Culture and Society
Contemporary Debates

Brings together the major statements by the leading contemporary scholars of cultural analysis on the relationship between culture and society.

Jeffrey C. Alexander (Edited by), Steven Seidman (Edited by)

9780521359399, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 31 August 1990

384 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.56 kg

'This splendid collection of essays illuminates the vital argument about the importance of culture in social analysis today. Many of the articles are classics in their own right. The book is a major contribution to teaching and research.' Robert N. Bellah, University of California, Berkeley

This volume brings together the major statements by the leading contemporary scholars of cultural analysis on the relationship between culture and society. Part one surveys the range of current analytical debate over culture, focusing on the relationship of culture to social structure and power. Approaches to the study of culture covered include functionalism, semiotics, and Weberian, Durkheimian, and Marxian analysis. While individual contributions differ in defining the nature of culture and its relation to society, they are in agreement in assessing the relative autonomy of culture and the centrality of symbolic analysis. Part two turns to substantive debates, including those over the role of religion, secular ideology, and mass culture and brings to light disputes about the meaning of modernity. The book testifies to the remarkable development in the last two decades of a cultural paradigm for social and political analysis.

Introduction Part I. Analytic Debates: 'Understanding the Relative Autonomy of Culture' introduction
The case for culture 1. The human studies
2. Values and social systems
3. Culture and ideological hegemony
4. Signs and language
Approaches to culture Functionalist 1. The normative structure of science
2. Values and democracy
Semiotic 3. The world of wrestling
4. Food as symbolic code
Dramaturgical 5. Out of frame activity
6. The Balinese cockfight as play
Weberian 7. Puritanism and revolutionary ideology
8. French catholicism and secular grace
Durkheimian: 9. Lininality and community
10. Symbolic pollution
11. Sex as symbol in Victorian purity
Marxian 12. Class formation and ritual
13. Masculinity and factory labor
Post-structuralist: 14. Artistic taste and cultural capital
15. Sexual discourse and power
Part II. Substantive Debates: Moral Order and Crisis: Perspectives on Modern Culture
The Place of Religion: Is modernity a Secular or Sacred Order? Introduction: 1. Social sources of secularization
2. The future of religion Wolfgang 3. Civil religion in America
The debate over the 'End of Ideology': can secular reason create cultural order? 4. Culture industry revisited
5. From consensual order to instrumental control
6. The end of ideology in the west
7. Beyond coercion and crisis: the coming of an era of voluntary community
8. Ideology, the cultural apparatus, and the new consciousness industry
Modernism or post-modernism: dissolution of reconstruction of moral order? 9. Post-modernism and the dissolution of moral order
10. The post-modern condition
11. Modernity versus postmodernity
12. Mapping the post-modern.

Subject Areas: Cultural studies [JFC]