Contemporary Approaches in Cultural Sociology
Week 1
Introduction
Comparison
- Sociology of culture is not cultural sociology
o Sociology of culture
§ Culture as a topic
§ One specific domain in society à e.g. economy
o Cultural sociology
§ Culture as an approach à way to look at different topics
§ Factor accounting for action
§ Can be applied to any social domain
Sociology
- Scientific (systematic, not just philosophizing) discipline that tries to understand (making
sense, finding patterns and generalizing) society
o Theory to reduce complexity
- Sociology is first and foremost a way of thing about the human world
o Sociological questions defamiliarizes the familiar à often common, mundane things
studies (most people know), looking at ‘hidden’ processes
History of culture in sociology
- 3 Major periods
o Structural functionalism
§ 1930 – 1960s
§ Culture important as part of theory
o Culture disregarded
§ 1965 – 1980s
§ As structural functionalism became less popular
o Cultural turn
§ 1980s – present
Structural functionalism
- Sociology discipline with multiple paradigms
- But during structural functionalism sociologist believed this was the best way to look at
society
- America focussed more on social psychology à interactions between people
- In Europe focus on sociology à coming up theories that account for society in general
- Talcott Parson (1902 – 1979)
o Looking at society in general
o Central questions à what is it that holds society together
§ America in great depression, afraid of society falling apart
, § Society holds together when people behave the way they are supposed to à a
consensus over values (agree on larger goals in life, things you want to
achieve) and norms (concrete things you can (and can’t) do to achieve these
goals, actions aloud to be taken) à this is culture
§ People are not rational actors (thinking of long-term consequences)
o Simplification of theory
§ Society consists of a number of systems
• These systems are concerned with their own maintenance, preservation
and reproduction
• Social system
o In order for society to preserve over time certain functions must
be fulfilled (hence functionalism) à e.g. food, children raised,
external/internal threads
• Personality system
o Society consists of individuals that try to preserve and
reproduce à e.g. be happy
o People want to do well for themselves
• Cultural system
o In order for society to not be in conflict between needs and
continuation of social and personality systems
o Presided over other system à shared values and norms
o Values and norms institutionalized in social system in the form
of roles and expectations (role of parent/child, or employee) à
to keep society functioning
o Needs and motivations are socialized (internalized) by the
cultural system à learn what people want and need
o People are socialized into roles that are needed for the social
system (e.g. good to be a good worker), what needed on level
of personality system is needed by social system
• Sometimes triangle doesn’t function, doctors and psychologist work to
but back into order
- Structural functionalism worked well in the context of the suburban family, cracks started
appearing in the 60s (student protest, hippies, African American groups, women’s rights) à
no such thing as a consensus over norms and values in society-
- 3 major criticism on Parsonian theory
o Culture as too consensual à no conflict or opposition, one general and unified
culture
§ In reality much contradictory views
, o Culture as too deterministic à people seen as cultural dopes, do what culture tells
them to do
§ In reality more agency and free will
o Culture as too abstract à culture as a realm of general values that is hard to actually
grasp
- Decline in thinking about culture by sociologist
Cultural turn
- Renewed interest in culture from the 1980s onwards
- New central principles (in comparison to Parsonian theory)
o Contradictory and conflictual
§ No longer considered universal set of norms and values shared by anyone,
instead more attention to different people and groups with different ideas
o Context
§ Rather than looking at a cultural as consensus that has impact on anyone and
everywhere, instead looking at how culture manifests in certain circumstances,
which influence the types of culture seen à in some cases people do x, in
others y.
§ Take into account specific circumstances of manifestation
o Concrete culture
§ Not looking at culture as abstract ideas but instead look at concrete things that
you can study (texts, stories, language, symbols, art...) à information about
what is happening in a society in a certain time
- These principles found in contemporary approaches to cultural sociology
o Culture as a cognitive structure
§ Inspiration: literary theory, (post-) structuralism, cognitive science
§ Characteristic: focus on contrite manifestations of culture, e.g. analysis of
‘texts’ à tell us how society ‘thinks’
§ Idealistic approach à has to do with ideas in people’s minds, impacts thinking
and action; relatively autonomous, people cannot control culture
§ Deterministic à Structure over agency
o Culture in action
§ Inspiration: Pragmatism
§ Characteristic: context-dependent use of culture à how do people use
different types of culture to solve everyday problems
§ Culture as a (fragmentary) toolkit à not necessarily compatible with one
another (room for conflict), what person does in one situation may be
completely different in another situation
§ Agency over structure à set of resources people can use,
o Production of culture
§ Inspiration: Sociology of organizations and knowledge
§ Characteristic: focus on how context of culture is influenced by the milieu in
which it is created, distributed, evaluated, taught and preserved (Peterson) à
how is culture shaped
§ Not about how culture has impact on what people do, more about how what
people do has an impact on the specific form of culture à culture as
dependent variable
- One thing in common à general definition of culture
o Culture as a form of meaning making, how people make sense of things
, §Central questions: How does meaning making occur, why meaning vary, how
does meaning have an impact on action, how is meaning making important in
generating solidarity and conflict
o Similar analytical perspective à share perspective, not one specific topic
o Sometimes overlap, often combined and sometimes compatible
Week 2
Foundation of cultural sociology
Emil Durkheim & Culture as structure/cognition
- Culture as structure/cognition à primarily about analysis of text
o Culture approached from relatively idealistic perspective à seen as something
autonomous, that has an impact on how we think and look at our surroundings à but
we cannot deliberately control
o Structure over agency
- First founding father of the discipline of sociology
- Central questions/problems
o Social integration of modern society
o Where does solidarity come from?
- Context: France in transition from one economic system to another à from Agricultural to
Industrialization
o From villages, tight knit communities, to urban, anonymous city
o Social control à anonymous
o High social integration, community à little sense of community
o Small class difference in same area à big class difference in same are
- The elementary forms of religious life (1912)
o Study of tribes à study of field notes by anthropologist
o How do feelings of group memberships/solidarity arise?
o Why are there collective symbols/rituals?
o Primarily engaged with survival but when together different behaviour
o Two phases of life of tribe
§ Profane à normal life and reality
§ Sacred à rituals, tribe different behaviours from profane phase
• Central/shared signs and symbols à totem (mana)
o Made them do things, transport to different type of reality
o Many religions are characterized by Profane and Sacred
§ Normal reality and something of a different order
§ Often characterised by symbols
§ Has to do with function of totem
• Represent or is sacred
• Specific rules on how to behave in relation to the totem à totem can
inspire but also punish
• Badge of the group à represent tribe
• So maybe totem in itself is not worshipped but actually the collective,
society itself
