Suchergebnisse

In this article, I argue that the sociology of culture and cognition is a virtual world and that—although it will be painful—we should try to escape it. This will involve engaging in true interdisciplinary work rather than in a pretense of it. To illustrate my argument, I focus on a particular case study—the study of values. I then examine more general (non‐topic‐specific) mechanisms that dissuade sociologists from doing truly interdisciplinary work. I will conclude by outlining some possibilities that I believe we are currently missing.

New cultural approaches to the study of poverty treat "culture" as providing the means for action and neglect the classical concern with motives for action. The author argues that though this paradigm shift has led to many important and interesting discoveries, it has also created blind spots that prevent a more complete understanding of how culture shapes action. After arguing that values, attitudes, and other motive concepts have been unfairly excluded from the new cultural pantheon, the author uses the empirical example of educational continuation to show that poor and nonpoor youth differ in their educational aspirations and that these differences can predict school continuation six years later. The findings are interpreted with an eye toward synthesizing "old" and "new" approaches to the study of culture and socioeconomic disadvantage.

New cultural approaches to the study of poverty treat "culture" as providing the means for action and neglect the classical concern with motives for action. The author argues that though this paradigm shift has led to many important and interesting discoveries, it has also created blind spots that prevent a more complete understanding of how culture shapes action. After arguing that values, attitudes, and other motive concepts have been unfairly excluded from the new cultural pantheon, the author uses the empirical example of educational continuation to show that poor and nonpoor youth differ in their educational aspirations and that these differences can predict school continuation six years later. The findings are interpreted with an eye toward synthesizing "old" and "new" approaches to the study of culture and socioeconomic disadvantage. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright The American Academy of Political and Social Science.]

Driven by the popularity of social capital theories, the concept of community is enjoying a renaissance in sociology. Yet much research in this area relies on exclusively "structural" thinking, attributing group identification to mechanisms such as the arrangement of physical space, power relations, or high investment requirements. Often neglected is a strand of theory that attributes gemeinschaft to shared moral order and culture. Using data from the Urban Communes Project, this article directly tests the influence of both structural and cultural mechanisms in producing the experience of community. Although the results show that both structural and cultural mechanisms are positively correlated with gemeinschaft, they also confirm the existence of shared moral order as the most likely proximate mechanism for creating community in these groups. Analyses using fuzzy-set techniques illustrate how culture and structure combine to sustain-or inhibit-the experience of community.