1. See Raymond Williams's critique (1958, 297-312) of the concepts of mass civilization and mass democracy as instruments of domination. [BACK]

1. This analysis is based on a seminar on Comparative Liminality and Dynamics of Civilizations conducted by the late Victor Turner and the author in Jerusalem in 1982-1983 within the framework of the program on Sociological Analysis of Comparative Civilizations at the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology and the Truman Research Institute of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. On this program see S. N. Eisenstadt, "Sociological Approach to Comparative Civilizations." The Development and Directions of a Research Program, Jerusalem, The Hebrew University, 1986. The papers of the seminar on Comparative Liminality were published in Religion 15 (July 1985). [BACK]

2. On some aspects of the dynamics of Buddhist civilization, from the standpoint of our analysis, see S. J. Tambiah (1976). [BACK]

1. For further details of this modification see Brownstein (1982:75-82). [BACK]

2. For further details of the theory of interpenetrative systems, see Luhmann 1977, 1978, 1984:286-345; Jensen 1978. [BACK]

3. There are somewhat divergent judgments on the metatheoretical status of this integrative strategy: Brownstein (1982:68) tends to believe that Parsons's endeavor can best be described as a form of obsessive eclecticism, while Alexander (1983:45, 74, 129, 154, 183, and elsewhere) characterizes them mildly as "ecumenicism" and more forcefully as "imperialistic ambitions" or "accumulationism." For a more comprehensive discussion of Parsons's metatheoretical ideas, see Schmid (1989:19-115). [BACK]

4. This confusion can already be observed in Parsons's first major theoretical treatise of 1937 (1968:75-77). [BACK]

5. I discuss this conflation at some length in Schmid (1972:177-180). For a typical example of this conflation, see Parsons (1969:8), where, at the same time, he defines values by the help of norms and defends a "distinction between value and differentiated norm" on the basis of the belief that norms can be regarded as situational specifications of the "common societal value system" (1969:9). break [BACK]

6. Whether there is a "nonlinguistic subsystem of human culture" (Bauman 1973:88-91) depends entirely on whether the nonlinguistic part of culture can be symbolically formulated (see Leach 1978:62-63), whereas it is not decisive whether this symbolization takes place on a conscious or a nonconscious level. [BACK]

7. For this theory of an objective use of symbols, see Popper (1972:106-152, 153-190, 1984:11-40) and Schneider (1973:137-139). [BACK]

8. Alexander takes this case to be a "logical illusion" and "sociologically unfounded" and believes that if cooperation between actors actually takes place, a "cultural commonality" will tend to build up (1984:311-314). In my view this position is incorrect. First, Alexander certainly cannot mean that the factual coexistence of cooperation and a contradictory cultural system is logically excluded; he believes rather, as his example shows, that such coexistence is unstable to a large degree, which is quite a different notion. Furthermore, and in true Parsonsian tradition, Alexander's understanding of culture is evidently restricted to values (and norms), which suggests a belief that cooperation without a common set of values simply does not exist. But both theses are contradicted by recent theoretical (and empirical) considerations of the condition of "egoistic cooperation" (see Axelrod 1984; Kliemt 1985, 1986; Voss 1985). The forms of cooperation described by these authors remain stable as long as the participant actors do not lose interest in the returns they get from cooperation; they are certainly not in need of a cultural commonality of values to maintain this interest. But, of course, if they actually lose their interest in mutual cooperation, such (nonexistent) common cultural values cannot serve to sustain cooperation. However, an interest guided form of cooperation is neither logically impossible nor empirically improbable.

