Introduction To Cultural Sociology

Introduction to Cultural
Sociology
Response Paper I.
What is the Cultural Sociology?
To understand what or rather how is it different then sociology we must
look at how does it come to being and what influences and events occurred
during its journey. Cultural sociology as an empirical and theoretical approach is
linked to the cultural turn in Europe and to the US sociology of culture.
Cultural turn was an emphasis on culture as a dynamic process to define
individuals and groups as reflexive agents of cultural production thus that they
are not separable. The production of a culture is an interplay between global and
local and helps the individuals to define and construct their lifestyle. Critical was
also distinguishing itself from the high art such as music or paintings. Raymond
Williams in his essay Culture is Ordinary from 1958 stated that the culture in its
broadest sense needs to be acknowledged as integral to be analysed. Richard
Hoggart ideas together with those of Williams were instrumental to foundation of
cultural studies.
Cultural studies set to explore and investigate the class struggles,
characteristic for Britain. There they embraced the key tenets of cultural Marxist
Antonio Gramsci especially term hegemony as a mean of exerting power over
society. Cultural studies wanted to reinvestigate the patterns that many
sociologists such as Georg Simmel or Max Weber already touched on but through
the question of culture. A central figure for this re-emergence of culture in
sociology is French theorist Pierre Bourdieu. His study Distinction develops
ideas of Simmel and Weber and connects them to term habitus. Habitus means
how individuals field of cultural competence is linked to the five forms of capital,
namely cultural, social, educational, economic and politic.
This return to the culture and cultural turn itself explores David Chaney in
his book The Cultural Turn. It touches on subjects of media influences,
individuals and they ability to reflect the media on their lifestyle, similar to what
Nicholas Abercrombie observed. The process of individualization was approached
by Zygmunt Bauman as a weakening of social bonds of an individual to the
society but for Anthony Giddens it was more of a reflexive modernity, rather than
breaking bonds it gives new possibilities to interact. Here I have to agree with the
basic statement that of Giddens. Individualization, as it may seem for Beck, does
not bring any level of uncertainty. Yes, you can argue that in an open world where
everyone is an individual piece that does not fit into the machine of fate is
uncertainty inevitable but, is it? When you are an individual you have to decide a
lot of things on your own and one of those is how to deal with uncertainty.
Because you have been given the choice, rather than society, that gives you a lot
of freedom of choice and to create new bonds just with those social media and
other modern means that some sociologists even speak of as the end of ideology.
And in a way we also change the media itself to fit our personal way so in the end
it will be a society build by every single individual and not dictated by few.
From those dialogues the cultural sociology in UK was born.
In the United States cultural sociology developed differently than in Britain.

There we have to follow work of two main protagonists of cultural sociology,
Jeffrey Alexander and Philip Smith. Later the cultural sociology as we know it
today was shaped by inter-Atlantic dialogue between the US and Europe (mostly
UK, France and Germany).
Culture was centre of sociological research even in early decades of history
of US sociology. Robert Park from the University of Chicago and Paul Lazarsfeld
from Columbia University were the early adopters of culture in sociology. Park
studied the impact of assimilation of immigrants and Lazarsfeld and his
colleagues examined the dynamics of mass persuasion on urban population, for
example the study of the Orson Welles War of the Worlds radio broadcast.
These early developments differ from the British case. Where British
sociologists debate on mass culture, civilized taste and social class, US also
debates the effect of mass culture and urban culture, social order and
immigration. Americans were suspicious of conservative and radical claims
concerning mass society. Where Britain combined Marxism and French theory and
infused the cultural turn, US criticized the cultural Marxism and thus they were
more likely to turn against culture.
Because of this the section for culture in the American Sociological
Association was not formed until 1988. Sociologists tended to focus on
organization structures, resources that shaped institutional production of culture.
Main characters were Richard A. Peterson, Vera Zolberg, Diana Crane, Muriel
Cantor, Paul DiMaggio. Their work was to discover how social actors give the
world a social meaning. It was a sociology of culture. Alternative approach had
Ann Swidler and Jeffrey Alexander. For Swidler culture provides a pragmatic
toolkit with symbols. For Alexander it was autonomy of culture and his call for
strong program.
Alexanders strong program was influenced by Durkheim and symbolic
anthropologies. He says that it is easy to criticise idealism then materialism, from
which I personally see heavy influence from Marxism, although he was a Marxist
in my opinion he was a bit too centred around his ideals and had a clouded vison
of what a culture should be in a contrast to what he wanted cultural sociology to
be. He wanted it to be a tool for sociologists. He wanted them to focus more to
the internal environment of action, to uncover the invisible components of social
performance. To pay more attention on speech and not just the language itself.
Alexander already established cultural sociology as something to be defined and
used and as the other side of the mirror, as opposite to the sociology of culture,
through which we see the world, society and culture.
As a closure sentence I would like to summarize one last thing I did not
touch on and that is methodology of cultural sociology. Cultural sociology does
use many methods as sociology does, but its emphasis on the self-involvement
and field research where sociologist became part of the social filed he studies is
the key difference.

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In the United States cultural sociology developed differently than in Britain.

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