Interpreting Culture

D. Lewandowski Joseph

Description

Scholars have conducted the study of culture in two general ways: as an observer science, where behavior and world-views are measurable, rational, and subject to impartial examination; and as an interpretive art, where a scholar actually participates in the understanding of cultures. In view of increasingly manifest problems with both stances, Joseph D. Lewandowski proposes an alternative, one that capitalizes on the strengths of both schools of interpretation and in fact underpins the work of major social theorists of the modern era, including Adorno, Foucault, and Bourdieu.

 

Gathering insights from a wide array of anthropologists, archaeologists, and philosophers and applying them to case studies in the United States, Lewandowski develops a practical model of culture and method of interpretation that are built around the concept of "constructing constellations." According to this concept—drawn from the work of Simmel, Kracauer, Benjamin, and Adorno—cultures are made up of social fields, embedded social practices that are continually created and patterned in certain ways, akin to constellations. The constellations of embedded actions and beliefs in different settings, such as ghetto life in New York or the world of boxing in Chicago, are, Lewandowski argues, observable, measurable, and ultimately comparable.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Ethnic studies
• Social theory
• Cultural studies
• Anthropology

Informations

• Publié par: Nebraska
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2001
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780803201637
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Interpreting Culture

Modern German Culture and Literature General Editor: Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Cornell University Editorial Board: Russell A. Berman,Stanford University; Martin Jay,University of California, Berkeley;Sara Lennox,University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Klaus Peter,University of Massachusetts, Amherst;Klaus R. Scherpe,Humboldt University, Berlin

interpreting culture Rethinking Method and Truth in Social Theory

joseph d. lewandowski

University of Nebraska Press Lincoln and London

©2001by the University of Nebraska Press All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America   Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lewandowski, Joseph D.,1966– Interpreting culture : rethinking method and truth in social theory / Joseph D. Lewandowski. p. cm. — (Modern German culture and literature) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn0-8032-2939-9(cloth : alk. paper) 1. Sociology—Philosophy. 2. Social sciences—Philosophy. I. Title. II. Series. hm585.l49 2001 301'.01—dc21 00-053687

Contents

List of Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments Chapter1. The Contemporary Logics of Social Theory 1. Textuality and Deconstruction 2. Rationality and Reconstruction 3. Constructing Constellations Chapter2. Method and Truth amid the Ruins of the Social 1. Image-Construction and the Problem of Truth 2. Adorno’s Critique and Appropriation of Benjamin 3. Interpretive Philosophy as Constructing Constellations Chapter3. Affect and Evidence in the Logic of Constructing Constellations 1. Adorno’s Kierkegaard Study 2. Truth as Truth Bearers 3. Sociological Interpretation and Disenchantment Chapter4. Method and Truth in French Social Theory 1. Archaeology and Genealogy 2. Reflexive Sociology Chapter5. Constructing Urban Constellations 1. Ghetto Life in America 2. Social Struggle in Chicago Afterword: Constructing Constellations, or Thematizing Embeddedness Notes Bibliography Index

vii ix xi 1 5 26 35

38 39 47

51

70 71 81 86 95 96 110 121 123 139

161 165 185 195

Illustrations

1. West Side, Detroit,1991 2. Rosa Parks Boulevard, Detroit,1987 3.178th and Vyse Avenue,1980 4.178th and Vyse Avenue,1982 5.178th and Vyse Avenue,1983 6.178th and Vyse Avenue,1986 7.178th and Vyse Avenue,1988 8.178th and Vyse Avenue,1991 9.178th and Vyse Avenue,1993 10.178th and Vyse Avenue,1996 11. East Side, Detroit,1991 12. Central Ward, Newark,1993 13. Highland Park, Michigan,1993 14. West Side, Chicago,1986 15. Harlem, New York,1992 16. Central Ward, Newark,1994

128 128 130 131 131 132 132 133 133 134 135 135 136 137 137 140

Preface

It is perhaps to point out the obvious to begin by saying that in the past several decades social theorists of various stripes have been increasingly willing to acknowledge the interpretive character of their work. What such an interpretive character in fact means for the methods of social inquiry is rather less obvious and depends largely on how the terminterpretationis understood and incorporated into the practical study of social life. Indeed, one of the persistent tasks of contemporary social theory appears to be not to conceive of ways to avoid interpretation but rather to develop an adequate account of interpretation and the kinds of truths that define it. This study attempts to make a provisional contribution to such an ongoing and difficult task by examining the inner workings, or logic, of three different modes of interpretive social theory: what I shall call the logic of rationality and reconstruction, the logic of textuality and deconstruction, and, finally, the logic of constructing constellations. While all three of these logics have their relative strengths and merits, I argue that the first is deeply flawed, the second has a rather limited range of application, and the third, once sufficiently developed as a kind of reflexive hermeneutics of retrieval and disenchantment, is the richest and most materialist option for those social theorists who are committed to nonrela- tivizing and empirically informed interpretations of social life. The ensuing study thus has a rather narrow focus. The dis- ciplinary giants of social theory such as Karl Mannheim, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, and C. Wright Mills, for example, do not make an appearance here, nor does the important work of American Pragmatists such as John Dewey or George Herbert Mead; and Karl Marx and Georg Simmel are, for the most part, only subtexts. By and large the study exclusively treats the work of a limited number of hermeneutically informed Continental and American social theorists: Jürgen Habermas and Axel Hon- neth (as exemplars of the logic of rationality and reconstruction);

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