Cultural Sociology Research Articles

Italian sociologists: a community of disconnected groups

Examining coauthorship networks is key to study scientific collaboration patterns and structural characteristics of scientific communities. Here, we studied coauthorship networks of sociologists in Italy, using temporal and multi-level quantitative analysis. By looking at publications indexed in Scopus, we detected research communities among Italian sociologists. We found that Italian sociologists are fractured in many disconnected groups. The giant connected component could be split into five main groups with a mix of three main disciplinary topics: sociology of culture and communication (present in two groups), economic sociology (present in three groups) and general sociology (present in three groups). By applying an exponential random graph model, we found that collaboration ties are mainly driven by the research interests of these groups. Other factors, such as preferential attachment, gender and affiliation homophily are also important, but the effect of gender fades away once other factors are controlled for. Our research shows the advantages of multi-level and temporal network analysis in revealing the complexity of scientific collaboration patterns.

Desacralising teachers: inside Myanmar’s educational capitalism

ABSTRACT This study focuses on the changed roles and symbolic identities of Myanmar teachers under the forces of marketisation and the privatisation of education. Private tutoring by school teachers is used as an example of what society perceives to be the incursion into education of market-oriented values that are incompatible with traditional morals. The theoretical framework draws on Durkheim’s concept of the sacred and its interpretations in neo-Durkheimian scholarship, particularly cultural sociology. The main argument presented revolves around the idea that the marketisation of education is profaning the teaching profession. Based on qualitative data from a larger three-year study conducted in eight Yangon schools, combined with textbook and document analysis, the study highlights the patterns of exceptional respect traditionally afforded to Myanmar teachers. This is then contrasted with the consequences of the growing marketisation of educational values through tutoring. The study identifies tutoring as a force polluting into what society perceives to be a sacred profession. Although bringing much-needed economic benefits to teachers, in the eyes of society, it has corrupted the idea of teachers as sacred individuals. This analysis enables critical reflection on the privatisation of education and its consequences for the lives of teachers, which are still under-researched.

Estética, materialidad y marginalidad el proyecto editorial Eloísa Cartonera

The aim of this paper is to analyze the dimensions of aesthetics and materiality in the Eloisa Cartonera publishing project, which emerged after the 2001 crisis in Argentina. For this purpose, we seek to investigate how the procedures, techniques and work modalities of Eloisa Cartonera are articulated both with the context of the neoliberal crisis and with the peripheral and suburban culture of Buenos Aires. From a perspective that crosses the field of sociology of culture with the sociology of books and publishing, we postulate that Eloisa Cartonera implies a disruption in aesthetic and cultural terms with respect to the dominant forms of publishing in the publishing field, because that publishing house unfold the imaginary of the cartoneros and the marginality into an alternative form of literary publication. The article uses a qualitative methodology, applied to a study case.

A Cultural Sociology of Populism

This article interrogates dominant definitions of “populism” found in the social sciences, focusing on the term’s conceptual utility in understanding recent changes in Western polities. Though populism is typically treated as a deviant form of politics, this article finds that it in fact holds remarkable continuities with conventional politics, and indeed culture more generally. It argues that these more general cultural processes can be illuminated by cultural sociology, just as the more specific but still routine political processes can be illuminated by Civil Sphere Theory (CST). The article goes on to argue that when populism is understood as a formal mode of public signification, rather than a substantive ideology, the substance it signifies becomes crucial to determining its civility. It suggests that while populism can certainly have anti-civil effects, there is nothing inherent in it that precludes it from also acting to promote civil repair.

Трактовка социокультурных оснований субъектности молодежи

<p>В статье рассматривается трактовка социокультурных оснований субъектности молодежи, представленная в рамках социологии культуры Институтом фундаментальных и прикладных исследований Московского гуманитарного университета. Освоение социокультурной субъектности в этой трактовке выступает как основное приобретаемое свойство молодежи. Обоснование ведется на базе применения тезаурусного подхода, выступающего субъектно-ориентированной методологией такого исследования в ракурсе социологии.</p>

