New metaphors for investigating culture in everyday life

• In Event: 545 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtable Session.
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Levels of Culture

Abstract

Many studies over the past three decades show that culture matters in everyday life, but culture takes a variety of forms. Studies show culture as structured symbolic patterns or as implicit, routine practices, as fluid or more institutionalized, enduring meanings. Actors engage these different forms simultaneously in everyday life. As we move beyond establishing that “culture matters,” we increasingly need to grapple with two interrelated questions: How do actors act at different levels of culture simultaneously in everyday life? How do we as scholars choose and combine distinct culture concepts to analyze the different kinds of cultural work we find in everyday sites?

Writings to date offer some fruitful leads on these two puzzles (for instance, Swidler 2001) at an abstract theoretical level. They suggest some forms of culture are more enduring or causally primary than others. We propose several new ways of tracing and conceptualizing different cultural forms in unfolding, everyday action. Illustrations from interaction in a South Asian nonprofit organization and an upper-middle class, suburban family show that everyday action sometimes challenges current views on how actors engage different levels of culture simultaneously. These challenges require us to think more about how to use distinct culture concepts together. We suggest several new metaphors that improve our understanding of how different forms of culture work simultaneously in everyday life. These metaphors help us choose and combine distinct culture concepts judiciously in our interpretive work. Bringing culture and action more subtly together, they contribute toward a more precisely cultural sociology.

Authors

• Edson Cruz Rodriguez, University of Southern California

• Kushan Dasgupta, University of Southern California

• Paul R. Lichterman, University of Southern California