Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural StudiesJeffrey C. Alexander The classic works of Emile Durkheim are characterized by a structural approach to the understanding of collective behaviour, and it is this element of his writings that has been most taken up by modern social science. This volume, however, rejects the dominant structural approach, and draws instead on Durkheim's later work, in which he shifted to a symbolic theory of modern industrial societies that emphasized the importance of ritual and placed the tension between the sacred and the profane at the center of society. In so doing, the contributors offer both a radically different approach to Durkheimian sociology and a new way of linking the interpretation of culture and the interpretation of society. In his introduction to the volume, Jeffrey Alexander elaborates the new interpretation of Durkheim that informs the contributions. His arguments form a background for the lively and provacative chapters that follow, which provide broadly cultural interpretations of such topics as popular upheavals and social movements, ranging from the French Revolution to the massive rebellions in Poland and Nicaragua in the 1980s; political crisis, from Watergate to the crisis of legitimation in contemporary capitalism; and the creative and contingent element in symbolic behaviour, including the symbolics of intimate friendship, and the ritual and rhetoric of media events. In addition to re-examining Durkheimian sociology, the essays also demolish the myth that attention to cultural values implies conservatism or the inability to analyze social change, and challenge the common antithesis between normative theory and microsociology. Its exploration of the links between Durkheimian sociology and the most important developments in contemporary sociology, history, anthropology and semiotics will ensure it a broad appeal across the social sciences. |
Contents
The sacred and the French Revolution | 25 |
From Durkheim to Managua revolutions as religious revivals | 44 |
The Liminal fight mass strikes as ritual and interpretation | 66 |
Micro and macro in symbolic context | 91 |
Religious elements in friendship Durkheimian theory in an empirical context | 93 |
The Durkheimian tradition in conflict sociology | 107 |
Common terms and phrases
action actors Alexander American American Civil Religion analysis argued celebrations ceremonial Chicago Church civil religion collective collective effervescence Collins concept conflict consensus contemporary crisis cult cultural differentiated Durk Durkheim's later Durkheimian Durkheimian theory economic Elementary Forms Elihu Katz Emile Durkheim factional liminality festivals Foner force Frankfurt-am-Main Free Press French Revolution friendship function Harper and Row Hommay individual institutional Iran legitimacy legitimation Lévi-Strauss liminal Luhmann Lukes Max Webers media events modern society moral movement nation Nicaragua Nixon norms organization Paris person Poland political profane R. N. Bellah Randall Collins regime relationship religious revolutionary Révolutions de Paris ritual process role Rothenbuhler sacralization sacred secular secular phenomena sense social order social solidarity social structure sociology specific strike strikers studies subjunctive symbolic television theoretical Tiryakian tradition Trans Turner University Press ution values Varieties of Civil Victor Turner Watergate Weber workers York
References to this book
Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture Professor Roland Robertson No preview available - 1992 |