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Zusatztext "This is a powerful claim on behalf of reuniting what has been separated since the beginning of the sociological venture: shapes of acts and their meanings, descriptions of human deeds and their comprehension, the this-worldly and the transcendental, religion and reason, values and facts, the poetry of culture and the prose of the mundane. This claim has been made with the hope of liberating the knowledge of things human from its service to a power that too often struggles to liberate itself form the ethical bonds of humanity. A commanding claim that makes for fascinating reading."--Zygmunt Bauman, author of Modernity and the Holocaust Informationen zum Autor Jeffrey C. Alexander is Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University, and co-Director of the Center for Cultural Sociology. Klappentext In The Meanings of Social Life, Jeffrey Alexander presents a new approach to how culture works in contemporary societies. Exposing our everyday myths and narratives in a series of empirical studies that range from Watergate to the Holocaust, he shows how these unseen yet potent cultural structures translate into concrete actions and institutions. Only when these deep patterns of meaning are revealed, Alexander argues, can we understand the stubborn staying power of violence and degradation, but also the steady persistence of hope. By understanding the darker structures that restrict our imagination, we can seek to transform them. By recognizing the culture structures that sustain hope, we can allow our idealistic imaginations to gain more traction in the world. A work that will transform the way that sociologists think about culture and the social world, this book confirms Jeffrey Alexander's reputation as one of the major social theorists of our day. Zusammenfassung Presents an approach to how culture works in societies. Exposing our everyday myths and narratives in a series of empirical studies that range from Watergate to the Holocaust, this work shows how these unseen cultural structures translate into concrete actions and institutions. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction: The Meanings of (Social) Life: On the Origins of a Cultural Sociology 1: The Strong Program in Cultural Sociology: Elements of a Structural Hermeneutics (with Phillip Smith) 2: On the Social Construction of Moral Universals: The "Holocaust" from War Crime to Trauma Drama 3: Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity 4: A Cultural Sociology of Evil 5: The Discourse of American Civil Society (with Phillip Smith) 6: Watergate as Democratic Ritual 7: The Sacred and Profane Information Machine 8: Modern, Anti, Post, and Neo: How Intellectuals Explain "Our Time" Notes References Index ...
List of contents
- Introduction: The Meanings of (Social) Life: On the Origins of a Cultural Sociology
- 1: The Strong Program in Cultural Sociology: Elements of a Structural Hermeneutics (with Phillip Smith)
- 2: On the Social Construction of Moral Universals: The "Holocaust" from War Crime to Trauma Drama
- 3: Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity
- 4: A Cultural Sociology of Evil
- 5: The Discourse of American Civil Society (with Phillip Smith)
- 6: Watergate as Democratic Ritual
- 7: The Sacred and Profane Information Machine
- 8: Modern, Anti, Post, and Neo: How Intellectuals Explain "Our Time"
- Notes
- References
- Index
