Pub Date : 2022-12-06DOI: 10.1177/17499755221140236
P. Kivisto, G. Sciortino
This article argues that Jeffrey Alexander’s The Civil Sphere constitutes the first sociological theory of civil society, a theory with its own developmental history. That history includes the trajectory of Alexander’s career prior to his simultaneous turn to cultural sociology and civil society. The former led him to develop what he calls a ‘strong program,’ while the use of the term ‘civil sphere’ serves to distinguish his approach to civil society from other articulations, past and present. This includes viewing the theory as offering a more realistic understanding of the prospects for and impediments to liberal democracy. Conceived at the outset as an ongoing project, rather than the last word on the topic, we review how that project has shifted from the work of one prominent theorist to a global network of scholars.
{"title":"From Author to Network: The Coming of Age of Civil Sphere Theory","authors":"P. Kivisto, G. Sciortino","doi":"10.1177/17499755221140236","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221140236","url":null,"abstract":"This article argues that Jeffrey Alexander’s The Civil Sphere constitutes the first sociological theory of civil society, a theory with its own developmental history. That history includes the trajectory of Alexander’s career prior to his simultaneous turn to cultural sociology and civil society. The former led him to develop what he calls a ‘strong program,’ while the use of the term ‘civil sphere’ serves to distinguish his approach to civil society from other articulations, past and present. This includes viewing the theory as offering a more realistic understanding of the prospects for and impediments to liberal democracy. Conceived at the outset as an ongoing project, rather than the last word on the topic, we review how that project has shifted from the work of one prominent theorist to a global network of scholars.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"17 1","pages":"3 - 20"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46829404","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-05DOI: 10.1177/17499755221138720
Werner Binder
As a social phenomenon, artificial intelligence (AI) is not just technically but also culturally constructed. This article investigates the meaning-making of AI in the case of AlphaGo by employing and refining cultural sociological narrative analysis. Building on Smith’s structural model of genre, whose horizontal axis reflects varying degrees of (dis-)enchantment, I propose an extended model of narrative genre, adding a vertical axis on the theoretical basis of Durkheim’s distinction between pure and impure sacred, to account for the empirical bifurcation between utopian and dystopian AI narratives. While critical approaches to AI, prevalent in sociology, tend to offer disenchanted narratives, my cultural sociological approach allows for the construction of a meta-narrative, which is able to capture not only enchantment as well as disenchantment but also purification and impurification as empirical processes that accompany the emergence and consolidation of new technologies. This approach is exemplified by a case study of AlphaGo, a Go-playing program utilizing machine learning and neural networks, which gained global prominence and cultural significance after beating a human grandmaster in 2016. Drawing on publicly available online data, this article investigates the discourses surrounding AlphaGo, focusing on its cultural construction through storytelling and genre. I not only show how characters and events were emplotted in different stories, which were in turn embedded in broader narratives about technological progress and AI, but also explain how the development of the main storyline was driven by in-game performances, audience expectations and collective representations. The article demonstrates the feasibility of a cultural sociology of AI and the usefulness of my extended model of narrative genre, which is not only applicable to AI discourses but other domains as well.
{"title":"Technology as (Dis-)Enchantment. AlphaGo and the Meaning-Making of Artificial Intelligence","authors":"Werner Binder","doi":"10.1177/17499755221138720","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221138720","url":null,"abstract":"As a social phenomenon, artificial intelligence (AI) is not just technically but also culturally constructed. This article investigates the meaning-making of AI in the case of AlphaGo by employing and refining cultural sociological narrative analysis. Building on Smith’s structural model of genre, whose horizontal axis reflects varying degrees of (dis-)enchantment, I propose an extended model of narrative genre, adding a vertical axis on the theoretical basis of Durkheim’s distinction between pure and impure sacred, to account for the empirical bifurcation between utopian and dystopian AI narratives. While critical approaches to AI, prevalent in sociology, tend to offer disenchanted narratives, my cultural sociological approach allows for the construction of a meta-narrative, which is able to capture not only enchantment as well as disenchantment but also purification and impurification as empirical processes that accompany the emergence and consolidation of new technologies. This approach is exemplified by a case study of AlphaGo, a Go-playing program utilizing machine learning and neural networks, which gained global prominence and cultural significance after beating a human grandmaster in 2016. Drawing on publicly available online data, this article investigates the discourses surrounding AlphaGo, focusing on its cultural construction through storytelling and genre. I not only show how characters and events were emplotted in different stories, which were in turn embedded in broader narratives about technological progress and AI, but also explain how the development of the main storyline was driven by in-game performances, audience expectations and collective representations. The article demonstrates the feasibility of a cultural sociology of AI and the usefulness of my extended model of narrative genre, which is not only applicable to AI discourses but other domains as well.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45398055","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-02DOI: 10.1177/17499755221137507
