“Political culture” is a poorly defined yet virtually indispensable
concept within political sociology. This course surveys recent
strategies for defining and operationalizing elements of political
culture. As such, it builds upon basic premises and concepts within
the sociology of culture and applies them to substantive topics
central to the study of politics, such as power, conflict, and inequality.

The first two weeks will offer a crash course in the sociology of
culture, followed by two book-length considerations of power and
political conflict. The bulk of the remainder of the course will focus
on competing and complementary ways of conceptualizing political
knowledge and political discourse, including recent work on culture
and cognition, social categorization, collective memory, framing,
narrative, identity, and symbolism. Methodologically, the readings
will lean more toward qualitative than quantitative analyses, though
both will be represented in a variety of forms.


Representative Readings—Books:
Lukes, Steven. 2005 (1974), 2nd ed. Power: A Radical View. New York,
NY: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gusfield, Joseph R. 1986 (1963), 2nd ed. Symbolic Crusade: Status
Politics and the American Temperance Movement. Urbana and Chicago, IL:
University of Illinois Press.
Ferree, Myra Marx, William A. Gamson, Jurgen Gerhards, and Dieter
Rucht. 2002. Shaping Abortion Discourse: Democracy and the Public
Sphere in Germany and the United States. New York, NY: Cambridge
University Press.

Representative Readings—Articles:
Ewick, Patricia, and Susan Silbey. 2003. "Narrating Social Structure:
Stories of Resistance to Legal Authority." American Journal of
Sociology 108:1328-72.
Perrin, Andrew J. 2005. "Political Microcultures: Linking Civic Life
and Democratic Discourse." Social Forces 94:1049-1082.
Gamson, William A., and Andre Modigliani. 1989. "Media Discourse and
Public Opinion on Nuclear Power: A Constructionist Approach." American
Journal of Sociology 95:1-37.
Polletta, Francesca. 1998. "'It Was Like a Fever...' Narrative and
Identity in Social Protest." Social Problems 45:137-159.
Eliasoph, Nina. 1990. "Political Culture and the Presentation of Self:
A Study of the Public Sphere in the Spirit of Erving Goffman." Theory
and Society 19:465-494.
Jacobs, Ronald N. 1996. "Civil Society and Crisis: Culture, Discourse,
and the Rodney King Beating." American Journal of Sociology 101:1238-1272.