Abstract
Since his first sociological publication in 1978 (on formal and substantive volunteerism in the work of Parsons) and the publication a few years later of his four-volume Theoretical Logic in Sociology, Jeffrey Alexander has proven to be a formidable figure in the theory world. During his prolific career—with a publication record that includes nearly 60 authored or edited books and hundreds of journal articles—one can identify distinct stages. In the earliest, his work was largely exegetical, calling for a reconsideration of the Parsonian legacy at a moment when it was at its nadir. This led to the second stage, during which his growing disenchantment with elements of Parsonian theory led to his promotion of a corrective in the form of what he called neofunctionalism. By the 1980s, he became one of the many in the discipline who made the “cultural turn.” His move from UCLA to Yale led to the establishment of a Center for Cultural Sociology in New Haven and a commitment to what he and his colleague Philip Smith called the “strong program in cultural sociology.” Within the parameters of this program, he produced an original and complex theory of civil society, The Civil Sphere, and has written extensively on such topics as political performance, cultural trauma, and iconicity.
I note all this because it points to the challenge that University of Quebec sociologist Jean-François Côté has undertaken in attempting to write a concise overview of, as the title of his book indicates, Alexander's cultural sociology. A thorny question regarding the span of Alexander's career is how to frame the embrace of cultural sociology in relation to what came before. Can one speak of this relation as something akin to Louis Althusser's claim that an epistemological break occurred between the young and the mature Marx? Or is the opposite the case: the entire body of work should be construed as a seamless whole? Or is the truth somewhere in between these polarities? If the third is correct, a new set of thorny questions arises concerning how much of the early work was abandoned, how much revised, and how much retained.
Côté does not address this question head on, and there is some degree of ambiguity in what he writes. He begins by attempting to locate the strong program in terms of the evolution of Alexander's thought, noting for example that by the mid-1980s Alexander was writing about the hermeneutical challenge, with particular reference to the work of Clifford Geertz. In Côté’s account, it was not a wholehearted turn to culture that occurred in the 1980s, but rather an attempt to engage in theoretical repair, transcending the perceived shortcomings of Parsons's version of functionalism by advocating for a revisionist neofunctionalism. This set the stage for the next theoretical move to the strong program, which Côté explains in the following way: “By leaving aside the name of neofunctionalism in favor of cultural sociology, Alexander does not so much disavow the roots of his approach as specify the object on which it will henceforth focus” (p. 22). Missing from this discussion is a sense of what makes the strong program strong in contrast to alternative versions of cultural sociology.
The following three chapters are devoted to assessing Alexander's reading of select figures in classical and contemporary theory. The first turns to his rereading of Durkheim, with its emphasis on the later Durkheim, where it can be said that the French theorist had experienced his own cultural turn. Côté sees this new appreciation of Durkheim as instrumental to informing Alexander's efforts to forge an empirical sociology devoted to the symbolic forms of meaning in social life. In contrast, the following chapter looks at three instances where Alexander critiques and distances himself from others. This includes Marx and two currents of cultural studies rooted in different ways in Marxian ideas: the Birmingham and Frankfurt Schools. It then turns to Bourdieu. Côté’s summary is on target, though it doesn't fully capture Alexander's unequivocally negative bottom-line assessment, see in the following summary: “Bourdieu’s sociology is irredeemably flawed, in theoretical as well as in empirical terms, and ultimately in ideological and moral terms as well” (Alexander 1995:130). The following chapter turns to “Weber and Beyond.” Weber's significance is succinctly summarized in terms of his sociology of the major monotheistic religions, the attempts to overcome the antinomy between materialism and idealism, and his contribution to understanding rationality. The “beyond” section of the chapter departs Weber by turning to Durkheimian-influenced understandings of civil religion.
The two concluding chapters return to Alexander's own work, the first concerned with his original contribution to civil society theorizing and the second to what Côté characterizes as “the power of representation and the representation of power.” Perhaps because ever since The Civil Sphere appeared, I have been engaged with a cadre of scholars intent on advancing civil sphere theory as an ongoing project and have published extensively on it, I found the 22 pages devoted to the topic disappointing. It does not do justice to a literature on civil society dating to the eighteenth century that serves as a precursor to and foil against Alexander's own take, and it is simply not true that he chose “to distance himself from the concept of ‘civil society’ when it made a comeback” in late twentieth-century sociology (p. 84). The relevance of Parsons's idea of the societal community on the civil sphere concept is a topic of debate within civil sphere theory circles (compare Alexander to Giuseppe Sciortino), one that does not get traction in this chapter. Moreover, there are a lot of moving parts to the theory. This is cultural sociology, to be sure, but part of its distinctive character has to do with how societal institutions are related to one another. Unlike most competing theories that operate with a tripartite view of societal divisions—state, market, and civil society—Alexander insists that not everything outside of the state and market is part of civil society. At the same time, given the centrality of both communicative institutions and regulative institutions, the precise nature of the relationship between civil society and the state is more complicated than other theories recognize. Unlike the role of social movements to the theory, these two institutional complexes receive short shrift.
The end of this chapter and the following one on power point to concurrent strands of Alexander's cultural sociology theorizing, including his work on cultural trauma, power and political performance, and iconicity—strands of thought pitched at the level of middle-range theory intended to promote future research programs. Côté, understandably, does not attempt to pull all of these strands together into a neat systemic package, in this regard being faithful to the trajectory of Alexander's work. Rather, he points to the various ways in which this rich lode of theoretical work can serve as the basis for future developments by the growing network of scholars invested in cultural sociology and civil sphere theory. And in his conclusion, Côté reminds the reader of the normative intent of such work, which is to contribute to better understanding the prospects and the perils of creating “a democratic, inclusive, solidary, and just society” (p. 121). His short introduction to this project, my criticisms aside, succeeds in making a valuable contribution and is deserving of a wide readership.