory and as exemplar case studies in the analysis of the relationship between culture and society. As students will notice very early on, it is impossible to give even a cursory overview of cultural sociology given the constraints of a brief course. I have made selections, with two consequences: a) although cultural sociology has relevant classical roots in the work of Durkheim, Weber, Marx, Simmel, and Saussure, I have limited the time devoted to the discussion of the classics: I expect students who are supposed to finish their MA's soon to be familiar with the general ideas of these authors' works, and I will bring them up occasionally in class when it is required by the lecture; b) my own inclinations and prejudices about what cultural sociology is and what it should be will feature heavily in class discussion; therefore, I will give prominence to one particular positioncultural autonomy -one problem (how can we achieve cultural explanation?), and some substantive areas like politics, the arts, and the intersection between cultural autonomy and cultural production. There will also be a strong preference towards cultural historical sociology. My biases notwithstanding, my main goal for this course is to have students become familiar with the best examples of cultural analysis from a sociological perspective, and this means exploring all the range of approaches that create the landscape of contemporary cultural sociology: cognitive sociology, the production perspective, repertoire theory, social semiotics, and many more. At least a couple of them should suit one's inclinations and interests. The articles, books, and essays I have chosen combine the definition of theoretical questions, rigorous empirical analysis, and some methodological innovations. And, at the end of the day, they are great examples of sociological imagination. One can learn a lot about the politics of nature by looking at how gardens were designed in France during the ancien regime, and a lot about the way bureaucracy works from the problems restaurant chefs face in the day-to-day management of cooking. So, in the end, choose your topic, learn a lot, and make me learn a lot that I don't know yet.
The place of culture in sociology: Romanticism and debates about the `cultural turn
Journal of Sociology, 2007
A spate of recent publications has addressed the question of the place of culture within sociology. While some of these publications are meant to chart the growing field of cultural sociology, and its relationship to so-called cultural studies, others have felt the need to engage in polemical debates regarding the merits of the 'cultural turn' Long, 1997). Therefore, alongside the handbooks, textbooks, primers and readers covering both classical and contemporary efforts in cultural sociology there are the programmatic statements, denunciations and critical pieces regarding what constitutes 'good' social science.
Refashioning sociological imagination: Linguality, visuality & the iconic turn in cultural sociology
Chinese Journal of Sociology (SAGE), 2015
One of the key challenges of meaning-centred cultural sociology is facing the findings of contemporary anthropology, archaeology, art history and material culture studies. Specifically, the increasingly pressing task is to recognize the sociological limitations of the semiotic framework laid bare by those disciplines. The traditional structuralist focus on discursive codes and the assumption of arbitrariness of cultural sign is of limited service in understanding the power of complex representational economies and especially in the task of explaining its variability. The language- and communication-centred framework downplays the fact that signifiers credited with causal social power are inescapably embedded in open-ended but not arbitrary patterns of material signification. There is ample evidence delivered by the recent studies within the aforementioned fields that such signifiers are ‘not just the garb of meaning’, to use the insightful phrase of Webb Keane. Rather, the significatory patterns and their material and sensuous entanglements co-constitute meanings that inform social action. Therefore, more integrative and multidimensional models of culture in action are needed. Some specific explanatory models have been explicitly formulated by a series of intertwined conceptual ‘turns’ in human sciences: material, performative, spatial and iconic, among others. By showing that meanings are always embedded in and enacted by the concrete assemblages of materiality and corporeality, they enable sociologists to transcend the linguistic bias of classical structuralist hermeneutics. This paper discusses the importance of iconicity for developing such an integrative perspective without abandoning some constitutive insights of the linguistic turn. I focus on the transformative works of contemporary scholars like Daniel Miller,Webb Keane, Ian Hodder, and Jeffrey Alexander, as well as on my own research, to illustrate the implications of the aforementioned paradigmatic ‘turns’. In particular, I aim at elaborating a key principle of material culture studies: different orders of semiosis are differently subject to determination and/or autonomous logic of the cultural text. As a result, differently structured signifiers are responsive to distinct modes of ‘social construction’ and historical transformation. We need to keep paying attention to the Austinian question of how to do things with words, but we cannot keep doing it as if things social were at the same time not done with images, objects, places, and bodies and all that their specific character and use imply. Fleshing out the so-expanded sociological imagination helps us to activate the full potential of understanding and explanation that the concept of culture possesses, and thus, to decisively turn culture on.
The Origins and Perspectives of ‘Culture’—Is it Relevant Anymore?
Human Arenas, 2020
This paper argues that ‘culture’ is a crucial element of humans’ mental developmental dynamics and traces various threads of explorations of the concept of ‘culture’ and aims to contribute to its systemic understanding. Culture has been represented predominantly as external to a person or as something that is at the same time inside and outside of the mind by the various streams of Cartesian social sciences. The latter theoretical stances led to the essentialization, ‘entification’ and objectification of the concept/phenomenon. The systemic approach is proposed in order to more adequately reflect the relational organization of individuals, societies and cultures. ‘Culture’ should be understood as an entirety of relational processes of sense-making of experiences that are self-centred, intentional and future-oriented, however, always rooted in historically constructed sociocultural systems. Cultural elements and individuals are indissolubly and meaningfully linked and defined in relation to each other. Interaction between people and cultural elements is dialogical and is organized in intransitive hierarchical structures. The systemic approach to the cultural and semiotic dynamics allows us to understand how patterns of signs, meanings and behaviours are constructed through the past historical process and in relation to the anticipated short-term and distant future. ‘Culture’ is everywhere wherever and whenever human relates to or anticipates real or imaginary ‘other’, or whenever s/he constructs or interprets any ‘objectified’ sign. It is considered as the systemic totality of the processes of meaningful relating to others that is the basis for affectively charged meaning-making processes. The self-definition is possible only through ‘Culture’.