M. Rimmer
Music sociology has proven a fertile arena for the study and theorization of object–subject interaction, with the work of scholars such as Tia DeNora and Antoine Hennion marking its key contribution to the ‘new sociology of art’. Recent years have, however, witnessed no little debate amongst music sociologists about the broader purchase and value of such scholarship, especially considering its apparent challenge to Bourdieu’s critical cultural sociology. This article seeks to contribute to debates in this area by advocating a novel approach to questions about music’s relation to the social, one that seeks less to map the social distribution of taste profiles or explore how listeners make use of music’s affordances than understand the variable ways in which music emerges as something to be attended to (or not) in the first place. Drawing on recent work in relational sociology, the mature philosophy of pragmatist John Dewey as well as new materialist thought, this article explores the potential of a trans-actional prospectus for music sociology. This is an approach that advocates a ‘flat’ social ontology in order to focus on questions about the constitution and configuration of musical events. In so doing, the article argues that if we are to gain a better understanding of music’s varied relation to the social, it is necessary to transcend the residual substantialism implicit in ‘new sociology’ and mediation-focused accounts and adopt an approach capable of integrating concerns of object-ness, emergence and attention with questions of power and inequality.
{"title":"Beginning at the Beginning: Towards a Trans-actional Music Sociology","authors":"M. Rimmer","doi":"10.1177/17499755221137507","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221137507","url":null,"abstract":"Music sociology has proven a fertile arena for the study and theorization of object–subject interaction, with the work of scholars such as Tia DeNora and Antoine Hennion marking its key contribution to the ‘new sociology of art’. Recent years have, however, witnessed no little debate amongst music sociologists about the broader purchase and value of such scholarship, especially considering its apparent challenge to Bourdieu’s critical cultural sociology. This article seeks to contribute to debates in this area by advocating a novel approach to questions about music’s relation to the social, one that seeks less to map the social distribution of taste profiles or explore how listeners make use of music’s affordances than understand the variable ways in which music emerges as something to be attended to (or not) in the first place. Drawing on recent work in relational sociology, the mature philosophy of pragmatist John Dewey as well as new materialist thought, this article explores the potential of a trans-actional prospectus for music sociology. This is an approach that advocates a ‘flat’ social ontology in order to focus on questions about the constitution and configuration of musical events. In so doing, the article argues that if we are to gain a better understanding of music’s varied relation to the social, it is necessary to transcend the residual substantialism implicit in ‘new sociology’ and mediation-focused accounts and adopt an approach capable of integrating concerns of object-ness, emergence and attention with questions of power and inequality.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45261487","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-02DOI: 10.1177/17499755221118802
Jessie Dong
Despite being one of the most influential forms of media, cinema has yet to be theorized as a communicative institution of the civil sphere. Contrary to commonsense understandings of cinema as a medium for purifying representations of civil sphere ideals, this paper proposes a theoretical framework that opens up the black box of cinematic performance and theorizes processes of civil interpretation and evaluation: the cinematic gap. The cinematic gap describes an experiential space afforded by the medium’s fictional nature. Because cinema is ‘just fiction’, viewers are distanced from the ‘real civil sphere’ and permitted a space for thoughtful rumination on a cinematic performance’s presentation of civil sphere matters that is less reductive, more thoughtful, and more empathetic. As viewers can then apply these insights on the real civil sphere, the cinematic gap provides a space for thoughtful civil engagement and pathways to civil repair. This paper also identifies components of the cinematic gap which determine its ‘size’ – i.e., degree of distancing from the real civil sphere – as genre treatment and grounding in social reality. This theory is generated from responses to the 2019 Korean film Parasite, a highly successful black comedy-thriller that deploys and subverts commentary on class inequality.
