Description
Book SynopsisThis book is about our appreciation for order and meaningfulness. It offers a new theory of that feeling inspired by Durkheim and Marx, then derives other theories to answer a range of questions: why we like to make ourselves orderly (in Chapter Three's theory of identity and commitment), why create shared orders of meaning (in Chapter Four's theory of culture); how we create those orders collaboratively through conversation (Chapter Five), and also through narrative, symbolic, and ritualistic formats (Chapter Six), and how orders of meaning are created in response to social structural position (Chapter Seven). In the end, this book shows how our sense of order both integrates and segregates us into productive associations with one another. And so, Explaining Culture is able to explain two patterns common to all growth: expansion and centralization. We see how our desire for novelty disperses us for resources, and that for familiarity draws us together to create meaningful order from t
Trade ReviewWhat is the nature of order? What is the nature of self? What is the inextricable link among individuals, social interaction, culture and society? These questions have fascinated and befuddled social scientists for a long time. Loren Demerath’s Explaining Culture: The Social Pursuit of Subjective Order offers remarkably coherent and highly persuasive answers to these questions and does so by brilliantly merging insights from an array of subfields in sociology—among them, sociology of emotion, social psychology, social organization, and culture. This book will be of great interest to anyone studying these areas and to social scientists who want to read a compelling articulation of the connection between individuals and society. -- Brian Powell, Indiana University
Not ironically, the topics explored in this masterfully conceived volume are precisely what make this work invaluable: Meaningfulness, conceptual power, uniqueness, verbal articulation. Few in our field have that rare ability to wrap a superior mind around the most difficult and yet essential matters of being in the world, such as the subjective reading of society and culture. Loren Demerath appears to be one of the special ones. Explaining Culture is a gem of a book. -- Thomas J. Cottle
Table of ContentsChapter One: Alienation and Anomia as a Basis for Theorizing Culture Chapter Two: Knowledge-Based Affect and the Pleasures of Order Chapter Three: Putting Our Selves in Order: An Epistemological Identity Theory Chapter Four: The Social Pursuit of Meaningfulness: An Epistemological Theory of Culture Chapter Five: The Pursuit of Meaningfulness Through: Epistemological Conversation Chapter Six: Conditions for Community and Culture Chapter Seven: Network Position, Knowledge-Based Affect, and Cultural Manipulation Chapter Eight: Conclusion
