Message from the Chair Global Differences in Conceptualizing Culture

Why should US sociologists learn to speak or read other languages, when English is the world language? Aren’t the sociologies of non-English language communities transposed seamlessly into English? How does the path from French (post-)structuralism lead forward to American-style pragmatism? And if it does, why is it so difficult for US and French sociologists to collaborate in studying “culture”? Why do Brazilians read Gramsci differently than Europeans tend to? Why in Japan do sociologists have less purchase on the study of culture than scholars from other disciplines and from outside the academy altogether? More generally, how do scholarly conceptions of culture differ, intersect, and travel (or not) across national and regional borders? These questions and others arise from an invited session at last year’s ASA meetings on “Global Differences in Conceptualizing Culture” that I coorganized with Paul Lichterman and Ann Mische. The session was co-sponsored by the Culture and Theory sections, with modest financial support from a “Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline” grant from the National Science Foundation and the ASA. We were honored by the participation of Daniel Cefai; Evelina Dagnino; Thomas Eberle; and Eiko Ikegami. Paul Lichterman introduced the session, and Michele Lamont served as discussant. The papers from this session will also appear in the inaugural issue of the newsletter of the Research Network on Culture of the European Sociological Association, and possibly in other venues. (There is only space, in the print edition of Culture, for extracts of these papers. Full versions of the papers are readily available on the Section’s website: http://www.ibiblio.org/culture/) The global differences that the session was intended to explore were never imagined to be “essentialistic” ones, although in decades past they might have been imagined that way. Up until the period of the world wars, it was (as Don Levine [1995] has demonstrated) fruitful to conceive national sociological traditions in essentialistic terms, since those traditions developed in relative isolation from each other, within distinguishing frameworks of characteristically different sets of basic methodological, Feature Article Creating an Inclusive Venue for Sociological Studies of Language Celine-Marie Pascale, John Mohr, and Corinne Kirchner Language, broadly construed as systems of representation, is arguably the foundation of shared culture—it is the premier symbolic system. While language is central to social interaction and social structures, it remains at the margins of sociological research and theory. Given the profoundly interpretative nature of language, studies of language often have been regarded as being more humanistic than scientific. Within Sociology, studies of language have tended to focus on highly technical aspects of conversation analysis, perhaps reflecting an effort to reconcile the importance of language and the demands of science. However, with changing and contested notions of what constitutes a social science and deeper appreciation for the inseparability of symbolic practices and material realities, more sociologists are turning to a broad range of theories and methods for apprehending the sociological importance of language. Moving away from the highly technical focus associated with conversation analysis, sociologists are increasingly concerned about the ability of studies of language to effectively apprehend routine relations of power and privilege—to get at the reproduction of power in the dailiness of ordinary life. For example, a superficial review of literature might include Steinberg’s (1999) analysis of how material and discursive forces conjoin in shaping inequalities; Williams’ (1999) exploration of the relevance of French Discourse Analysis for a language-based empirical research; Bourdieu’s (2003) argument for the potency of symbolic power in strengthening relations of oppression and exploitation; Osha’s (2005) argument for the usefulness of poststructural discourse analysis for African scholars seeking to develop Afrocentric scholarship; and