{"title":"Encountering the Civil Sphere Through Cinema: The Cinematic Gap as a Pathway to Civil Evaluation and Repair","authors":"Jessie Dong","doi":"10.1177/17499755221118802","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221118802","url":null,"abstract":"Despite being one of the most influential forms of media, cinema has yet to be theorized as a communicative institution of the civil sphere. Contrary to commonsense understandings of cinema as a medium for purifying representations of civil sphere ideals, this paper proposes a theoretical framework that opens up the black box of cinematic performance and theorizes processes of civil interpretation and evaluation: the cinematic gap. The cinematic gap describes an experiential space afforded by the medium’s fictional nature. Because cinema is ‘just fiction’, viewers are distanced from the ‘real civil sphere’ and permitted a space for thoughtful rumination on a cinematic performance’s presentation of civil sphere matters that is less reductive, more thoughtful, and more empathetic. As viewers can then apply these insights on the real civil sphere, the cinematic gap provides a space for thoughtful civil engagement and pathways to civil repair. This paper also identifies components of the cinematic gap which determine its ‘size’ – i.e., degree of distancing from the real civil sphere – as genre treatment and grounding in social reality. This theory is generated from responses to the 2019 Korean film Parasite, a highly successful black comedy-thriller that deploys and subverts commentary on class inequality.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"17 1","pages":"115 - 135"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46247720","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-12-01DOI: 10.1177/17499755211066796
C. Mallett
{"title":"Book Review: Running, Identity and Meaning. The Pursuit of Distinction Through Sport","authors":"C. Mallett","doi":"10.1177/17499755211066796","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755211066796","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"16 1","pages":"563 - 564"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43712439","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-25DOI: 10.1177/17499755221111853
Julia Peters, Henk Roose
Do artists’ justificatory strategies to obtain government grants reflect expectations from the funding body, or are they predominantly tied to artists’ field positions? Using Multiple Correspondence Analysis on Flemish (Belgium) visual artists’ grant proposals spanning 51 years (1965–2015, n = 494), we find that, with some notable exceptions, field positions and artists’ justifications for obtaining subsidies are only marginally related. Instead, strategies mainly reflect the period they are written in, showing the influence of both cultural policy and the art field. These findings support Bourdieu’s idea that there is no mechanical homology between positions and position-takings, but that the ‘space of possibles’ in which agents express themselves, strongly bears on this relationship. Furthermore, our study suggests that strategic considerations turn the grant proposal into a genre.
{"title":"The Grant Proposal as a Genre. A Multiple Correspondence Analysis of Visual Artists and their Legitimations for Government Grants in Flanders, 1965–2015","authors":"Julia Peters, Henk Roose","doi":"10.1177/17499755221111853","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221111853","url":null,"abstract":"Do artists’ justificatory strategies to obtain government grants reflect expectations from the funding body, or are they predominantly tied to artists’ field positions? Using Multiple Correspondence Analysis on Flemish (Belgium) visual artists’ grant proposals spanning 51 years (1965–2015, n = 494), we find that, with some notable exceptions, field positions and artists’ justifications for obtaining subsidies are only marginally related. Instead, strategies mainly reflect the period they are written in, showing the influence of both cultural policy and the art field. These findings support Bourdieu’s idea that there is no mechanical homology between positions and position-takings, but that the ‘space of possibles’ in which agents express themselves, strongly bears on this relationship. Furthermore, our study suggests that strategic considerations turn the grant proposal into a genre.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44785767","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-17DOI: 10.1177/17499755221114550
R. Ali, B. Byrne
Diversity has increasingly become coveted in the Creative and Cultural Industries (CCIs), with a significant presence in institutional and policy vocabularies. The concern to employ diverse staff and cater to diverse audiences is driven by socio-economic rationales and in terms of ethnicity, the focus of this article, is justified by the levels of ethnic inequality within CCIs. This article argues that the painfully slow progress in advancing ethnic equality in CCIs pertains to the discursive conceptualisation of diversity, which translates into practices lacking in efficacy and legacy. It traces the evolution of the diversity discourse in CCIs from impassioned calls against racial inequality to a less politically conscious multicultural vision of society, and shifts to a discourse on creative diversity. Focusing on the production of, rather than representation in, culture, the article draws uniquely on an intensive institutional ethnography and interviews in two organisations in the museum and TV production sectors, both of which had committed to diversifying their workforce and practice. With a recognition of the historical and contextual differences in the two sectors’ approaches to diversity, we present an analysis of the micro institutional ways in which diversity is performed as a way of understanding the macro workings of diversity in CCIs at large. Our empirical discussion examines Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) policy as one of the more institutionally entrenched and visible practices of diversity and explores diversity schemes as a ‘quick fix’ that cultural organisations have increasingly pursued. While examining these practices, we centre the experiences of ethnically diverse cultural workers as the bearers of diversity work in the context of what we term white institutional benevolence. Those accounts reveal a complex web of intersecting institutional and socio-cultural barriers that need to be urgently addressed for a future cultural sector that is purposely anti-racist, equal and representative.
