Meaning and Moral Order: Explorations in Cultural Analysis

CHAPTER ONE. Cultural Analysis

C H A P T E R O N E Cultural Analysis The founders of sociology all recognized the importance of culturein social life. Emile Durkheim spent nearly fifteen years at the peak of his career investigating the beliefs and rituals of primitive religion in an effort to grasp the symbolic bases of moral community. Max Weber was concerned with problems of cultureto an even greater extent. From the Protestant ethic thesis to contributions on rationalization and comparative religions, his work was prominently oriented toward the values and norms that regulate and legitimate social institutions. From a quite different perspective, Karl Marx dealt extensively with ideology and class consciousness, with religion and legitimation, and with the bases of social knowledge. Other contributors—Toennies, Troeltsch, Tocqueville, Spencer, to name a few—were also deeply concerned with the role of culture in society. The legacy of the classical period has been carried forward in the work of more recent sociologists and social scientists whose interests have also given special consideration to the patterning and functioning of culture. In Talcott Parsons one finds a clear emphasis, deriving particularly from Durkheim and Weber, on the importance of values and norms. Similar interests are prominent in the work of sociologists who came under Parsons's influence: for example, in Neil Smelser's work on collective behavior, in Robert Bellah's sociology of religion, and in Clifford Geertz's essays on the interpretation of cultures. Durkheim's legacy is evident in Kai Erikson's studies of ritual and deviance, in Guy E. Swanson's investigations of the social bases of belief, and in Mary Doug1 las's work on symbolic boundaries and moral order. All these examples demonstrate the importance of culture as an object of sociological inquiry . Weber's legacy has included a number of significant extensions of the Protestant ethic thesis, such as Robert Merton's work on Puritanism and science, Bellah's monograph on Tokugawa religion, and studies of English history such as those of David Little and Michael Walzer, as well as broader applications such as Ernst Troeltsch's work on the varieties of religion and Benjamin Nelson's study of usury. Marx's considerations on culture have been greatly expanded in the work of writers such as Georg Lukacs, Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, and Jiirgen Habermas. In each instance the fundamental role of culture in society has been recognized. To say this without qualification, however, is clearly to misrepresent thefield. Although it is possible to point out specific studies in sociology that have contributed greatly to the understanding of culture, the disciplineas a whole has not given particular prominence to the importance ofculture. In fact, culture often appears in empirical studies as a vague concept to which relatively superficial attention is given or as an outmoded form of explanation that must be superseded by factors of greater objectivityand significance. Other studies ignore it entirely. These tendencies, of course, are not nearly as pronounced in European sociology, where thelinkages between philosophy, social theory, and sociology remain stronger. In American sociology, though, the general tendency toward de-emphasizing culture iswell in evidence. Severalindications of this tendency are particularly apparent. For example, the once flourishing subfield known as culture and personality has largelyreceded as a legitimate area of concentration . The personality component has shifted increasinglyinto thediscipline of psychology, while the idea of culture, especiallynational culture, having a decisive impact on personality has become widelyregarded as an arcane concept. Or to take a different example, the sociology of religion —one area in which cultural factors are given much attention— appears to have become increasinglyremoved from the rest of the discipline . This separation js evident not only in the existence of separate journals and scholarly organizations but also in an obvious dissimilarity between the major concepts and theories that guide research. Major contributions in the sociology of religion dealing with dimensions of belief, sources of conversion, the functioning of rituals and symbols, and modes of religious organization appear to have had virtuallyno impact on the discipline at large. Other examples could also be mentioned, from the shifting of many of the more culturalaspects of social psychology such as 2 Cultural Analysis cognition and attitude formation into psychology and away from sociology , to the tendency evident in recent yearsin political sociology to de-emphasize the role of political culture. It is perhaps arguable that political science as a discipline has continued to display greater interest...