Towards a New Cultural Sociology

After the cultural turn in Durkheimian reinterpretation, should we now talk about a performative turn? These two collections of work by members of the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology would suggest an affirmative response. Social Performance is arranged as a series of insightful chapters dealing with particular empirical cases (e.g., the Clinton/Lewinsky affair, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, Willy Brandt's 1970 knee fall at the Warsaw Memorial to the Ghetto Uprising) sandwiched by intro ductory and concluding chapters that stand as major theoretical statements informing the other chapters. I will focus most of my attention on these two theoretical chapters, as they most thoroughly situate themselves with respect to Durkheimian concepts and terminology. The introductory chapter, written by Alexander, constitutes an extensive effort towards the reconciliation of structural and pragmatist theories of cul ture. Alexander's proposition is that performance theory offers some tools for a fresh attempt at this integrative work. First, he delineates an histori cal framework for the construction of theoretical categories. Ritual and per formance differ in that the former is most applicable to simple societies of relatively unsegmented and undifferentiated component parts, while the latter is a more appropriate conceptual tool for more complex, segmented and differentiated societies like those in which we in the West live today. He calls these fused and de-fused societies, respectively. Ritual works more or less flawlessly every time in primitive societies because those societies are already so tightly interconnected; their members are so to speak already on the same page before rituals, and the rituals work well at further invig orating their relationship because members share so much in the way of