A noteworthy development that has transpired in American sociology in the past quarter century has been the increasingly sophisticated interest in the analysis of human cultural systems. Sadly, however, these analyses reveal that social scientists rarely appreciate the profoundly evolutionary aspects of human culture. The chief purpose of this essay is to address this shortcoming and to offer some tentative suggestions toward its rectification. The essay begins by briefly reviewing recent developments in the analysis of cultural systems, primarily by reference (...) to the influential work of Wuthnow. Second, a common flaw in these approaches is addressed—namely, the absence of any recognition of the value of grounding sociocultural theory in an informed evolutionary framework—and the case is made that this shortcoming is avoidable, even within the context of the intellectual traditions of the social sciences. Third, the evolutionary foundations of human cultural behavior are explored in terms of an analysis of relevant theoretical and empirical developments in the evolutionary neurosciences. Fourth, the value of these insights is illustrated by reference to an evolutionary critique of a recent and thought-provoking contribution to the study of modern political culture—Douglas and Wildavsky’s analysis ofRisk and Culture. Finally, the article concludes by emphasizing the value of and the necessity for incorporating evolutionary reasoning into the domain of sociocultural theory. (shrink)

This article remedies the divide in the theory of cultural performance between contingent strategy and cultural structure by bringing scene back in. Scene fuses components of performance and links local performance to macrolevel cultural structures and historical events. I theorize two conceptual elements: scene-act ratio and event-scene link. A scene creates an emotive context that demands consistent and timely performance; features of macrolevel events shape the emotive context of the scene. The two concepts can be deployed to explain variation in (...) performance effectiveness. The theory is illustrated in a comparative study of Chinese leaders' empathetic performance in disasters. (shrink)

This article is designed to explore the concept of the social sphere and its relations to public life. `Social sphere' here refers to a societal self-organization to create a common cultural landscape on which various forms of performance and public drama are staged, and through which a social bond among strangers is created and public life maintained. It is argued that different societies have different kinds of social spheres with distinctive forms of cultural performance, and thus create various types of (...) public life. Through a genealogical exploration, four kinds of social spheres (religious ceremonies, public festivals, recreation and consumption), associated with four types of performance (ritual, spectacular, theatrical and magical) are identified. The social transformation of the nature of public life is thereby explored. It is here that I see the structural source of modern individualism and its relations to cultural performance. (shrink)

Gay neighborhoods across the United States are de-concentrating in today’s so-called “post-gay” era as sexual minorities assimilate into the mainstream and disperse across the city. This context creates a problem of measurement. If by “culture” we mean to say a particular way of life of a group or subgroup of people like sexual minorities, and if that way of life is blending with other aspects of the metropolis, then how can we detect distinct urban sexual cultures? In this article, I (...) use 125 interviews with Chicago residents to propose a two-pronged strategy. First, gay neighborhoods continue to house anchor institutions, despite ongoing residential out-migrations. These are the primary engines of community building, and they locate the material culture of a group in a specific place. Commemorations serve as a second indicator for a culture, and they too put meanings into form. Although it is a fact of city life that all neighborhoods change, anchors and commemorations are analytic devices that scholars can use to observe urban sexual cultures. More generally, they provide a framework for how to measure the shifting geographic profile of a historically stigmatized group as it experiences positive change in public opinion. (shrink)

Sociological studies of culture have made significant progress on conceptual clarification of the concept, while remaining comparatively quiescent on questions of measurement. This study empirically examines internal conflicts (or “infighting”), a ubiquitous phenomenon in political organizing, to propose a “resinous culture framework” that holds promise for redirection. The data comprise 674 newspaper articles and more than 100 archival documents that compare internal dissent across two previously unstudied lesbian and gay Marches on Washington. Analyses reveal that activists use infighting as a (...) vehicle to engage in otherwise abstract definitional debates that provide concrete answers to questions such as who are we and what do we want. The mechanism that enables infighting to concretize these cultural concerns is its coupling with fairly mundane and routine organizational tasks. This mechanism affords one way to release the culture concept, understood here as collective self-definitions, from being “an amorphous, indescribable mist which swirls around society members,” as it was once provocatively described. (shrink)

Analysts of political culture within the "civil religion" tradition have generally assumed that discourse in civil society is structured by a single set of enduring codes based on liberal traditions that actors draw upon to resolve crises. Based on two case studies of national crises and debate in Brazil during its transition to democracy, I challenge this assumption by demonstrating that not only do actors draw upon two distinct but interrelated codes, they actively seek to impose one or another as (...) dominant. In Brazil this is manifest in actors who defend elements from the code of liberty and its valuation of the freestanding citizen, and those who defend the corporate code and its valuation of the collectivity over the individual. In an earlier debate on crime the corporate code was dominant, but in a later debate surrounding presidential improprieties, the liberal code became dominant. This analysis makes two contributions to the literature: it highlights the importance of nonindividualist cultural codes, such as the corporate code, in animating discourse in the public sphere in democratizing societies, raising attention to the importance of the symbolic contestation between actors seeking to establish one or another code during political transitions. Second, it offers a subtle commentary on the literature on democratization: changes in collective representations in the public sphere may not proceed apace of institutional changes and may be contingent on the kinds of crisis events and actors willing to contest previously dominant codes. (shrink)