Abstract
Current research on culture rarely differentiates explicitly between period-specific and other kinds of cultural patterns. This paper develops the concept of “zeitgeist” as a tool for sociological analysis. I propose we understand zeitgeist as a hypothesis for a pattern in meaningful practices that is specific to a particular historical time-period, links different realms of social life and social groups, and extends across geographical contexts. As such zeitgeist sensitises us to a phenomenon that can be described independently of and alongside other cultural phenomena such as trans-historical schemas or binaries or group-specific patterns. Dissociated from an idealist tradition in historiography, which makes strong assumptions about periods as coherent entities, tends to allocate one zeitgeist to one period, and assumes that zeitgeist is held together by the coherence of a set of ideas, zeitgeists can be described and compared according to their formal properties: We can ask how zeitgeists extend in time and social space and by what media and socio-material carriers the patterns of zeitgeists are held together.
Highlights
When we encounter discussions about the "post-truth era" or the "age of me-too", we encounter claims about epochal trends or period-specific cultural patterns
I propose we understand zeitgeist as a hypothesis for a pattern in meaningful practices that is specific to a particular historical time-period, links different realms of social life and social groups, and extends across geographical contexts
I have tried to show that the concept of zeitgeist alerts us to the possibility of a set of cultural phenomena, which cannot be captured in a precise manner by existing concepts in the sociology of culture
Summary
When we encounter discussions about the "post-truth era" or the "age of me-too", we encounter claims about epochal trends or period-specific cultural patterns Such claims are quite common in public debate, the media, and in some traditions of cultural analysis; yet, as I shall argue, we currently lack the conceptual tools to frame such claims as accountable sociological hypothesis and subject them to systematic investigation in the context of other sociological concepts. I will argue that, dissociated from some aspects of the heritage of the term in the idealist philosophy of history, zeitgeists can be a conceptual variable among others and can become a research object, which can be examined with regard to different sets of properties: We can ask how zeitgeists extend in time and social space and by what media and socio-material carriers the patterns of a zeitgeist are held together. They allow me to show the limits of historicist assumptions: The examples have been selected because, as a set, they illustrate the range of different ways in which cultural phenomena with a distinctive historical location relate to strong notions of periods as integrated cultural wholes on the one hand and to generations as presumed carriers of cultural forms on the other hand
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