{"title":"The Trouble with Diversity: The Cultural Sector and Ethnic Inequality","authors":"R. Ali, B. Byrne","doi":"10.1177/17499755221114550","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221114550","url":null,"abstract":"Diversity has increasingly become coveted in the Creative and Cultural Industries (CCIs), with a significant presence in institutional and policy vocabularies. The concern to employ diverse staff and cater to diverse audiences is driven by socio-economic rationales and in terms of ethnicity, the focus of this article, is justified by the levels of ethnic inequality within CCIs. This article argues that the painfully slow progress in advancing ethnic equality in CCIs pertains to the discursive conceptualisation of diversity, which translates into practices lacking in efficacy and legacy. It traces the evolution of the diversity discourse in CCIs from impassioned calls against racial inequality to a less politically conscious multicultural vision of society, and shifts to a discourse on creative diversity. Focusing on the production of, rather than representation in, culture, the article draws uniquely on an intensive institutional ethnography and interviews in two organisations in the museum and TV production sectors, both of which had committed to diversifying their workforce and practice. With a recognition of the historical and contextual differences in the two sectors’ approaches to diversity, we present an analysis of the micro institutional ways in which diversity is performed as a way of understanding the macro workings of diversity in CCIs at large. Our empirical discussion examines Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) policy as one of the more institutionally entrenched and visible practices of diversity and explores diversity schemes as a ‘quick fix’ that cultural organisations have increasingly pursued. While examining these practices, we centre the experiences of ethnically diverse cultural workers as the bearers of diversity work in the context of what we term white institutional benevolence. Those accounts reveal a complex web of intersecting institutional and socio-cultural barriers that need to be urgently addressed for a future cultural sector that is purposely anti-racist, equal and representative.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49300661","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-17DOI: 10.1177/17499755221113944
E. Hannerz, Veronika Burcar Alm, David Wästerfors
Drawing from interviews with posters and an analysis of a dozen discussion threads on the Swedish online discussion forum Flashback, this article sets out to investigate the dramatization of crime news from the point of view of the participants themselves. Analyzing both the online discussions and the articulated motivations and activities of the posters, this article focuses on how participants in these crime discussion threads come together around an epistemic quest for the truth, but also how discussions are ritualized so as to give rise to a collective effervescence and unity when the epistemic drama is perceived to have been resolved, and the truth is revealed to the wider public. Accordingly, this article seeks to remedy a gap in the previous research on online crime discussions by focusing less on the investigative aspects of such work – for example, how participants collaborate to solve crimes – and more on the symbolic and affective aspects of the dramatization of these discussions of crime. What is at the forefront is thus how participants make sense of their engagement and experience of these online discussions, rather than the actual criminal case. To refer to this as an epistemic drama is to highlight how activities, ideals and identities are ordered and sequenced through a ritualization of collective online participation, but also how it involves the establishment of (1) a particular predicament, (2) a collective objective, and (3) ultimately some sort of perceived emotional climax related to solving this predicament through the collective objective.
{"title":"Accomplishing Reality Media: The Affective Lure of Online Crime Discussions","authors":"E. Hannerz, Veronika Burcar Alm, David Wästerfors","doi":"10.1177/17499755221113944","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221113944","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing from interviews with posters and an analysis of a dozen discussion threads on the Swedish online discussion forum Flashback, this article sets out to investigate the dramatization of crime news from the point of view of the participants themselves. Analyzing both the online discussions and the articulated motivations and activities of the posters, this article focuses on how participants in these crime discussion threads come together around an epistemic quest for the truth, but also how discussions are ritualized so as to give rise to a collective effervescence and unity when the epistemic drama is perceived to have been resolved, and the truth is revealed to the wider public. Accordingly, this article seeks to remedy a gap in the previous research on online crime discussions by focusing less on the investigative aspects of such work – for example, how participants collaborate to solve crimes – and more on the symbolic and affective aspects of the dramatization of these discussions of crime. What is at the forefront is thus how participants make sense of their engagement and experience of these online discussions, rather than the actual criminal case. To refer to this as an epistemic drama is to highlight how activities, ideals and identities are ordered and sequenced through a ritualization of collective online participation, but also how it involves the establishment of (1) a particular predicament, (2) a collective objective, and (3) ultimately some sort of perceived emotional climax related to solving this predicament through the collective objective.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42735073","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-10DOI: 10.1177/17499755221125147
Sicong Zhao
During the COVID-19 pandemic, a new form of live music – streaming music festivals – has been popularised in China. With a particular reference to the Chinese indie music scene, this article critically examines the changes that streaming music festivals bring to audiences and music. Through a comparison to offline live music activities, this article examines the spatial change and its consequences for audiences, the shift of shared meaning within indie music communities, and the alteration in the value of music. This article argues, based on interviews and online ethnography, that by immersing themselves in live music, indie music lovers position themselves in multiple social relationships, seek shared meanings with peers, and construct the self through cultural participation; however, streaming music festivals cannot achieve similar effects as offline live music. The findings help us understand more about the digital trend of live music and allow us to reflect on what ‘live’ really means to the audience and the music.
