The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology Oxford Handbooks Series

In recent decades, the focus of the study of culture in sociology has been divided between the sociology of culture and cultural sociology. In the former approach, culture is seen as a reflection of the deeper and more "real" social structures. A cultural sociology, however, begins from the premise that ideas and beliefs retain autonomy from the social structures to which they refer and illuminate. Only after the internal logics of meaning have been discovered and understood--the codes, narratives, and rhetorical techniques--can the cultural be put back into social structure, and analyzed in a multidimensional way. Edited by Jeffrey Alexander, arguably the leading cultural sociologist in the world, and two other widely respected practitioners, Ron Jacobs and Phil Smith, these essays from an international cast of the best and brightest cultural sociologists cover topics in theory and method; power, politics, and states; economics and organization; mass media; social movements; religion; aesthetics; knowledge; and health. Organized by empirical areas of study rather than particular theories or competing intellectual strands, the editors demonstrate that cultural sociology is not so much as a specialized subfield of sociology but, rather, an intellectual approach that can be generalized across all the core fields of the discipline.

1. Introduction: Cultural Sociology Today. Jeffrey C. Alexander, Ron Jacobs, Philip Smith. PART I The Cultural Method in Sociology. 2. Cultural Sociology as a Research Program: Post-Positivism, Meaning, and Causality. Isaac Ariail Reed. 3. Rationalization Processes inside Cultural Sociology. Richard Biernacki. 4. Four Ways to Measure Culture: Social Science, Hermeneutics, and the Cultural Turn. John Mohr and Craig Rawlings. PART II The Economic as Culture. 5. Culture and the Economy. Carlo Tognato. 6. Culture and Economic Life. Lyn Spillman. PART III The Political as Culture. 7. From Moral Sentiments to Civic Engagement: Sociological Analysis as Responsible Spectatorship. Robin Wagner-Pacifici. 8. Reinventing the Concept of Civic Culture. Paul Lichterman. 9. Cultural Sociology and Civil Society in a World of Flows: Recapturing Ambiguity, Hybridity and the Political. Gianpaolo Biaocchi. PART IV The Media as Culture. 10. Mediatized Disasters in the Global Age: On the Ritualization of Catastrophe. Simon Cottle. 11. Media, Intellectuals, the Public Sphere, and the Story of Barack Obama in 2008. Eleanor Townsely. 12. Entertainment Media and the Aesthetic Public Sphere. Ronald Jacobs. PART V Race and Immigration as Culture. 13. Rethinking the Relationship of African American Men to the Street. Al Young. 14. Ethnicity, Race, Nationhood, Foreignness, Etc.: Prolegomena to a Cultural Sociology of Difference-Based Interactions. Giuseppe Sciortino. 15. Burning Schools/Building Bridges: Ethnographical Touchdowns in the Civil Sphere. Mats Trondman. PART VI Religion as Culture. 16. The Constitution of Religious Political Violence: Institution, Culture and Power. Roger Friedland. 17. Globalization, Culture and Religion. Kenneth Thompson. PART VII Social Movements as Culture. 18. Narrative and Social Movements. Francesca Polletta and Bobby Chen. 19. The Politics of Authenticity: Civic Individualism and the Cultural Roots of Gay Normalization. Steven Seidman, Chet Meeks, and James Dean. PART VIII Trauma as Culture. 20. Rethinking Conflict and Memory: the case of Nanjing. Barry Schwartz. 21. Cultural Trauma: Emotion and Narration. Ron Eyerman. 22. The Chinese Construction and Repression of Trauma: The Rape of Nanjing. Jeffrey C. Alexander and Rui Gao. PART IX Events as Culture. 23. Events as Templates of Possibility: An Analytic Typology of Political Facts. Mabel Berezin. 24. Cultural Pragmatics and the Structure and Flow of Democratic Politics. Jason Mast. PART X Materiality as Culture. 25. Consumption as Cultural Interpretation: Taste, Performativity and Navigating The Forest Of Objects. Ian Woodward. 26. The Force of Embodiment: Bodies, Dispositions and Culture. Arthur Frank. 27. Music Sociology in a New Key. Lisa McCormick. PART XI Knowledge as Culture. 28. Narrating Global Warming. Philip Smith. PART XII Classification and Ambiguity as Culture. 29. Broadening the Strong Program in Cultural Sociology: Focus On Mundane Life in Organizations. Nina Eliasoph and Jade Lo. 30. Inbetweenness and Ambivalence. Bernhard Giesen.

Jeffrey C. Alexander is the Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University. Ronald Jacobs is an Associate Professor of Sociology at University at Albany, SUNY. Philip Smith is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale University.