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This introductory chapter discusses the theme of this volume, which is about social life and cultural sociology. The chapters in this volume can be considered as adventures in the dialectics of cultural thought as they move back and forth between theorizing and researching, between interpretations and explanations, between cultural logics and cultural pragmatics. This volume presents a new approach for understanding how culture works in contemporary societies and shows how some unseen cultural structures translate into concrete actions and institutions.

This chapter explores the concept of the cultural sociology of evil. It explains that for every effort to institutionalize comforting and inspiring images of the socially good and right, there is an interlinked and equally determined effort to construct social evil in a horrendous, frightening, and equally realistic way. It discusses the systematic crystallization and elaboration of evil by institutions and societies in their pursuit of the good. It also discusses the intellectual roots of the displacement of evil, the displacement of evil in contemporary social science and the transgression and the affirmation of evil and good.

In dialogue with recent developments in cultural sociology, this chapter looks at the forms of discourse generated by movement activists in response to the multiple relations in which they are involved. Networks are reinterpreted as multiple, cross‐cutting sets of social relations sustained by conversational dynamics within social settings. They are at the same time the location for the development of movement solidarities and for the transmission of messages, identity, etc. across movements. The chapter identifies several conversational mechanisms that characterize the process of network construction and reproduction. It also introduces a technique, Galois lattices, to map the complexity of conjunctures of actors and events in a dynamic way.

This chapter examines the information machine in the context of cultural sociology. It argues that the theory underlying the proposition about the possibility of a purely technical rationality is not correct because both human action and its environments are indelibly interpenetrated by the nonrational. It discusses socioscientific understandings of technology and suggests that far from being empirical accounts based on objective observations and interpretations, they represent simply another version of technocratic discourse itself.

This chapter examines in more abstract terms how universities, in combination with the broader political culture, cultivate distinctive styles of conservatism among students. It reviews research in the fields of higher education studies, cultural sociology, political theory, and organization studies to capture some of the more general processes observed at Eastern Elite University and Western Flagship University. In particular, it considers how social and cultural capital gives rise to the particular dominant conservative styles of civilized discourse at Eastern Elite, provocation in the Western Public university system, and the submerged styles seen at these different campuses. The chapter concludes by arguing that the model developed for studying student conservatism on both campuses is general enough to be useful to scholars studying other aspects of students' lives other than politics.

This chapter introduces the distinction between ontological and cultural sociological theories of the sacred, which respectively understand the sacred to be grounded in the essence of the cosmos or human person or to be culturally constructed. The limitations of ontological approaches are discussed, and an initial outline of a cultural sociological understanding of the sacred is developed through a critical re-reading of the work of Emile Durkheim. Rejecting Durkheim’s social ontology and his relatively undifferentiated concept of the profane, the chapter concludes by offering an initial definition of the sacred as that which people take to be a non-contingent reality which exerts an unquestionable moral claim over social life, and of sacred forms as specific instantiations of the sacred.

Humanitarian NGOs receive wide support from donors, policymakers, and diplomats, despite a lively scholarly debate about their effectiveness and ethical grounding. How did the humanitarian NGO sector attain such an unusually trusted status? The introduction examines this question in light of existing work on the history and sociology of humanitarian work. It focuses on the central role religion has played in long-distance humanitarian projects, and highlights the mid-nineteenth-century as a key turning point in the development of the humanitarian NGO sector. Building on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and on the Strong Program in Cultural Sociology, the introduction argues that the humanitarian NGO sector achieved its prominent international status through a set of cultural and religious processes occurring in the second half of the nineteenth-century.

This chapter brings the book to a conclusion. I review the contributions this book makes to studies of the Black middle class, critical race theory, cultural sociology, and race and class more broadly. I also examine how my research can open up new studies in cultural sociology, critical race studies, and international perspectives on the Black middle class. The book also reflects on the theme of the book series: racism, resistance, and social change, where I argue that a growth in a Black middle class does not mean there is growing racial equality in Britain.

This chapter develops a concept of agency through which to study power and thereby mobilize the vocabulary proposed in the previous chapter (rector, actor, other). Agency is defined as the ability to send an agent into the world and bind said agent to act on behalf of the sender. This concept is developed via a careful interpretation of the work of the sociologist Julia Adams, whose work on principal-agent theory provided the definitive breakthrough to a new theory of culture and power. It also discusses the concept of "project" at length, relating it to pragmatist action theory, as well as to the work of Simone de Beauvoir. In provides a brief, retrospective rendering of the concerns of Karl Marx and Max Weber in terms of agency theory as well. The chapter proposes a fundamental distinction between action and agency – two terms that are often conflated in sociology. Action is universal – it is what all humans do as they move through the world. Agency is highly variable, and subject to construction and reconstruction in particular ways. The process of sending and binding an agent gives both order and dynamism to action in the world.

