I pursue three aims in this article: (1) a contextualization of Jeffrey Alexander’s cultural sociology within the broader trajectory of his intellectual development; (2) a sketch of the key ideas of his approach to cultural analysis against the backdrop of contemporary debates regarding culture and social structure; and (3) an appreciation and critical assessment of Alexander’s program.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1978) ‘Formal and Substantive Voluntarism in the Work of Talcott Parsons: A Theoretical and Ideological Reinterpretation’ , American Sociological Review43: 177-198 .
2.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1982) Positivism, Presuppositions, and Current Controversies. (Vol. 1 of Theoretical Logic in Sociology). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press .
3.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1982-3) Theoretical Logic in Sociology, 4 vols. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press .
4.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1983) The Modern Reconstruction of Classical Thought: Talcott Parsons. (Vol. 4 of Theoretical Logic in Sociology). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press .
5.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1987a) Twenty Lectures: Sociological Theory Since World War II. New York: Columbia University Press .
6.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1987b) ‘Action and its Environments’, in Jeffrey C. Alexander , Bernhard Giesen , Richard Munch , and Neil J. Smelser (eds) The Micro-Macro Link, pp. 289-318. Berkeley: University of California Press .
7.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1988a) ‘The New Theoretical Movement’, in Neil J. Smelser (ed.) Handbook of Sociology, pp. 77-101. Newbury Park, CA: Sage .
8.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (ed.) (1988b) Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
9.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1988c) ‘Culture and Political Crisis: “Watergate” and Durkheimian Sociology’, in Jeffrey C. Alexander (ed.) Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies, pp. 187-224. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
10.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1988d) ‘Introduction: Durkheimian Sociology and Cultural Studies Today’, in Jeffrey C. Alexander (ed.) Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies, pp. 1-21. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
11.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1991) ‘Bringing Democracy Back In: Universalistic Solidarity and the Civil Sphere’, in Charles Lemert (ed.) Intellectuals and Politics: Social Theory in a Changing World, pp. 157-176. Newbury Park, CA: Sage .
12.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1992a) ‘The Promise of a Cultural Sociology: Technological Discourse and the Sacred and Profane Information Machine’, in Richard Munch and Neil J. Smelser (eds) Theory of Culture, pp. 293-323. Berkeley: University of California Press .
13.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1992b) ‘Citizen and Enemy as Symbolic Classification: On the Polarizing Discourse of Civil Society’, in Michele Lamont and Marcel Fournier (eds) Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality, pp. 289-308. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press .
14.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1993) ‘The Return to Civil Society’ , Contemporary Sociology22: 797-803 .
15.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1995a) ‘The Reality of Reduction: The Failed Synthesis of Pierre Bourdieu’, in Fin de Siècle Social Theory: Relativism, Reduction, and the Problem of Reason, pp. 128-217. London and New York: Verso .
16.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1995b) Fin de Siècle Social Theory: Relativism, Reduction, and the Problem of Reason. London and New York: Verso .
17.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1996) ‘Collective Action, Culture, and Civil Society: Secularizing, Updating, Inverting, Revising and Displacing the “Classical Model” of Social Movements’, in Jon Clark and Marco Diani (eds) Alain Touraine, pp. 205-234. Brighton: Falmer Press .
18.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (ed.) (1997) Real Civil Societies: The Dilemmas of Institutionalization. Newbury Park, CA: Sage .
19.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1998) ‘After Neofunctionalism: Action, Culture, and Civil Society’, in Jeffrey C. Alexander (ed.) Neofunctionalism and After, pp. 210-233. Malden, MA: Blackwell .
20.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (2001a) ‘Robust Utopias and Civil Repairs’ , International Sociology16(4): 579-592 .
21.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (2001b) ‘The Long and Winding Road: Civil Repair of Intimate Injustice’ , Sociological Theory19(3): 371-400 .
22.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (2001c) ‘On the Social Construction of Moral Universalism: The “Holocaust” from War Crime to Trauma Drama’ , European Journal of Social Theory5(1): 5-85 .
23.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (2003) The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press .
24.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. (forthcoming) Possibilities of Justice: Civil Society and its Contradictions.
25.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. and Seidman, Steven (1990) Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
26.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. and Smith, Philip (1993) ‘The Discourse of American Civil Society: A New Proposal for Cultural Studies’ , Theory and Society22: 151-207 .
27.
Alexander, Jeffrey C. and Smith, Philip (2003) ‘The Strong Program in Cultural Sociology: Elements of a Structural Hermeneutics’, in The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology, pp. 11-26. Oxford: Oxford University Press .
28.
Archer, Margaret S. (1988) Culture and Agency: The Place of Culture in Social Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
29.
Chan, Elaine (1999) ‘Structural and Symbolic Centers: Center Displacement in the 1989 Chinese Student Movement’ , International Sociology14: 337-354 .
30.
