UCSD Culture Conference Discussed the Future of Cultural Sociology

Kwai Hang Ng, University of California-San Diego

The University of California-San Diego (UCSD) recently held a one-day conference on the theme of “Cultural Sociology and Its Diversities.” About 80 academics and graduate students in the Southern California region attended the conference, held on the UCSD campus, overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Sociologists Michael Schudson, UCSD, and Paul Lichterman, University of Southern California, delivered presentations on the sociology of culture. In his talk, Schudson, a scholar specializing in the study of American civic culture and author of the best-selling book The Good Citizen, clarified the conceptual mirage surrounding the public/private distinction in American public discourse since 1960. He offered a bold and insightful overview of the shifting boundaries that separate the private and the public and suggested possible directions that the idea of American citizenship will evolve in the future. Lichterman, a sociologist known for his work in culture and politics, discussed in his talk the role of culture in facilitating local, religion-based voluntarism. His aim, further detailed in his new book, Elusive Togetherness, is to move beyond what he called the established “debunking” tradition in sociology of culture and redirect his focus instead on the enabling potentials of culture for individuals and communities. He argued that successful groups thrived on local cultural customs which invited reflective, critical discussions among members of the group.

The conference also featured a “State of the Discipline” Panel. Four sociologists, including UCSD’s Richard Biernacki, Steve Epstein, UC-Irvine’s Calvin Morrill, and UCLA’s Abigail Saguy elaborated on the meanings of the concept of culture in their own sub-fields and traced the linkages between culture and the subject matters of their subfields, namely, historical sociology, sociology of science, organizational sociology, and sociology of law.

A common theme underscoring the “cultural turns” in these fields is the gradual moving away from an earlier, delimited view of culture to a new embedded vision of “cultural approach.” The four panelists explained to an interested audience how despite the different natures of the subject matters, culture was at the core of the latest advances in these fields. The challenge ahead, said the panelists, was to combine and integrate the analytical rigor of the sociological reasoning that defined the best works of these fields with the more embedded notion of culture.

The panel offered a genuine opportunity for self-critical reflections of the validity of culture in different areas of sociology. It justified with convincing examples from the panelists the importance of a catholic vision of cultural sociology. Attempts to pin down culture in exhaustive definition of its “essence” have been shown to founder upon the diversity and vitality of the field. The panelists’ discussions were followed by a wide range of audience questions.