This chapter outlines the book’s aims to analyse how racism and anti-racism influence Black middle class cultural consumption. It begins by summarising the colourblind literature on the middle class, which I argue limits our overall understanding of how middle class identity and culture are racialised. I then review the literature on the White and Black middle classes, before positioning the book in relation to these streams of research. The triangle of Black middle class identity is then sketched out, where I argue there are three Black middle class identity modes – strategic assimilation, ethnoracial autonomous, and class-minded – each showing a different relationship between racism, anti-racism, and cultural consumption.

Chapter 1 argues that opinion and news commentary are neglected topics in research literatures about media, democracy and the public sphere. It offers the idea of the space of opinion as a way of conceptualizing the role of opinion in contemporary democracies. The space of opinion is defined as a distinct social space with its own history and cultural logic, located at the chaotic intersection of the journalistic, the political and the academic fields. The chapter concludes with a description of research design, including details about sampling and data collection strategies from six major opinion formats in print and television: The New York Times, USA Today, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Face the Nation, Crossfire, and Hannity & Colmes.

This chapter presents a good introduction to Roger Chartier's, The Cultural Uses of Print in Early Modern France. Fernando de Rojas' prologue clearly indicates the central tension of every history of reading—and this is why he is worthy of consideration. Reading is a creative practice, which invents singular meanings and significations that are not reducible to the intentions of authors of texts or producers of books. Rojas also implies that the history of genres, both textual and typographical, could provide the underpinnings for the history of discourse as formulated by Michel Foucault. Printing lowers the cost of the book's manufacture and shortens the time of production. Cultural history might find a new niche at the crossroads of textual criticism, the history of the book, and cultural sociology.

This chapter develops the language of rector, actor, and other, and of "persons with projects" to work toward a new theory of power. It does so in dialogue with pragmatist theories of action and the theories of Orlando Patterson, Rene Girard, James Coleman, Judith Butler, and G.W.F. Hegel. In hierarchical relations, a figure is elevated to a superior position with enhanced capacity, and to such a figure discretion accrues. This is the person or group who rules, and rule enables the accomplishment of projects. Such mastery—which accrues to rectors—is dependent upon allies and subordinates (actors, who become agents) to whom tasks are delegated and from whom knowledge and expertise are gained, advice is taken, profits are stolen, and value is extracted. Power is dependent on its dependents, and an agent both stands in for, and works on behalf of, the rector. Actor becomes an agent by abdicating, in part, actor's own projects. If actor is an ally to rector, other stands outside the project, profaned. The radical uncertainty that other represents to rector and actor can become an synecdoche for the uncertainty of the world itself. There are four types of extreme alterity: enemy in war, slavery, invisibility, and scapegoat.

This introduction provides an overview of the central issues contained in previously published reviews. It sets the stage for the civil sphere project in terms of the evolution of Alexander’s larger theoretical concerns. It presents a critical review of previously published critiques of Alexander’s understanding of civil society. It then presents an overview of his intellectual career from neo-functionalism to cultural sociology, with a focus on the significance of symbolic structures in helping to promote social solidarity. Finally, the introduction offers brief summaries and analysis of the six commentaries and Alexander’s rejoinder.

In this chapter I argue there are three modes of Black middle class identity, which individuals towards each identity mode adopting specific cultural repertoires. Firstly is the identity mode labelled strategic assimilation. Here, individuals adopt repertoires of code switching and cultural equity; they switch identities when around the White middle class, and strive to consume dominant cultural capital to achieve a cultural equity with White middle class people. Secondly, there are those towards the ethnoracial autonomous identity mode. They reject the strategy of code switching through their repertoire of browning, and through their repertoire of Afro-centrism they prioritise consuming cultural forms which give positive representations of Black diasporic histories, knowledges, and identities. Lastly are those towards the class-minded identity mode. They adopt repertoires of post-racialism – arguing that we are ‘beyond racism’ – and de-racialisation, seeing themselves as ‘middle class’ rather than Black.