Razmerja med občo sociologijo in sociologijo kulture: vsebinske razlike in institucionalni boji

Abstract

The article develops a two-level analysis of the relation between general sociology and the sociology of culture, as it has been formed at the Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana. One level presents struggles between groups for the seizure of institutional positions and sources, and the other describes formal differences in contents between the two sub-disciplines of sociology. The expected division of their competences is such that general sociology studies and compares general theories, while the sociology of culture studies culture as a particular object. At the Department of Sociology, the structuralist approach gained theoretical hegemony in the 1980s, positioning itself institutionally as the “sociology of culture.” The institutional place of “general sociology” was constituted as a residue of contents and as an institutional asylum. Consequently, structuralist sociologists of culture took the initiative in practising general sociology. Later, the structuralist movement dispersed because none of the theoretical schools achieved hegemony and because the production of theory and theoretical dialogue was not stimulated institutionally. The contemporary polemic against the “studies” approach and for a rebuilding of a theoretical basis of the sociology of culture is a struggle for the renewal of theoretical hegemony, but now as the hegemony of historical materialism.