{"title":"Why Live Music Matters: Implications from Streaming Music Festivals in the Chinese Indie Music Scene","authors":"Sicong Zhao","doi":"10.1177/17499755221125147","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221125147","url":null,"abstract":"During the COVID-19 pandemic, a new form of live music – streaming music festivals – has been popularised in China. With a particular reference to the Chinese indie music scene, this article critically examines the changes that streaming music festivals bring to audiences and music. Through a comparison to offline live music activities, this article examines the spatial change and its consequences for audiences, the shift of shared meaning within indie music communities, and the alteration in the value of music. This article argues, based on interviews and online ethnography, that by immersing themselves in live music, indie music lovers position themselves in multiple social relationships, seek shared meanings with peers, and construct the self through cultural participation; however, streaming music festivals cannot achieve similar effects as offline live music. The findings help us understand more about the digital trend of live music and allow us to reflect on what ‘live’ really means to the audience and the music.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44603242","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-11-10DOI: 10.1177/17499755221124793
Hizky Shoham
Does the civil sphere consist merely of conscious and reflective subjects? Do folkloric habits, customs, and traditions contribute anything to its universalism? This article proposes the term ‘folkloric civil sphere’ to describe a non-intentional dimension of social life and of the civil sphere, composed of conventional rituals – such as those of holidays – that are followed without reflection or debate and that together form a collective ‘way of life,’ but which are nevertheless civil, in that they transcend primordial loyalties and encourage universalistic discourse. As opposed to the neo-Durkheimian focus on the meanings of delineated and emotionally moving performances, the article relies on ethnological history to develop a bottom-up model for grasping the civil meanings of conventional rituals. It suggests recreating the gradual chronological process in which conventions appear, are disseminated, turn into rituals and into group icons, and only then may acquire ambiguous meanings. Hence the meanings of folkloric customs often lie in the perceived universalism of social conventions – what ‘everyone’ does – rather than in their symbolic significance or semiotic thickness. The article proposes a shift in focus in the discussions of civil solidarity: instead of institutional, legal, and discursive processes, it centers on the slow and quiet integration of minority groups – religious and ethnic groups or undocumented immigrants – into the symbolic civil sphere, by means of cultural codes that become embedded in everyday conventions and create, bottom up, a sense of belonging to the universalist civil sphere and its distinct ‘way of life.’
{"title":"‘Our (Civil) Way of Life’: The Folkloric Civil Sphere","authors":"Hizky Shoham","doi":"10.1177/17499755221124793","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221124793","url":null,"abstract":"Does the civil sphere consist merely of conscious and reflective subjects? Do folkloric habits, customs, and traditions contribute anything to its universalism? This article proposes the term ‘folkloric civil sphere’ to describe a non-intentional dimension of social life and of the civil sphere, composed of conventional rituals – such as those of holidays – that are followed without reflection or debate and that together form a collective ‘way of life,’ but which are nevertheless civil, in that they transcend primordial loyalties and encourage universalistic discourse. As opposed to the neo-Durkheimian focus on the meanings of delineated and emotionally moving performances, the article relies on ethnological history to develop a bottom-up model for grasping the civil meanings of conventional rituals. It suggests recreating the gradual chronological process in which conventions appear, are disseminated, turn into rituals and into group icons, and only then may acquire ambiguous meanings. Hence the meanings of folkloric customs often lie in the perceived universalism of social conventions – what ‘everyone’ does – rather than in their symbolic significance or semiotic thickness. The article proposes a shift in focus in the discussions of civil solidarity: instead of institutional, legal, and discursive processes, it centers on the slow and quiet integration of minority groups – religious and ethnic groups or undocumented immigrants – into the symbolic civil sphere, by means of cultural codes that become embedded in everyday conventions and create, bottom up, a sense of belonging to the universalist civil sphere and its distinct ‘way of life.’","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"17 1","pages":"136 - 156"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-11-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44169856","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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