What properties of culture should we measure?

Jepperson, Ronald L.; Swidler, Ann

doi:10.1016/0304-422x(94)90014-0

Cited by 145 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…They also emphasise stability -that a culture is shared by members of a group that it is formed over a long period, and that it is relatively stable. Jepperson and Swidler (1994) suggest that for a particular cultural form, there is an underlying code of meaning and rules, there are ''customs that have emerged governing it'', and there are ''ideologies of talk surrounding it''.…”

Section: Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Defining “drinking culture”: A critical review of its meaning and connotation in social research on alcohol problems

Savic

Room

Mugavin

et al. 2016

Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy

153

160

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There has been growing academic interest in ''drinking cultures'' as targets of investigation and intervention, driven often by policy discourse about ''changing the drinking culture''. In this article, we conduct a critical review of the alcohol research literature to examine how the concept of drinking culture has been understood and employed, particularly in work that views alcohol through a problem lens. Much of the alcohol research discussion on drinking culture has focussed on national drinking cultures in which the cultural entity of concern is the nation or society as a whole (macro-level). In this respect, there has been a comparative tradition concerned with categorising drinking cultures into typologies (e.g. ''wet'' and ''dry'' cultures). Although overtly focused on patterns of drinking and problems at the macro-level, this tradition also points to a multifaceted understanding of drinking cultures. Even though norms about drinking are not uniform within and across countries there has been relatively less focus in the alcohol research literature on cultural entities below the level of the culture as a whole (micro-level). We conclude by offering a working definition, which underscores the multidimensional and interactive nature of the drinking culture concept.

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Section: Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Defining “drinking culture”: A critical review of its meaning and connotation in social research on alcohol problems

Savic

Room

Mugavin

et al. 2016

Drugs: Education, Prevention and Policy

153

160

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Data were collected 8 Group life insurance, which is usually sold to employers as a fringe benefit for employees, is not the concern of this study. 9 Borrowing Marx's metaphor, Jepperson and Swidler (1994) describe culture in "living" form as standing in contrast to culture in "dead" form when cultural constructs have been congealed through institutionalization. In other words, the "living" form of culture can be found in pre-institutionalized events, activities, and organizations.…”

Section: The Ethnographic Case Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Creating a market in the presence of cultural resistance: the case of life insurance in China

Chan

2009

Theor Soc

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This article brings together two different conceptions of culture-a shared meaning system on one hand and a repertoire of strategies on the other-to understand the emergence of a market. Based on ethnographic data, it examines how a Chinese life insurance market is emerging in the presence of incompatible shared values and ideas acting as cultural barriers, and how these cultural barriers shape the formation of the market. The findings reveal a burgeoning Chinese life insurance market despite local cultural logics incompatible with the profit-oriented institutional logic of life insurance. This Chinese market, however, has developed along a different trajectory from what might be expected. It first emerged as a money management, rather than a risk management, market. I argue that the very cultural barriers that compose the local resistance to a new economic practice also necessitate the mobilization of the cultural tool-kit to circumvent this resistance. These dual processes, shared ideas composing the resistance and the cultural tool-kit circumventing the resistance, shape the trajectory and characteristics of an emergent market. I propose a theoretical model specifying the mechanisms through which the two forms of culture interplay to influence the development of the life insurance. I apply this model to extend Zelizer's (1979) insights and discuss how culture matters in forging a new market in the global diffusion of capitalism.In the case of life insurance the trick was to sell futures -pessimistic futures (Zelizer 1979:153).[The Chinese] see accidents as being far removed from their lives. They've seen accidents happen, but insist that that kind of misfortune would not happen to them (A general manager of a foreign life insurer in Shanghai 2001).

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“…Jepperson and Swidler (1994), for example, assert that "the greatest impediments to measuring culture are conceptual rather than strictly methodological" (Jepperson and Swidler 1994, p. 360). Measurement precision requires clear, even if actively debated definitions (Cook 1985), of course, but this counsel risks conflating two distinct enterprises of defining the culture concept and measuring it.…”

Section: Measuring Culturementioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring urban sexual cultures

Ghaziani

2014

Theor Soc

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Gay neighborhoods across the United States are de-concentrating in today's so-called "post-gay" era as sexual minorities assimilate into the mainstream and disperse across the city. This context creates a problem of measurement. If by "culture" we mean to say a particular way of life of a group or subgroup of people like sexual minorities, and if that way of life is blending with other aspects of the metropolis, then how can we detect distinct urban sexual cultures? In this article, I use 125 interviews with Chicago residents to propose a two-pronged strategy. First, gay neighborhoods continue to house anchor institutions, despite ongoing residential out-migrations. These are the primary engines of community building, and they locate the material culture of a group in a specific place. Commemorations serve as a second indicator for a culture, and they too put meanings into form. Although it is a fact of city life that all neighborhoods change, anchors and commemorations are analytic devices that scholars can use to observe urban sexual cultures. More generally, they provide a framework for how to measure the shifting geographic profile of a historically stigmatized group as it experiences positive change in public opinion.

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What properties of culture should we measure?

Cited by 145 publications

References 10 publications

Defining “drinking culture”: A critical review of its meaning and connotation in social research on alcohol problems

Defining “drinking culture”: A critical review of its meaning and connotation in social research on alcohol problems

Creating a market in the presence of cultural resistance: the case of life insurance in China

Measuring urban sexual cultures

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