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Acknowledgments
I am grateful for all my many encounters and conversations over the years with cultural sociologists who have developed the field from its inception to its diversity and strength today. They have made cultural sociology an intellectual home I could not have imagined when I first wondered long ago why sociologists did not seem to talk about culture. Among all these colleagues over the years, I have been particularly fortunate in the support, encouragement, and friendship of Jeffrey Alexander, Nina Eliasoph, Paul Lichterman, and Ann Swidler, even though each of them might well critique the picture of the field presented in this book.
I also thank Jonathan Skerrett, who motivated the project, Karina Jákupsdóttir, for her patience in seeing it through, and Justin Dyer, for his impressive copy-editing. The manuscript benefited from the comments of three anonymous reviewers. Michael Strand also offered helpful comments. Colleagues and students in Sociology at the University of Notre Dame create a stimulating environment for doing cultural sociology, and certainly enriched the picture presented here in many ways. Rebecca Overmyer provided enormous help by preserving time for this work among other responsibilities. Rachel Keynton, Robert Mowry, and Lilly Watermoon contributed essential background research at different stages of the project. I benefited from extended critical conversation on many of the topics included here with participants in my cultural sociology seminars. Especially fond thanks go to the seventy students who have worked with me over the years in preparation for advanced field examinations: I always finish our meetings feeling privileged by the opportunity. Russell Faeges helps in all these ways and many more and I thank him, too, for his sustained support.
1 Introduction
Sociology teaches us about human groups and human interactions, how they work, and how they influence our lives. Cultural sociology investigates the meanings people attach to their groups and interactions. What do their groups mean to people, where do those various meanings come from, and how do those meanings influence what they do?
For all of us as human creatures, meaning is as essential to our existence as infant care or water. Our lives are full of meaning and meaning-making. Sometimes our ideas and values are totally taken for granted. We are supported and sustained by perceptions of the world which seem natural and inevitable, passed on to us implicitly by those who raise us. Our meaning-making is like breathing, and we don’t notice the air that surrounds us.
At other times – and more and more often – we encounter different ideas about what is really meaningful. Encountering differences can be fascinating and helps us learn more about ourselves. Sometimes, though, cultural differences may give us “culture shock,” and disagreements challenging the ideas we take for granted may seem like “culture wars.” Modern life makes escalating cultural difference unavoidable, even as it also offers exponentially increasing opportunities for sharing meaning through mass and social media.
Cultural sociology offers concepts and methods to help explore meaning-making – familiar meanings we share, strange and unfamiliar meanings, and those we dispute with others. To start noticing the meaning-making all around us, we can orient ourselves by thinking about different rituals, symbols, values, norms, and categories.
Rituals, symbols, values, norms, and categories
As big, splashy, intentional, repetitive events distinct from everyday life, rituals clearly highlight culture and cultural difference. Weddings, graduations, pep rallies, religious services, birthday celebrations, and patriotic holidays – all of these are ritual events expressing the meanings of our social relationships. For example, new family commitments are expressed in wedding rituals, and shared national identity is expressed in patriotic holidays like July 4th or Bastille Day.
Because rituals are intentionally distinct from everyday life, they make cultural differences obvious. For instance, while graduations everywhere mark students’ transitions to the social status of graduate, different peoples do graduations differently. In New Zealand, unlike elsewhere, a university graduation begins with a traditional Maori welcome, with a Maori man blowing a conch shell, and a “Kairanga,” or call, by two Maori women in traditional dress. The chancellor of the university then offers a welcome in the Maori language, before the graduation ceremony proceeds much as it would anywhere else in the English-speaking world. To take another example of the ways ritual highlights cultural difference, even though national holidays everywhere celebrate history and patriotism, Norway’s “Children’s Parade,” coordinated by schools in every town (Elgenius 2011, 119–22), looks different to July 4th fireworks in the United States, or the glamorous military parades and local fire-station dances of France’s Bastille Day. Other peoples’ rituals condense cultural difference and draw attention to stories and symbols their participants may take for granted as “natural.” They may also condense unfamiliar histories and traces of conflict – highlighting, for instance, the residual effects of Maori resistance to the white (“pakeha”) invasion of New Zealand in the mid-nineteenth century, or, in Norway, strategic efforts to claim Norwegian identity and independence from Sweden later in that century (Elgenius 2011, 119).
Sometimes, too, conflict and disagreement over meaning become vivid in ritual processes. A protest march with large signs and chants dramatizes political dispute. So too do celebrities wearing colors or badges supporting controversial causes while they announce prizewinners at the Oscars.
Whatever the mix of consensus, difference, and dispute in big ritual events, they make vivid assertions about the meanings of our groups and social relationships and demonstrate cultural difference. But cultural differences extend beyond the bright highlights of unfamiliar ritual. Moving into any new setting, we also encounter less obvious differences to surprise us.
We encounter different symbols. Language is often an obvious symbolic difference, but even if we share a language, new vocabulary and diction can make communicating with someone from a different subculture or region a little strange. (Should you be asking for a “soda,” “pop,” “cool drink,” “soft drink,” or even “frappé”? What exactly is a “freshman”?) And symbolic differences run much deeper than language. Many symbols are highlighted in ritual events – such as team mascots, religious images, and national flags. But symbolism also pervades everyday life. Uniforms symbolize membership of teams, schools, the military, and many workplaces. T-shirts emblazon us with our tastes and tribes. Different genders are symbolized by different clothes almost everywhere. (Why don’t most men wear skirts in Western countries? What’s the point of high heels?) Even simple colors can mean different things. (Is black more associated with death than white, or vice versa? What are the different meanings of wearing a pink ribbon, a red ribbon, or a yellow ribbon?) And consumerism creates an even more complex symbolic universe. (Which sneakers will convey the best impression?)
Shared symbols ease communication, but we hesitate and puzzle over symbols that are new to us. We might ask for an explanation of a military medal, or an unfamiliar image on a road sign or a coin or a t-shirt. If we encounter symbols that are too unfamiliar – like the social difference between wearing a toga and a tunic in ancient Rome, or the lined and dotted rock paintings of Aboriginal groups – we need to learn the meanings just as we might learn a new language. And beyond taken-for-granted consensus and unfamiliar cultural difference, symbols express power, challenge, and conflict. Crowns and private airplanes are symbols