Edles, Laura Desfor (1995) ‘Rethinking Democratic Transition: A Culturalist Critique and the Spanish Case’ , Theory and Society24: 355-384 .
31.
Edles, Laura Desfor (1998) Symbol and Ritual in the New Spain: The Transition to Democracy after Franco. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
32.
Emirbayer, Mustafa (1992a) ‘The Shaping of a Virtuous Citizenry: Educational Reform in Massachusetts, 1830-1860’ , Studies in American Political Development6: 391-419 .
33.
Emirbayer, Mustafa (1992b) ‘Beyond Structuralism and Voluntarism: The Politics and Discourse of Progressive School Reform, 1890-1930’ , Theory and Society21: 621-664 .
34.
Emirbayer, Mustafa (1996) ‘Useful Durkheim’ , Sociological Theory14: 109-130 .
35.
Emirbayer, Mustafa and Goldberg, Chad (forthcoming) ‘Collective Emotions in Political Life’ , Theory and Society.
36.
Emirbayer, Mustafa and Goodwin, Jeff (1994) ‘Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency’ , American Journal of Sociology99: 1411-1454 .
37.
Hays, Sharon (1994) ‘Structure and Agency and the Sticky Problem of Culture’ , Sociological Theory12: 57-72 .
38.
Jacobs, Ronald N. (1996) ‘Civil Society and Crisis: Culture, Discourse, and the Rodney King Beating’ , American Journal of Sociology101: 1238-1272 .
39.
Jacobs, Ronald N. (2000) Race, Media, and the Crisis of Civil Society: From Watts to Rodney King. Chicago: University of Chicago Press .
40.
Kane, Anne E. (1991) ‘Cultural Analysis in Historical Sociology: The Analytical and Concrete Forms of the Autonomy of Culture’ , Sociological Theory9: 53-69 .
41.
Kane, Anne E. (1997) ‘Theorizing Meaning Construction in Social Movements: Symbolic Structures and Interpretation during the Irish Land War, 1879-1882’ , Sociological Theory15: 249-276 .
42.
Kane, Anne E. (forthcoming) Meaning Construction, Political Alliance and the Irish Land War.
43.
Ku, Agnes S. (1998) ‘Boundary Politics in the Public Sphere: Openness, Secrecy, and Leakage’ , Sociological Theory16: 172-190 .
44.
Ku, Agnes S. (1999) Narratives, Politics, and the Public Sphere: Struggles over Political Reform in the Final Transitional Years in Hong Kong (1992-1994). Aldershot: Ashgate .
45.
Ku, Agnes S. (2001) ‘The “Public” Up Against the State: Narrative Cracks and Credibility Crisis in Postcolonial Hong Kong’ , Theory, Culture, and Society18: 121-144 .
46.
Rambo, Eric (1995) ‘Conceiving Best Outcomes within a Theory of Utility Maximization: A Culture-Level Critique’ , Sociological Theory13: 145-162 .
47.
Rambo, Eric and Chan, Elaine (1990) ‘Text, Structure, and Action in Cultural Sociology’ , Theory and Society19: 635-648 .
48.
Seidman, Steven (1997) ‘The End of Sociological Theory’, in Difference Troubles: Queering Social Theory and Sexual Politics, pp. 43-60. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .
49.
Sewell, William H., Jr. (1992) ‘A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation’ , American Journal of Sociology98: 1-29 .
50.
Sewell, William H., Jr. (1999) ‘The Concept(s) of Culture’, in Victoria E. Bonnell and Lynn Hunt (eds) Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture, pp. 35-61. Berkeley: University of California Press .
51.
Sherwood, Steven Jay (1994) ‘Narrating the Social: Postmodernism and the Drama of Democracy’ , Journal of Narrative and Life History4: 69-88 .
52.
Sherwood, Steven Jay , Smith, Philip and Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1993) ‘The British Are Coming... Again! The Hidden Agenda of ‘Cultural Studies” ’ , Contemporary Sociology22: 370-375 .
53.
Smith, Philip (1991) ‘Codes and Conflict: Toward a Theory of War as Ritual’ , Theory and Society20: 103-138 .
54.
Smith, Philip (2001) Cultural Theory: An Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell .
55.
Somers, Margaret R. (1995a) ‘What’s Political or Cultural about Political Culture and the Public Sphere? Toward an Historical Sociology of Concept Formation’ , Sociological Theory13: 113-144 .
56.
Somers, Margaret R. (1995b) ‘Narrating and Naturalizing Civil Society and Citizenship Theory: The Place of Political Culture and the Public Sphere’ , Sociological Theory13: 229-274 .
57.
Tilly, Charles (1998) Durable Inequality. Berkeley: University of California Press .
58.
White, Harrison C. (1992) Identity and Control: A Structural Theory of Social Action. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press .
59.
White, Harrison C. (2000) ‘Modeling Discourse In and Around Markets’ , Poetics27: 117-134 .