I assume that Alexander's assumptions are based on a conflation of (normative) integration (by the help of a set of common values) and stability of a relation in the sense that no actor has good reason to relinquish his participation. These two theses are quite independent of each other, but can be unified: for example, membership of a normatively integrated social relation may (under quite debatable circumstances) be accepted as one reason not to leave it. [BACK]

9. Such additional fields of understanding are enumerated by Simmel and Sombart, who differentiate between Sachverstehen (objective understanding), Gef쨬sverstehen (emotional understanding), Stilverstehen (stylistic understanding), and so on (Simmel 1984:61-83; Sombart 1929:208-226). [BACK]

10. Such an elaborated theory has been developed, among others, by Gadamer (1965) and Popper (1969, 1972:162-180) and even more radically by Luhmann (1984:191-241). [BACK]

11. Space does not permit detailed discussion of this theory here. For further clarification I draw the reader's attention to M. Archer's important study (1988) and to an interesting article by P. Drechsel (1984), especially to the extensive literature cited there; I limit myself to an outline of such a theory in the section on heuristic prospects for the development of a valid theory of culture in this chapter. [BACK]

12. Brownstein (1982:64-65) has convincingly shown that Parsons's idea of an acting cultural system does not follow necessarily from the basic assumption of the AGIL-schematization. break [BACK]

13. It would be interesting to know whether Parsons has adopted Simmel's theory of the cultural system, which implies this very idea that cultural entities can have a dynamic of their own. See my critical discussion of this theory in Schmid (1987:256-259). [BACK]

14. This involves the view that the de-coupling of different system levels is, in the last analysis, a product of the actors themselves (or, to express it in Parsons's terminology, of the social system); see Giesen and Schmid (1989). [BACK]

15. Some of Parson's commentators have been led by this fact into somewhat daring and overcomplex modifications of the AGIL-schema (for example, Gould 1976); Brownstein (1982:29-30) quite correctly regards this as theoretically and empirically indefensible. [BACK]

16. For the importance of this "logic of the situation," see Popper (1961:147-152, 1969); for a more critical explanation of individual and/or social action, see Schmid (1985). [BACK]

17. parsons's own theory of culture has been interpreted as representing such a form of reductionism; see Archer (1988:30-38). [BACK]

18. To exclude a strict determination of culture by some sort of Produktions-verhältnisse does not, of course, imply that there are no restrictions resulting from how actors organize their social relations (see Douglas 1970; Swanson 1968, among others). Reductionist determinism has been conclusively criticized by Alexander (1982a). [BACK]

19. I have criticized Luhmann's position in Schmid (1987a:40-43). [BACK]

20. Refering to Parsons's "functionalism," I do not pretend that he really believed any system to be in the state of a perfect reproductive equilibrium, but that he can be considered a "methodological functionalist" insofar as he saw the necessity to analyze systems as "boundary maintaining systems" (see Lackey 1987:42). For a more general statement concerning functional analysis see Davis (1959). [BACK]

21. The state of systems analysis in Parsons's time is well documented by Buckley (1968); for parsons's original qualifications as an economic theorist, see Camic (1987). [BACK]

22. For a negative appraisal of Parsons's commitment to developing such a theory of culture change, see Savage (1981:204). [BACK]

23. That it is possible to theorize on this issue is exemplified by Archer (1988:158-171, 183-184, 199-201, 207-208). [BACK]

24. For such a model of change, see Popper (1972:180-183), Schmid (1987), Mayntz and Nedelmann (1987), and others. [BACK]

25. For such a model of "revolutionary" changes in cultural traditions see especially Popper (1966). [BACK]

26. Thus Parsons (1972a:10) speaks of a "sprunghafte Entwicklung des (gesellschaftlichen) Anpassungsvermögens," and he is well aware that there are breakdowns in cultural traditions; see his conception of a seed society (1977a). [BACK]

27. For the possibilities of such a modified theoretical program, see Prigogine (1976), Boulding (1978), Jantsch (1979), Martens (1985), D'Avis (1984), Valjavec (1985), B쨬 (1988), Gleick (1988), and many others. [BACK]

28. Worthy of consideration are the objections of Camic (1979), which suggest that Parsons improperly included in his critique of the utilitarian per- soft [BACK]

