The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology

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Oxford University Press, 18 sept 2003 - 312 páginas
In The Meanings of Social Life , Jeffrey Alexander presents a new approach to how culture works in contemporary societies. Exposing our everyday myths and narratives in a series of empirical studies that range from Watergate to the Holocaust, he shows how these unseen yet potent cultural structures translate into concrete actions and institutions. Only when these deep patterns of meaning are revealed, Alexander argues, can we understand the stubborn staying power of violence and degradation, but also the steady persistence of hope. By understanding the darker structures that restrict our imagination, we can seek to transform them. By recognizing the culture structures that sustain hope, we can allow our idealistic imaginations to gain more traction in the world. A work that will transform the way that sociologists think about culture and the social world, this book confirms Jeffrey Alexander's reputation as one of the major social theorists of our day.

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Índice

The Meanings of Social Life On the Origins of a Cultural Sociology
3
Elements of a Structural Hermeneutics with Philip Smith
11
The Holocaust from War Crime to Trauma Drama
27
3 Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity
85
4 A Cultural Sociology of Evil
109
5 The Discourse of American Civil Society with Philip Smith
121
6 Watergate as Democratic Ritual
155
7 The Sacred and Profane Information Machine
179
How Intellectuals Explain Our Time
193
Notes
229
References
271
Index
293
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Sobre el autor (2003)

Jeffrey C. Alexander is Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University, and co-Director of the Center for Cultural Sociology.

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