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(1) Social system and power system; (2) value system of the culture and political institution; (3) culture change and political phenomena.
社会構造と権力構造、文化の価値体系と政治制度および文化変動と政治現象を扱う。
In this course, we will read and discuss different analytical approaches to culture in social and political analysis, and their implications for empirical research.
Our collective engagement with the subject-matter will be guided by the following four “orienting questions”:
1. What is culture?
2. What does culture do?
3. Where can culture be located?
4. What is the point (or added value) of studying culture?
Broadly speaking, there are two distinct types of explanatory strategies in the social sciences: the methodological individualist, on the one hand, and the non-individualist of various kinds, on the other. Among the analytical perspectives on culture, we similarly find two distinct approaches:
1) Those that treat culture as subjective orientations and preferences of individuals, and
2) Those that consider culture historical, organizational, and structural features of social life.
In this course, we will mostly focus on the second approach. To better organize our collective engagement, one or two works from a single scholar will be selected for the discussion of each class meeting.
The texts of the assigned readings and select recommended materials will be made available at the ICU Moodle site (please enroll yourself in the course Moodle page before coming to the first class meeting). The participants are expected to attend class meetings well-prepared to discuss the weekly reading materials meeting (to further assist this, several “orienting” questions may be posted in the Moodle alongside the required reading files).
There is no final examination in this course. For the course evaluation, the participants will instead be asked to submit (1) a short midterm assignment (a single-spaced one-page reflective essay on the contents and class discussions of the first three sets of the course readings [Weeks 2 through 4]; the expected length is 1000 to 1200 words and it is due by the Week 5 class date); and (2) a final assignment. For the final assignment, they will be asked to submit a short research paper on a topic relevant to the subject-matter of this course. To ensure that their preferred topic is considered relevant, the participants will be asked to submit a one-page paper proposal which includes a bibliography between the midterm point (January 13) and two weeks before the end of the term (that is, February 10). The expected length of the final assignment is 4000 to 6000 words. The final assignment is due via email by the end of the examination period (March 8), in a Word file, not a PDF.
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Week 1: Course Introduction (no assigned reading)
Part I: An Analytical Overview of Culturalist Approaches
Week 2: Eckstein (the Parsonian/”Political Culture” approach)
Eckstein, Harry. 1988. “A Culturalist Theory of Political Change,” American Political Science Review 82(3): 789-804.
Recommended: Eckstein, Harry. 1992. Chapter 1 "Background" and Chapter 8 "'Observing' Political Culture" in Regarding Politics: Essays on Political Theory, Stability, and Change (Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press), 3-14, 286-300.
Week 3: Geertz (the Parsonian/Semiotic approach)
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. "Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture" and "Religion as a Cultural System" in The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books), 3-30 and 87-125.
Recommended: Geertz, Clifford. 1983. "Common Sense as a Cultural System," Ch. 4 of Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (New York: Basic Books), 73-93.
Week 4: Reflections on Inter-subjectivity and A Relationalist Alternative
Taylor, Charles. 1979. Pp. 50-53 of "Interpretation and the Sciences of Man," in Paul Rabinow and William M. Sullivan, eds., Interpretive Social Science: A Reader (Univ. of California Press), Ch 1 (pp. 25-71), and
Tilly, Charles. 1998. "Contentious Conversation," Social Research 65(3), 491-510.
Mid-term Assignment [due via email at matsunaga@tufs.ac.jp by the morning of the Week 5 class date]
Part II: Issues in Culturalist Research
Week 5: Phenomenological Insights
Turner, Victor. 1977. "Process, System, and Symbols: A New Anthropological Synthesis," Daedalus 106(3): 61-80.
Recommended: Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality (1966); Alfred Schutz, The Problem of Social Reality (1962); Harold Garfinkel, Studies in ethnomethodology (1967).
Week 6: The Politics of Social Memories
Zerubavel, Eviatar. 1997. Social Mindscapes: An Invitation to Cognitive Sociology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press).
Recommended: Zerubavel, E. 2003. Time maps: collective memory and the social shape of the past. University of Chicago Press; Zerubavel, E. 2018. Taken for granted: the remarkable power of the unremarkable. Princeton University Press.
Week 7: Cultural Contexts and Contentious Claimsmaking
Jasper, James M. 2014. "Preface" and "Introduction: Doing Protest" in Protest: A Cultural Introduction to Social Movements (Cambridge, UK: Polity), 11-36; and 1997. "Culture and Resources: The Arts of Persuasion," Ch. 12, of The Art of Moral Protest (Univ. of Chicago Press), 267-292.
Recommended: Swidler, Ann, 1986. "Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies," American Sociological Review 51(2): 273-286.
Week 8: Culture/Ideology/Discourse/Practice
Wuthnow, Robert. 1987. "Rethinking Weber's View of Ideology," Theory and Society 16(1): 123-137; and Williams, Rhys. 1996. "Religion as Political Resources: Culture or Ideology?" J of the Scientific Study of Religion 35(4): 368-378.
Week 9: Ideology/Discursive Formations at Work
Asad, Talal. 2006. “Trying to Understand French Secularism," in Political Theologies: Public Religions in a Post-Secular World, ed. Hend de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan (Fordham Univ. Press), 494-526.
Recommended: Asad, Talal. 2003. Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity. Stanford Univ. Press.
Week 10: The Geopolitics of Knowledge
Mignolo, Walter D. 2002. "The Geopolitics of Knowledge and the Colonial Difference," South Atlantic Quarterly 101(1): 57-96.
Recommended: Mignolo, Walter D. 2009. "Epistemic Disobedience, Independent Thought and Decolonial Freedom," Theory, Culture & Society 26(7-8): 159-181.
Final assignment: To be sent to matsunaga@tufs.ac.jp by the end of the examination period (i.e., by 5 pm on Wednesday, March 8).
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