Development Of Cultural Sociology Research Articles

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

How Do Ordinary Swiss People Represent and Engage with Environmental Issues? Grappling with Cultural Repertoires

This paper studies how ordinary people in Switzerland represent and engage with environmental issues in daily practices. Bringing together conceptual developments in cultural sociology and social practice theory, the paper argues that cultural repertoires strongly shape how representations and forms of engagement play out. It identifies two main repertoires of social and environmental change: adaptation and transformation. The adaptation repertoire is reformist and aligned with individualism and the capitalist growth-paradigm; the transformation repertoire consists of a critique of the market society and calls for systemic change. Using qualitative in-depth interviews and a random survey of residents of Western Switzerland, the analyses show that most people’s representations and engagements with environmental issues relate to the dominant repertoire of adaptation, which appears to be very compatible with existing social practices. Although people hint at limits to the adaptation repertoire, only very few of our study participants relate to the transformative repertoire.

Meaning on the move: synthesizing cognitive and systems concepts of culture

Recent developments in cultural sociology have advanced our understanding of the cognitive mechanisms that link culture to action. They have also raised a significant question about whether human cognitive limits are compatible with theories that envision culture as a complex, codified social system. This article describes a theoretical model of culture that reconciles these approaches by focusing on the circulation of meaning through heterogeneous semiotic networks. These networks are conceived as linking cognitive and environmental locations of culture with different information processing and storage characteristics. By specifying the characteristics of these locations of culture and the semiotic mechanisms through which meaning is translated between them, the model aims to provide a theory capable of reconciling cognitive and systems concepts of culture.

Early Researchers and Development of Cultural Sociology

Culture is the social behavior and norms found in human societies. Culture is considered a central concept in anthropology, encompassing the range of phenomena that are transmitted through social learning in human societies. Cultural universals are found in all human societies; these include expressive forms like art, music, dance, ritual, religion, and technologies like tool usage, cooking, shelter, and clothing. The concept of material culture covers the physical expressions of culture, such as technology, architecture and art, whereas the immaterial aspects of culture such as principles of social organization (including practices of political organization and social institutions), mythology, philosophy, literature (both written and oral), and science comprise the intangible cultural heritage of a society.

From Europe’s past to the Middle East’s future: The constitutive purpose of forward analogies in international security

Why do international security experts and policymakers draw analogies between various contexts? Do they use analogies to help them better predict the future consequences of their actions? Or do they employ analogies for other purposes? This article analyzes how policymakers and experts draw on “forward analogies” (i.e., analogies between observed causal relations and expected causal relations) to advance diplomatic negotiations in a particularly hard context: the deliberations of the weapons of mass destruction Free Zone in the Middle East. In situations in which diplomacy is blocked by the unwillingness of parties to start negotiations, this article claims that forward analogies can not only serve a predictive purpose, but also a constitutive purpose: analogies help “constitute” the reality of regional orders (such as the “Middle East”) when their ontological status as objects of deliberation and intervention is problematic. Yet, their successful operation depends on their ability to respect pre-existing cultural scripts and cultural taboos. Furthermore, their constitutive effect remains circumscribed to specific contexts in which forward-looking discussions are clearly distinguished from official negotiations. By highlighting the cultural embeddedness of forward analogies, this article draws upon developments in cultural sociology to advance the burgeoning literature on future-oriented practices in international relations.

On the value of failing and keeping a distance: narrating returns to post-dictatorship Greece

ABSTRACTIn the years after the Greek Junta, activists who had been involved in anti-dictatorship movements abroad returned as the country’s new pool of left-leaning, well-educated political actors. Drawing on interviews with former activists and borrowing from recent developments in cultural sociology, I analyse these returns as political projects fraught with moral conundrums. I argue that the contemporary crisis structure accounts of returns by placing speakers within what Boltanski and Thévenot call a ‘situation subject to the imperative of justification’. I make two arguments regarding the critiques and valuations used in accounts: First, the idealized political subject put forward by former activists promotes withdrawal over participation and silence over speech. Second, failure is valorized as a principled mode of self-exoneration. This article further demonstrates the importance of theorizing return migration within an ethnographic treatment of the present.

Intersections of Gender and National Identity in Sport: A Cultural Sociological Overview

AbstractSport is a global phenomenon that is assigned different meanings in different countries. This article reviews how we can understand the intersections of national identity and gender in sport. Two diverging analytic pathways reveal themselves. On the one hand, we have an intersectional approach, wherein national identity and gender are understood to be formed by universal notions of nationalism and patriarchy, respectively. On the other, we have a cultural analysis by which specific national‐identity repertoires are understood to form local gendered meaning. These two analytic pathways are exposed by comparing selected sport studies with developments in cultural sociology. I find that intersectional sport studies draw attention away from cultural sociologists' aim to uncover variation in global and local meaning‐making. Cultural sociology can thus help take apart the universalities argued for in many sport studies and explicate variations across national representations of gendered identities.

Is de culturele omnivoor een sociale omnivoor: netwerkkenmerken van omni- vs. univoren.

The social stratification of cultural taste patterns is a well studied topic in cultu¬ral sociology. Inspired by Bourdieus’ classical work: La Distinction, the conversion between economic and cultural capital gets a lot of attention. However, much less is known about the importance of social networks for explaining cultural variety. Even though classical cultural sociologists acknowledge in general terms that culture is embedded in a dynamic structure of social interactions, only few empirical studies investigate the link between social networks and cultural capital. We contribute to this area of research by combining social network theory with recent developments in cultural sociology. More specifically, we use the ‘Cultural Participation in Flanders 2003-2004 survey’ to test the homology between the structure of social networks (in terms of network size, -heterogenity and tie strength) and cultural omnivorousness (based on music preferences). Our results indicate that there is an interdependent link between social network structure and cultural omnivorousness. Furthermore, they show the importance of social networks for cultural sociology in general.

