Beyond Distinction: Cultural Networks as Ecologies of Constraint

• In Event: Theory Section Refereed Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 11

Abstract

Field theories offer a general template for analysis of cultural networks, or networks composed of persons and cultural phenomena, by emphasizing how relations among persons and cultural objects shape experience. Sociological field theories, I argue, rest on three explanatory principles: (1) totality, which posits that meaning arises from our experience of an encompassing system of relations; (2) perspectivism, which holds that individuals' experiences are shaped by their relative location within this totality; and (3) linkage, which specifies how agents’ experiences are structured by the relational environment. In Bourdieu’s field theory, the linkage criterion refers to the cognitive inseparability of first-order judgments of objects and second-order judgments of persons who take stances on those objects. This linkage criterion connects agents’ vision of the field to structural homologies between positions and position-takings. However, other criteria of linkage can direct analytic attention to alternative patterns in the relational structure of cultural networks. Durkheim’s homo duplex model of cognitive dualism, in comparison, suggests approaching cultural networks as ecologies of constraint, in which patterns of integration and individuation become the salient structuring forces of experience within cultural networks.

Author

• Kyle Puetz, Texas State University