Suchergebnisse

In this paper, I outline a general framework for cultural analysis consistent with an "analytic" approach to explanation in social science. The proposed approach provides coherent solutions to thorny problems in cultural theory. These include providing a coherent definition of culture (and the "cultural"), specifying the nature of cultural units (both simple and complex), and outlining the processes making possible episodes of cultural genesis, transformation, and reproduction within bounded units characterized as cultural causal systems.

Aux États-Unis, une sociologie cognitive s'est récemment développée, dans le sillage de la sociologie culturelle, et plus particulièrement du courant « Culture and Cognition ». Omar Lizardo, sociologue à l'Université de Californie à Los Angeles, revient sur ces développements scientifiques, auxquels il a directement contribué. C'est pour lui l'occasion de réfléchir aux logiques de construction d'objet en sciences sociales, aux liens entre (neuro)psychologie et sociologie, ainsi qu'aux façons de penser et de mesurer l'incorporation de dispositions cognitives.

In this paper, I provide a critical examination of Warren Schmaus's recently systematized "functionalist" approach to the study of collective representations. I examine both the logical and the conceptual viability of Schmaus's brand of "functionalism" and the relation between his rational reconstruction and philosophical critique of Durkheim and the latter's original set of proposals. I conclude that, due to its reliance on certain problematic philosophical theses, Schmaus's functionalism ultimately falls short of providing a coherent alternative to the Durkhemian position or serving as a useful starting point from which to understand the origins of abstract categories in concrete experience.

Pierre Bourdieu is without doubt one of the main figures in the sociological study of culture today. Yet, for a theorist so central to the subject matter of cultural studies, it is clear that there is no coherent account of Bourdieu stance in relation to the 'concept of culture' among current commentators. More importantly, in the sister-discipline of anthropology, Bourdieu is thought of as a central figure precisely because he helped move contemporary anthropological theory away from the centrality of the culture concept. This paper reviews this peculiar double reception of Bourdieu's anthropological and sociological work, closely examining these unacknowledged strands of Bourdieu's thinking on culture. The basic argument is that the anthropological reception of Bourdieu's work is more faithful to the outlines of his late-career intellectual development while the sociological portrayal — Bourdieu as a Sausserean culture theorist with a 'Weberian power twist'— is fundamentally misleading. I close by outlining how Bourdieu's work points towards a yet-to-be developed 'post-cultural' stance — one that takes cognition, experience and the body seriously — in the sociological study of culture.