Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

In their formulation of a `strong program' in cultural sociology, Jeffrey C.Alexander and Philip Smith argue that sociology is suffering from a `numbness toward meaning' due to `cultural unmusical scholars'. Clifford Geertz embodied this demanded musicality on, in Geertz's own words, `particular ways of being in the world'. He knew how to do a cultural sociology of symbolic structures, meaning making and performances, but did not found a school and had no party line. He even came to reject theory, which in the mid-1980s forced Alexander to conclude that `we must reluctantly turn away from Geertz'.The aim of this article is to reconcile Geertz with Alexander and the`strong program'. While Alexander rightly criticized Geertz from his turn away from theory, Alexander, at the very same time, missed out on the multidimensional cultural analysis that Geertz kept on doing so well. This is what is being demonstrated.

Keywords

Alexander cultural sociology culture Geertz meaning performance sociology of the arts

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Alexander, J.C. (1983) Theoretical Logic in Sociology, Volume One: Positivism, Presuppositions, and Current Controversies. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Alexander, J.C. (1987) Twenty Lectures: Sociological Theory since World War II. New York: Colombia University Press.

Alexander, J.C. (1988) Action and Its Environment: Toward a New Synthesis . New York: Columbia University Press.

Alexander, J.C. (2006) `Cultural Pragmatics: Social Performances between Ritual and Strategy', in J.C. Alexander et al., Social Performance. Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual, pp. 29-90. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Alexander, J.C. and Smith, P. (2003) `The Strong Program in Cultural Sociology: Elements of a Structural Hermeneutics', in J.C. Alexander The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Apter, D.E. (ed.) (1964) Ideology and Discontent. New York: Free Press of Glencoe.

Bellah, R. (1970) `Civil Religion in America', in R. Bellah Beyond Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditional World, pp. 168-89. New York: Harper and Row.

Cavell, S. (2004) Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters On a Register of Moral Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Darnton, R. (2007) `On Clifford Geertz: Field Notes from the Classroom' , New York Review of Books 54(1): 32-3.

10.

Douglas, M. (2004) Jacob's Tears: The Priestly Work of Reconciliation . Oxford: Oxford University Press .

11.

Geertz, C. (1983) `Art as A Cultural System', in C. Geertz, Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology, pp. 94-120. New York: Basic Books.

12.

Geertz, C. (1993) Interpretation of Cultures. London: Fontana Press.

13.

Geertz, C. (1993 [1964]) `Ideology As a Cultural System', in Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 193-233. London: Fontana Press.

14.

Geertz, C. (1993 [1967]) `Religion as a Cultural System', in Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 87-125. London: Fontana Press.

15.

Geertz, C. (1993 [1972]) `Deep Play: Notes on The Balinese Cockfight', in Interpretation of Cultures, pp. 412-53. London : Fontana Press.

16.

Geertz, C. (1999) A Life of Learning: Charles Homer Haskins Lecture for 1999. American Council of Learned Societies: Occasional Paper, No. 45.

17.

Inglis, F. (2000) Clifford Geertz: Culture, Custom and Ethics. Cambridge: Polity.

18.

Kroeber, A.L. and Kluckhohn, C. (1952) Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions . Paper 47. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.

19.

Shweder, R.A. and Good, B. (2003) Clifford Geertz By His Colleagues. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

20.

Trondman, M. (2006) `Disowning Knowledge: To Be or Not to Be the "Immigrant" in Sweden', Ethnic and Racial Studies 29(3): 431-51.

21.

Trondman, M. (forthcoming) `Bypass Surgery: Rerouting Theory to Ethnographic Study' , in G. Walford (ed.) How to do Educational Ethnography. London: Tufnell Press.

22.

Willis, P. and Trondman, M. (2000) `Manifesto for Ethnography', Ethnography 1(1): 5-16.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

0.12 MB