Book Review: Confronting Culture: Sociological Vistas
Journal of Communication Inquiry, 2005
Inglis and Hughson explore the sociology of culture by providing an extensive survey of late 19thand 20th-century perspectives on culture and society. Their goal in this broad overview is to establish a relationship between culture and society and show how sociology, as a discipline, is equipped to undertake a rigorous analysis of both. Although recognizing the work that other disciplines have done in the study of culture, the authors privilege a sociological approach and champion a positivistic orientation. Their rationale is that much of the work of disciplines outside of sociology is too theoretical and without the benefits of empirical data. For them, the sociology of culture aims at particular discernments and resists universal generalizations. At the same time, however, it avails itself of historical insights from sociology, but only insofar as those insights are still relevant and, thus, useful for the contemporary scene. The book spans the intellectual distance from Marx to Bourdieu, through critical theory with Barthes, Saussure, and Raymond Williams in supporting roles. Marx is invoked to reassert the notion that culture is largely determined by socioeconomic conditions. By contrast, Bourdieu’s perspective is employed to address the interplay between culture and society, an interplay that cannot be reduced to material factors if only because such factors operate on a logic of their own. The rest of the authors cited are recognized as having made less, but significant, contributions to the study of culture, and, as such, they ought to be taken into account. In a very real sense, the book resembles a history of sociology, a history predicated on the Hegelian notion of progress. Accordingly, the authors postulate that Bourdieu’s thinking represents a more advanced and sophisticated conception of culture than Marx’s. The book does not offer an explicit statement on the relationship between culture and society despite the authors’plea that this relationship is a central concern for sociology. In place of a definitive statement, the book resorts to the work of numerous scholars who have suggested that such a relationship does exist. The authors, however, endorse only those views that use empirical data to study the relationships between social structure and social action and cultural and social factors. These restrictions are seemingly aimed at working out a sociological canon for cultural study. The authors make an exception to this rule by including classical sociologists in this canon. According to the authors, early sociologists focused primarily on society and left culture, at best, implied. Subsequent thinkers, such as cultural theorists, recognized the importance of paying attention to both. Despite the shortsightedness of early sociologists, their work is forgiven on account of its early, and as such, unsophisticated nature. Their inclusion into the canon allows them to continue exerting influence on modern, sociological developments.
Cultural Studies and Sociology: Early developments and keywords
Being Cultural (edited by Bruce M. Z. Cohen), 2012
This chapter introduces students to some of the important issues and terminology which will help to ground the sociological study of cultural studies and popular culture. This includes a discussion of the deeply contested nature of ‘culture’, a word that Raymond Williams famously described as ‘one of the two or three most complicated words in the English language’ (1983: 87). Definitions are appropriate starting points for sociological discussion and the chapter takes time to note some of the keywords that are often encountered in the area, such as ‘cultural text’, ‘authenticity’ and ‘resistance’. Some time is also spent considering the rise of industrial capitalism and mass production in the nineteenth century. It is crucial for students to understand the fundamental social, economic and political changes that resulted from the industrial revolution and the rise of industrial society. The development of machines and processes which could mass produce items led to the emergence of ‘mass culture’ (or ‘popular culture’). The effects that mass-produced ‘culture’ had on Western society has formed a key debate within cultural studies between the cultural conservatives (such as Arnold and Leavis) and ‘culturalists’ such as Williams. This debate is the focus of the second half of this chapter.
What Does 'Sociology of Culture' Mean? Notes on a Few Trans-Cultural Misunderstandings
A B S T R AC T This article attempts to clarify some misunderstandings between English-speaking and French-speaking scholars in the field of the sociology of arts and culture. In addition to a number of ambiguities in the definition of what 'culture', 'ar ts' and 'sociology' mean within the French and the Anglo-American academic traditions, the very words 'culture', 'cultural sociology' and 'cultural studies' exhibit important differences between each other as they are understood within each linguistic context. Seen from a French point of view, so-called 'French theory' appears as a typically Anglo-American category, along with 'post-modernism', while French debates among sociologists of art seem to have few echoes abroad. The linguistic dissym-metry between French and Anglo-American academic cultures should be taken into account in order better to understand the nature of these misunderstandings. K E Y WO R D S cultural sociology / cultural studies / French theory / post-modernism / sociology of art / sociology of arts / sociology of culture
Journal of Classical Sociology, 2006
It is argued that a renewed reception of the works of the Polish and American scholar Florian Znaniecki should be carried out by any so–called ‘cultural turn’ in sociology. If the new cultural sociology is to obtain firm and broader theoretical grounds, it needs to transcend its mere reaction against structural–functional normativism in search of classic studies of cultural dynamics such as those of Florian Znaniecki. The reasons behind the blurring of Znaniecki's influence upon 20th–century sociologists, including Talcott Parsons and Alfred Schutz, are investigated through a general examination of the reception contexts of his work. An overview of Znaniecki's general theoretical contribution to cultural sociology is simultaneously presented.