The Cultural Turn
 Cultural Sociology and Cultural Studies

Organized by Roger Friedland and John Mohr

 

                                                                                                                      

University of California,                                                    

Santa Barbara                                                                                        

February 14-16, 1997                                                                                                                                                               

With Featured Guest Speakers:
John Hall (UC Davis)
Jeffrey Alexander (UCLA)
Steven Seidman (SUNY Albany)
Sherry Ortner (Columbia University)
Paul DiMaggio (Princeton University)
Margaret Somers (University of Michigan)
Nancy Fraser (New School for Social Research)
Mark Schneider (Southern Illinois University)
Magali Sarfatti-Larson (Temple University)
Eviatar Zerubavel (Rutgers University)

 

Conference organized by Roger Friedland and John Mohr.  Sponsored by the ASA Culture Section, the ASA Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline, UCSB College of Letters and Sciences, and the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center.   For information about attending and/or participating in the conference contact Rachel Luft, Department of Sociology,  University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9430, Email:  6500rel@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

 

Over the last several years, cultural sociologists have increasingly drawn or withdrawn from new interpretive approaches in the humanities which have sought sites of representation and discourse far from canonical works of art, ranging not only into popular culture, but into the manuals of bookeepers and navigator's maps.  Some have sought insights in deconstruction as well as myriad poststructural approaches.  Some of the most exciting work has come from feminist scholars working in a variety of fields.   In turn, many humanists have looked for concepts and problematics in divergent social theoretical approaches ranging from Geertz, and Bourdieu to Habermas.  Some of us are excited, other perplexed or indifferent, and still others hostile to these transgressions and transpositions.  Anti-foundational thinking has been particularly vexing.

 

Our conference is intended, in part, to be a site where cultural analysts can consider some of these issues, can see how some of the best practitioners from both perspectives have considered the stakes involved, have made their choices and with what consequences for their actual work.  This conference is not meant to be an intellectual contest, a site for religious battle, but as a context where we can explore inquisitively, playfully, aggressively in terms of concrete work.

 

The panels: 

 

Nancy Fraser (philosopher, feminist studies, literary theory, social historian) will give the plenary on interest and identity based on her new historical research.  Elizabeth Long, Steven Seidman and Mark Schneider will discuss the state of play--theoretically and episemologically. A panel on products and production of culture will include Constance Penley (film theorist), Mayfair Yang (anthropologist working on third world public sphere), Bill Bielby, Denise Bielby and Harvey Molotch (cultural sociologists). A panel on culture in history includes Margaret Somers and John Hall. A panel on the sacred includes Jeffrey Alexander, Eviatar Zerubavel and Richard Hecht (historian of religions ).

 

"Book" Seminars:

 

There will also be a series of seminars based on texts--published and unpublished, with the author and two commentators/critics. Participants will be able to sign up for one seminar. It is expected--just like any seminar--that the text will have been read beforehand.  If the text is not published, we will distribute it. This will be chance to interact with writers, to inquire how they developed their ideas, the choices they made, their  afterthoughts and the issues they feel are unresolved and the agendas they feel are pressing now.  And it will be a chance to chew over some great books or fragments thereof at a very high level.  The people and their works who have agreed to participate include:

 

Jeff Alexander and John HallÑcomparing their essays "The Discourse of American Civil Society: A New Proposal for Cultural Studies" (Alexander) and"Public Narratives and the Apocalyptic Sect: From Jonestown to Mount Carmel" (Hall).

Jon Cruz's new book, Culture on the Margins: The Social Uses of Afro-American Music

Paul DiMaggio's essay, "Culture and Cognition: An Interdisciplinary Review"

Simonetta Falsca-Zamponi's new book Fascist Spectacle:  The Aesthetics of Power in Mussolini's Italy

Avery Gordon's new book Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination

Sherry Ortner's new book, Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture

Constance Penley's new essay "Crackers and Whackers: The White Trashing of Porn"

Magali Sarfatti-Larson's new book, Behind the Postmodern Facade

 

Serving as commentators and discussants on these panels are: Kum-Kum Bhavnani, Julie Carlson, Diane Mackie, Chandra Mukerji, Dwight Reynolds, Richard A. Peterson, Richard Hecht, Robin Wagner-Pacifici, John Sutton, Jean Jacques Courtine, Dana Cuff, Harvey Molotch, Elizabeth Long, Constance Penley, Shirley Lim and Cedric Robinson.

 

Discussion Groups:

 

Finally, we are organizing a series of informal discussion sessions around the following themes: "Subjects" (led by Albert Bergesen and Christopher Newfield), "Classification" (Elvin Hatch/Marc Ventresca), "Ideology" (Paul Lichterman/Giles Gunn), "Boundaries" (Elizabeth Weber/Eviatar Zerubavel), "Lifestyle" (Richard A. Peterson/Andrea Press), "Measurement" (Charles Bazerman/Mustafa Emirbayer), "Identity" (Fred Moten/Richard Flacks) and "Narrative" (Porter Abbott/Margaret Somers). We will invite participants in these groups to write brief (2 page) short essays on these  subjects--copies of which will be distributed by email to all attendees in  advance of the conference.  Everyone who attends will  be invited to participate in this segment of the  conference and all who participate will be listed as a  presenter on the main program.

 

If you want to come, please email or write Rachel Luft at 6500rel@ucsbuxa.ucsb.edu or at the  Department of Sociology, UCSB, Santa Barbara, California, 93106. Registration for faculty is $25, for graduate students $15. Please indicate which book seminar you wish to attend and which discussion group you wish to participate in (and please give us first and second choices for each of these as we will be trying to keep the seminar sizes down to manageable levels).  Also send us your address and telephone number. We're going to provide great burritos, some interesting conversation and a chance to be in California in February.  Please come and join us.

 

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