Policing, Recognition, and the Bind of Legal Cynicism

AbstractWe draw on a unique dataset of 60 semi-structured interviews with recently arrested suspects in Cleveland, Ohio, a city currently under federal consent decree due to police use of excessive force. Through these interviews we shed light on an apparent paradox in research to date—that residents of disadvantaged communities are deeply skeptical about policing, while still believing that the police remain a viable institution for seeking security in their communities. By connecting research on legal cynicism with insights from cultural sociology and the sociology of law, we find that respondents make meaning of this apparent paradox – and the resulting bind in which they find themselves – by stressing the promise of law that underwrites a transformative potential of policing. Through these ideals of legality, residents aspire to material and symbolic forms of recognition from law enforcement, ranging from police presence and safety, to expressions of understanding and feelings of worth. We propose that this desire for broad recognition is central to how suspects make sense of their reliance on police, and we suggest further research into how this struggle for recognition provides a cultural approach for understanding social inequality and its intersection with legality and criminal justice.

Poet-Critics and the Administration of CultureAmerican Guides: The Federal Writers’ Project and the Casting of American Culture

Poet-Critics and the Administration of CultureAmerican Guides: The Federal Writers’ Project and the Casting of American Culture

Adopting a Cloak of Incompetence: Impression Management Techniques for Feigning Lesser Selves

The “cloak of competence” concept captures attempts to disguise limitations and exaggerate abilities. The author examines the conceptual converse: the “cloak of incompetence,” or the various ways people deliberately disregard, disguise, downplay, or diminish their personal abilities. Drawing on a comparative analysis of manifold empirical cases, the author identifies three generic competence-concealing techniques—avoidance, performance, and neutralization—and considers some of the interactional contingencies that can enhance or reduce their effectiveness. Avoidance and performance techniques are used to manage creditable competence. Neutralization techniques are used to manage credited competence. Each strategy obstructs the appearance and attribution of competence in a particular way: avoidance techniques prevent the dramatic realization of competence, performance techniques dramatically realize incompetence, and neutralization techniques discount, downplay, distance, or otherwise explain away evident but undesirable competent performances. The author concludes by discussing some implications for sociologies of persons, culture, and structure.

The problem of order: Understanding how culture predicts social action

AbstractHow is social order possible? Scholars in a variety of sociological subfields have sought to address this question, known as the problem of order, building theories and evidence that have tended to center either structural forces or human agency. I explain how this dichotomy has shaped the direction and extent of our scholarly progress, focusing on debates and developments in sociological social psychology and cultural sociology, and consider how theoretical and empirical developments in these fields enable us to revisit the problem of order in pursuit of new questions and answers. The great promise of this work is in its ability to identify the micro–macro linkages that enable personal agency and social change, while also explaining why the social order is so durable and how we arrive at and enact a shared definition of the situation as often as we do given individual differences and self‐complexity.

Cultural sociology throughout the world: a critical exploration

Cultural sociology throughout the world: a critical exploration

Salvation as Cultural Distinction: Religion and Neoliberalism in Urban Africa

Intervening in debates on religion and social inequalities, this article advocates a shift from concerns with economic ethics to a focus on religious belonging as embodying class-based cultural distinctions. In the first part, I critically review the literature that draws inspiration from Weber’s concept of Protestant inner-worldly asceticism and advance two arguments: Pentecostal orientations toward this-worldly salvation thwart rationalising potentials and feed into magic, or “occult,” economies instead. Simultaneously, however, Pentecostalism promotes personal autonomy by emphasising the possibilities for radical personal change through conversion and becoming “born again.” In the second part, I draw on Bourdieu’s cultural sociology and show that personal autonomy and certain images of Pentecostal modernity are increasingly deployed within practices of cultural distinction between the modern Pentecostal and economically successful and the backward who remain locked in the past. The article is based on ethnographic research among Pentecostals in South Africa as well as a review of the literature on other African societies.

Strong program cultural sociology and Latin America

Over the past decade, a community of strong program cultural sociologists has developed from Latin America against the background of local traditions in the study of culture that mostly have been influenced by Gramsci and Bourdieu. Here, we will provide an overview of this community—its members, sites of production, and recent publications which mark the leading edges of iconic power theory, cultural trauma theory, social performance theory, and civil sphere theory. In particular, we will try to flesh out how the members of this emerging community have gone about extending the horizon of strong program cultural sociology while seeking to maintain their tune with local intellectual sensibilities in the study of culture across the region.