The `Aql-Naql Theory of Human Symbols and the Making of Cultural Sociology

This paper uses both reason (`aql) and Qur’an-based knowledge (naql) to establish my `Aql-Naql Theory of Human Symbols (ANTHS) and explain its relevance to the formulation of cultural sociology. In it, I argue that human individuals are by nature users of human symbols, based upon the following five observations/concepts: (1) the process of the human body’sgrowth and maturation is very slow when compared to that of other living beings; (2) humans have a longer lifespan than many other species; (3) the human race has a dominant role in running this world; (4) humans are distinct due to their use of human symbols (HS), which comprise spoken and written language, thought, religion, knowledge/science, laws, myths, cultural values and norms, and so on; and (5) human identity is made up of two parts, the physical body and human symbols, and is thus fully dualistic. This theory explains that human symbols (4) play a principal role in enabling humanity to occupy the central place in the world (3) as well as in the making of features 1, 2, and 5. The person’s slow bodily growth and maturation are explained by the fact that humanity’s global growth and maturation involve two fronts: those of the body and of human symbols. While the growth and maturation of non-human species is unidimensional (the body), those of their human counterparts are bidimensional (the body and human symbols. The human ability to think and reason (`aql) gives credit to human symbols’ centrality to the human identity. The Qur’an also stresses these symbols’ core importance for human identity. As a classical Islamic method, this essay will show that the use of `aql and naql in the process of knowledge making makes a major contribution to the development of cultural sociology.

The `Aql-Naql Theory of Human Symbols and the Making of Cultural Sociology

This paper uses both reason (`aql) and Qur’an-based knowledge (naql) to establish my `Aql-Naql Theory of Human Symbols (ANTHS) and explain its relevance to the formulation of cultural sociology. In it, I argue that human individuals are by nature users of human symbols, based upon the following five observations/concepts: (1) the process of the human body’sgrowth and maturation is very slow when compared to that of other living beings; (2) humans have a longer lifespan than many other species; (3) the human race has a dominant role in running this world; (4) humans are distinct due to their use of human symbols (HS), which comprise spoken and written language, thought, religion, knowledge/science, laws, myths, cultural values and norms, and so on; and (5) human identity is made up of two parts, the physical body and human symbols, and is thus fully dualistic. This theory explains that human symbols (4) play a principal role in enabling humanity to occupy the central place in the world (3) as well as in the making of features 1, 2, and 5. The person’s slow bodily growth and maturation are explained by the fact that humanity’s global growth and maturation involve two fronts: those of the body and of human symbols. While the growth and maturation of non-human species is unidimensional (the body), those of their human counterparts are bidimensional (the body and human symbols. The human ability to think and reason (`aql) gives credit to human symbols’ centrality to the human identity. The Qur’an also stresses these symbols’ core importance for human identity. As a classical Islamic method, this essay will show that the use of `aql and naql in the process of knowledge making makes a major contribution to the development of cultural sociology.

Household Food Strategies and the Reframing of Ways of Understanding Dietary Practices

While the use of households as a study focus is not a new concept in nutrition research, recent sociological literature has highlighted methodological advances in household strategy research that deserve attention. This article introduces and examines the conceptual relevance and analytical scope of household food strategies (HFS) research. People's household food strategies and dietary practices go together as do legs and walking, and yet to listen to public commentary on, for example, the current public health cause célèbre- the childhood obesity epidemic- we hear little, if any, balanced discussion of domestic food provisioning work, but much ideological posturing re parental responsibility, resisting the temptation of the abundance of fast food in our environment, and the importance of cooking from scratch. Using HFS as a unit of analysis highlights the process of integrating two critical sets of factors: household resources and preferences on the one hand, and the broader social and cultural shaping of dietary practices on the other. Such an approach has the advantage of avoiding an overemphasis on agency. Specifically, this article outlines a search for a coherent and integrated theoretical and methodological framework suited to studying households and dietary practices under circumstances of resource constraint and rapid social or political change. Developments in cultural sociology and anthropology, particularly, have much to offer a research agenda to support contemporary food and nutrition policy making in a post-modern world.

Arab intellectual concepts for cultural sociology

This paper presents new cultural concepts drawn from the Arab world. The terms ‘other underdevelopment’ and ‘cultural symbols’ are new as terms as well as cultural concepts in today’s social sciences. As such, they are in favour of the development of cultural sociology with a ‘strong programme’. This paper argues that the building of a cultural theory based on a different epistemology and on new cultural concepts is a legitimate possibility. This potential contribution to the growing cultural sociology has been done independently before the official meaning of cultural sociology was generally adopted.

Cultural sociology at the crossroads of the discipline

This article examines two questions. First, what difference does it make when approaches developed in cultural sociology are applied more broadly? We suggest here that such applications subject theoretical assumptions in other sub-fields to investigation, challenge, and development by providing the conceptual resources for empirically linking micro- and macro-analysis: cultural processes, shaping the possibilities and limits of meaning-making, are understood as the practical intersection of structure and agency, the switchpoint between them. Conversely, what do such applications then imply for the further development of cultural sociology? Four issues are highlighted. Empirically, they suggest that cultural sociologists should remedy their under-emphasis of transnational processes, and also that the influence of specialized cultural institutions like art on broader culture processes should be reconsidered. Theoretically, they encourage a renewed emphasis on understanding the causal significance of culture. Finally, the articles here suggest that the proliferation of theoretical concepts in cultural sociology creates a productive ambiguity encouraging the development and diffusion of the field, but also calls for better articulation of the pertinence of divergent analytic tools to particular research problems.