Abstract
By their works ye shall know them. This old English phrase, probably derived from a statement in the Gospel of Matthew, yields a good way into the process of reviewing any book, especially one that has a title in the form of a question, such as What is Cultural Sociology? For the phrase suggests that you may know a book not by its cover but by its index and its reference list.
A look at the reference list of this book by Lyn Spillman, one of the USA’s leading practitioners of cultural sociology today, does indeed give a good sense not just of the book but of its presentation (or construction) of what ‘cultural sociology’ is. Looking at the authors with the most references, there are 10 entries for works by Jeffrey C. Alexander, 8 entries for Michèle Lamont, 7 entries for Pierre Bourdieu, 6 entries for both Paul DiMaggio and Richard A. Peterson, 5 entries each for Diana Crane and Wendy Griswold, and 4 entries each for Erving Goffman, Chandra Mukerji, and Eviatar Zerubavel. These – mostly American – authors appear across an introduction and conclusion chapter, plus three substantive chapters, each encompassing meaning-making, the connections between meaning and interaction, and the production of meaning.
Spillman packs a lot into the relatively short span (circa 150 pages) of this book. We get an overview of the cultural sociology field as she constructs it, both in terms of its genesis, its main features, and its current tendencies. She also includes a very large array of references to empirical studies – some well-known, some more obscure but valuable – which apply or highlight the more general and theoretical issues which the book unpacks.
The central strength of the book is its nimble movement between theoretical and empirical elements, and its comprehensive coverage of so many specific studies. The text is essentially an embodiment of the author’s vast and highly detailed knowledge of the field. And it is a great benefit to the cultural-sociological community that such a great deal of learning has been put together in such a clear and compact form. The book is a small triumph of the craft of thoughtful intellectual compression. It can most certainly be used in teaching advanced BA and MA students.
A look at the reference list tells of both presence and absence. Read not from the USA, from whence the text came and to which it seems primarily pitched, but from a UK perspective, we see that a few major cultural sociologists working within or near the British version of the cultural-sociological field, such as Andy Bennett and Alan Warde, are briefly name-checked but not subject to much discussion or attention at all. This is perhaps because the work of such persons does not fit neatly into the underlying assumption and claim of the book – that cultural sociology is primarily and centrally concerned with meaning-making. French and German authors are not really represented, and the obligatory Bourdieu is the Bourdieu appropriated and (re)constructed by scholars in the USA.
This all takes us back to a constantly occurring issue in the world field of ‘cultural sociology’. Obviously, different schools of thought define ‘cultural sociology’ differently, to one degree or another. But Spillman’s account suggests that there is, beyond more surface-level factional disputes, within the US cultural sociology field a general consensus to the effect that the field is essentially a set of studies about meaning. This may well be correct. And it is comprehensively illustrated with reference to the works of major American authors. But if that is how the Americans by and large think what cultural sociology ‘is’, there is no such consensus outside of that national field, either in other national situations or in inter- and trans-national networks and constellations. Beyond meaning, other candidates for the central focus of what cultural sociology is taken to be centrally about, might include today (symbolic) power and (culturally mediated) social inequalities. Some might say that it is not meaning but symbolism and aesthetics that are at the heart of it all. It depends who you ask, where they come from, where they live, and what institutional/intellectual complexes they are located within, and which ones they contribute to.
Spillman’s answer to the question What is Cultural Sociology? is lucid and convincing. It is also a question answered from within the American cultural sociology field, and thus it is an American answer. That is fine, as long as the question is taken to refer to something specific to the USA. But the book’s title, which is very general and non-context-specific, suggests more global, less nationally oriented answers are also required. Now we certainly know what ‘cultural sociology’ is, and is felt to be, within the USA. But we could also do with other books answering the same question, both with other national frames of references, as well as in ways which transcend those. Many other possible answers remain to be formulated in reply to the central question. Lyn Spillman has in the meantime given us an exemplary version of one possible answer among many.