Аксиологический подход в социологии культуры

Since its inception, sociology has focused on the analysis of cultural patterns, patterns of functioning and development of society, and the search for optimal solutions to various socio–cultural problems. The article deals with the interpretation of culture based on its value understanding. Today, the axiological approach continues to play an important role in the sociology of culture. This allows us to study the structure of social values, as well as the dominant value orientations of diverse social groups, not only in the sphere of culture, but also in other areas of society. Based on these studies, practical recommendations can be developed on a wide range of cultural issues — from the moral education of young people, to the optimization of the activities of certain socio–cultural institutions.

Lions and foxes: revisiting Pareto’s bestiary for the age of late pluto-democracy

ABSTRACT Vilfredo Pareto’s legacy is uncertain; while his reputation in economics is secure, references to Pareto in contemporary sociology are few and fleeting. Sociologists and members of the public who are aware of Pareto’s non-economic work likely associate the Italian polymath with a single zoological image: the lions and the foxes. This phrase has found some currency in political sociology but has also recently been employed in the popular press to explain contemporary social and political change. Yet such references are often only vaguely connected to Pareto’s larger intellectual project. This article situates Pareto’s imagery of lions and foxes in relationship to his larger work in order to transform this popular-but-vague image into useable sociological concepts. These concepts are then used to interpret contemporary political changes. Several arguments about Pareto’s work are made in the course of this discussion: that Pareto was a cultural sociologist, that a culturalist understanding of religion played a central part in his explanations of social change, and that his theory of elites should supplement existing elite theory.

The Malleability Narrative in Entertainment and Social Media: Explaining Pathways to Happiness in Media Content

Abstract Media effects research has documented the prevalence of different ideals in media content, and their effects on media users. We developed a framework for the representation of such ideals, and that may increase our understanding of the effects media have on users' well-being. Drawing on cultural sociology, communication theory, and psychological literature, we introduce the malleability narrative of mediated ideals, described as “a collection of media representations of a variety of ideals that tend to be portrayed as within reach for anyone who is committed to pursuing his/her own self-interest.” The aim of the framework is to foster content analytical research on the occurrence of the malleability narrative in popular media and to stimulate audience research on interactions between media users and the malleability narrative in media, while taking account of different explanatory routes and the heterogeneity of the audience.

Introduction

Introduction

Cultural sociology in a secular age

Cultural sociology in a secular age

カルチュラル・ソシオロジーの系譜と構造解釈学派 : 質的研究における理論枠組み要請への応答として

カルチュラル・ソシオロジーの系譜と構造解釈学派 : 質的研究における理論枠組み要請への応答として

He Heard, She Heard: Toward a Cultural Sociology of the Senses

When studying cultural goods, sociologists have tended to focus on the production of those goods, and on the social patterning of tastes. To date, little work has considered the organization of cultural experience. This reflects both a general historical devaluation of the embodied and experiential aspects of social life, and a tendency among scholars to view language and discourse as distinct from embodied and practical elements of culture. In this article, I introduce an interview method designed to facilitate the description of music experience. My data reveal gender differences in descriptions of a particular subtype of sonic experience, which suggest potential variations in experience. These findings indicate that (1) experience and discourse are culturally structured, (2) a more generative (re)conceptualization of the language‐experience relation emphasizes domain interdependence rather than independence, and (3) particular types of language can facilitate the expression of harder‐to‐articulate qualities of experience.

The Social Life of Methods as Epistemic Objects: Interview with Celia Lury

Celia Lury is the founder of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick, of which she is a professor and researcher. Out of her interest in the way 'live' methods represent social worlds, she works on interdisciplinary methodologies, feminist and cultural theory, sociology of culture, consumer culture, and algorithms. Celia Lury is co-editor of Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research Methods (Routledge, 2018), Inventive Methods, (Routledge, 2012), and Measure and Value (Blackwell, 2012), among other volumes. In the following interview, Lury explains how she uses discussion and critical reflection on methods as a means to build interdisciplinarity. She emphasizes that live methods require being activated within a broader assemblage or ecology, and that an ethical orientation is needed when approaching and using methods. For Lury, methods cannot simply be conceived as instruments or tools. Instead, they should be perceived as practices. In this sense, one of the contributions that design makes to the debate on methodology is the specific relationship that designers have with practices and processes. In fact, emphasis on making allows designers to think about the material and semiotic properties of methods in a very enabling way.