Politics and Culture: A Less Fissured Terrain

Abstract

In the past few years, the area of politics and culture has moved from the margins of cultural inquiry to its center as evidenced by the number of persons who identify themselves as working within the area and by its growing institutionalization within sociology. “Politics and culture” suggests that each term constitutes an autonomous social realm; whereas “political culture” suggests the boundaries of cultural action within which ordinary politics occurs. Bourdieu's emphasis on boundary making, Foucault's disciplinary mechanisms, and Habermas's conception of the public are setting the research agenda of scholars who focus on macro-level social change. Interdisciplinary dialogues are emerging, conducted on a landscape of historical and contemporary empirical research. Four sub-areas have crystallized: first, political culture, which focuses on problems of democratization and civil society; second, institutions, which includes law, religion, the state, and citizenship; third, political communication and meaning; and fourth, cultural approaches to collective action. Promising directions for future work are historical ethnographies, participant observation and interview studies of political communication, and studies of political mobilization that examine how emotion operates in politics. Paradigms are not yet firm within this area, suggesting that politics and culture is a disciplinary site of theoretical, methodological, and empirical innovation.

A Cultural Quest: A Study of Organizational Use of New Cultural Resources in Strategy Formation

“…The view of culture as a toolkit from which individuals draw cultural resources "in varying configurations to solve different kinds of problems (Swidler 1986, p. 273)" has become increasingly influential in the sociology of culture (DiMaggio 1997) and has spurred a vibrant body of work. Individuals use cultural resources flexibly in political settings to change ideas and practices (Berezin 1997), in social movements to frame the direction of change and its implementation (Weber et al 2008), and in a variety of contexts to establish social boundaries and identities (Lamont and Thévenot 2000;Swidler 2001). …”

What Shapes Attitudes Toward Paying Taxes? Evidence from Multicultural European Countries*

“…Even though culture studies are relatively new to the tax compliance literature, the topic has been extensively investigated in anthropology and sociology (e.g., Tyler, 1871Tyler, /1924Herskovits and Willey, 1923;Willey, 1929;Ogburn, 1937;Swidler, 1986;Yengoyan, 1986;Wuthnow and Witten, 1988), as well as in political science, which has strongly intensified its investigation (e.g., Banfield, 1958;Almond and Verba, 1963;Putnam et al, 1983;Wildavsky, 1985Wildavsky, , 1987Inglehart, 1988;Berezin, 1997;Wedeen, 2002). Inglehart (1988) criticizes that cultural factors have been de-emphasized in the rational choice models.…”

Untitled

“…75 Through their activities, the Schützen demonstrate the importance of their political role: here the term 'political' refers to no party, but rather to the development of a true civic culture (in the same way, the Greek word polis, from which 'political' derives, is strongly linked to the need to establish a strong social cohesion, in order to generate an important dimension of civil society). 76 The Heimat, the bond with the land, acts as a social glue, thus instilling in the citizens a greater civic engagement; 77 it is based on generalized reciprocity, defined as a widespread confidence among members of a large social group, within which bonds of solidarity are created, involving an increasing number of individuals. 78 The concept of Heimat is referred to the spiritual foundation of the state, as order of things as such, whose essence is the result of the synthesis between the family and the community.…”