Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates / Edition 1

by Jeffrey C. Alexander

Overview

This volume brings together major statements by the leading contemporary scholars of cultural analysis. Part I surveys the range of current analytical debate over culture. Focusing on the reciprocal relationship between symbolic code and social structure, the contributors bring abstract theories down to earth in a series of readable case studies. Neoclassical examples of Weberian, Durkheimian, and Marxian analysis are included, as are prototypes of functionalist, semiotic, and poststructuralist analysis. While the contributors differ sharply in their understanding of the culture/society relation, the articles in Part I exhibit an underlying consensus about the relative autonomy of culture and the centrality of symbolic analysis.

Part II then turns to substantive debates, including those over the role of religion, secular ideology, and mass culture, and brings to light disputes about the meaning of modernity. This book testifies to the remarkable development in the past two decades of a cultural paradigm for social and political analysis.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	2900521359398
Publication date:	08/31/1990
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 1.25(h) x 9.00(d)

Table of Contents

	Preface	vii
Part I	Analytic debates: Understanding the relative autonomy of culture	1
	The Case for Culture
1	The human studies	31
2	Values and social systems	39
3	Culture and ideological hegemony	47
4	Signs and language	55
	Approaches to Culture: Functionalist
5	The normative structure of science	67
6	Values and democracy	75
	Approaches to Culture: Semiotic
7	The world of wrestling	87
8	Food as symbolic code	94
	Approaches to Culture: Dramaturgical
9	Out-of-frame activity	105
10	The Balinese cockfight as play	113
	Approaches to Culture: Weberian
11	Puritanism and revolutionary ideology	125
12	French Catholicism and secular grace	134
	Approaches to Culture: Durkheimian
13	Liminality and community	147
14	Symbolic pollution	155
15	Sex as symbol in Victorian purity	160
	Approaches to Culture: Marxian
16	Rituals of mutuality	173
17	Masculinity and factory labor	183
	Approaches to Culture: Poststructuralist
18	Sexual discourse and power	199
19	Artistic taste and cultural capital	205
Part II	Substantive debates: Moral order and social crisis--perspectives on modern culture	217
	The Place of Religion: Is Modernity A Secular or Sacred Order?
20	Social sources of secularization	239
21	The future of religion	249
22	Civil religion in America	262
	The Debate over the "End of Ideology": Can Secular Reason Create Cultural Order?
23	Culture industry reconsidered	275
24	From consensual order to instrumental control	283
25	The end of ideology in the West	290
26	Beyond coercion and crisis: The coming of an era of voluntary community	298
27	Ideology, the cultural apparatus, and the new consciousness industry	306
	Modernism or Postmodernism: Dissolution or Reconstruction of Moral Order?
28	Modernism, postmodernism, and the decline of moral order	319
29	The postmodern condition	330
30	Modernity versus postmodernity	342
31	Mapping the postmodern	355

Editorial Reviews

"An extremely useful compilation of writings...on the relationship between culture and society. So much well chosen erudition, so neatly presented, this work may lay to rest the futile question of priority between culture and society." Newsletter of the Sociology of Culture Section of the American Sociological Association

From the Publisher