Abstract
Legitimacy is one of the key areas where power and culture are coordinated; where power is transformed into authority and the right way to do things; and where power convinces, motivates and binds people into its imperative logics. In modern, liberal democratic societies, legitimacy is vital precisely because it can be criticised and contested. In such societies, it has to be continually performed if confidence in it is to be maintained and prolonged. Performance is conceptually central to Jeffrey Alexander’s examination of the dynamics of power in this book. In the first part of it, he sets out his general approach, which he calls cultural pragmatics, outlining how performances draw on general cultural frameworks and resources to generate new scripts that are engaging, persuasive and authentic. In this respect, coming across as authentic is essential in establishing a politician’s credibility. Elsewhere in this book are various case studies, including the Civil Rights movement, 9/11, Barack Obama’s pre- and post-election performances and military intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq. The underlying intention is to show how cultural pragmatics may be applied in different intellectual fields, which is fine, but at times this is done rather too programmatically. Cultural pragmatics can make an important contribution to the sociology of culture, but it is not the be-all and end-all of such sociology, and it remains to be seen how it may be applied beyond performance on the ‘big stage’, as it were, in the contexts and settings of everyday social life. Cultural pragmatics is nonetheless an interesting alternative to other approaches in cultural sociology and certainly good to think with.