ALBERT SALOMON'S SOCIOLOGY OF CULTURE

Abstract

The `Sociology of Culture' (or Kultursoziologie) once held a core position next to the `Theory of Society' (or Gesellschaftstheorie), both being indeterminate and yet with a long, and sometimes opposing, internally related history, particularly in German social thought. With its self-destruction, the sociology of culture had also receded in modern sociology, becoming an outmoded notion. However, systematic attention to ethnic cultures appears to have regained its role once more and is today actively pursued as a global discipline. Without directly evaluating these contemporary, often empirical, lines of social research, the paper starts first with the reconstructive task of remembering a tradition by considering the works of Albert Salomon, an emigrant sociologist of culture at the New School (1934-1966). Secondly, in the `ex-centric' way of a centre lost, Salomon becomes a main centripetal figure, offering an integrating but open constellation of thought for a sociology of culture. By unifying the philosophy and ethics of Stoicism with social phenomenology, his historical analyses become keys for an interpretive sociology of social action. Salomon's works are seen in the deepest sense to provide a methodology for a sociology of culture which centres in a type of `written art' or `cultural scriptology'. His whole project is finally viewed in terms of contemporary questions of social trust and trusting in symbolic faith.