1. For some general considerations see Weiss (1984). [BACK]

2. A first effort in this direction is Weiss (1987). [BACK]

3. Quoted from Hofmann (1974: 408). [BACK]

4. Adopted, with minor modifications, from Birch (1971: 15). [BACK]

5. For a scanty reference to these affinities see Bendix (1965); Bendix, too, is disinclined to speculate on Burckhardt's possible influence on Weber. [BACK]

6. In Weber's (1965: 847) view, charismatic leadership and representation exclude each other principally. [BACK]

7. "The party, sect, or theorist, who disclose class-consciousness, not as it is, but as it ought to be." [BACK]

8. Admittedly Burckhardt did not see a sign of cultural decay in the existence of great individuals; but there can be no doubt that he did see the intellectuals, with their proclivity for ahistorical rationalism and their "advocatory" claim, asserted in the cultural and political arenas. He (1974: 215) spoke of Robespierre as being "a terrible man who was a mere dallier for all his legal logic, though he tried to prevail here whatever the cost"; this is reminiscent of Hegel's (1961: 59) disparaging remark on the "lawyers, ideologists and men of principle" who thoroughly deserved being banished by Napoleon. [BACK]

9. It is necessary to keep in mind (Burckhardt 1939: 68) that as far back as the beginning of occidental democracy (the polis of the Greeks) "mere delegation by representation" did not measure up to the Greek idea of democracy. [BACK]

10. Thus J. von Eichendorff (n.d., 780) notes about F. Schlegel's political views, "Opposing the dead rule of mechanical equilibrium in the representation state ( Vertretungsstaat ) he, on historical and religious foundations, raised the Christian state, depending on faith and love." [BACK]

11. See for example Simone de Beauvoir (Schwarzer 1983: 103). [BACK]

12. "Whoever teaches [the gospel] shall and must submit his teachings to the judgement of his hearers. . . . Thus here again it is evident that a Christian not only has the right and the power to teach the word of God but he is obliged to do so under pain of his soul and the grace of God" (Luther 1983: 11, 13). [BACK]

13. Recent discussions (cf. Brumlik 1986) about "advocatory ethics" (the legitimacy and necessity of representation of proxy action or decision making in moralibus ) mainly refer to questions of environment, biotechnology, and euthanasia. These discussions are particularly difficult because they cling to the idea of a universalistic moral but reject the assumption of practical reasoning a priori. Things become even more, not less, complicated if (as in Benhabib 1986) the reference to the "generalized other" is completed by taking into account the perspectives and claims of the "concrete other(s)." [BACK]

14. For a rather radical, as well as inoperative, contemporary criticism of the trial lawyer, see Illich et al. (1977). [BACK]

15. "The artist, having withdrawn inwardly from society, is only searching for the appreciation of art dealers, critics, director's museums, exhibitors, and continue

collectors" (Gehlen 1986: 230). On the problematic influence of experts in this field, see also Janssen (1982) and, with regard to contemporary music, Dahlhaus (1987). [BACK]

16. Thus Lyotard (1979: 8) advances the "variety of inventors" against the "one-dimensionality of the experts"; his expectation is that the universal "participation in an aesthetic community, which has always been promised" is now coming into being. [BACK]

1. There are, of course, other conceptions of culture (Kroeber and Kluck-hohn 1952; Williams 1981). Many anthropologists equate it with social heritage or with systems of symbols. Some writers confine it to metaculture: the making of authoritative interpretations of authoritative interpretations (for example, specifying criteria of validity, proffering a systematic of representations, identifying the ordering entailed in cybernetic hierarchies). Still others include in culture one possible outcome of authoritative interpretations: the making accessible of authoritatively validated experiences of meaning and value. A few (Bellah 1970) include the objects so experienced (Bellah regards these as symbolic realities ). [BACK]

2. An explicit conception of collective purpose seems to provide the missing framework for the phenomena treated in Jaeger and Selznick's paper and one within which they can be ordered and studied. [BACK]

3. Although he never uses words like collective motivation or purpose , Durkheim constantly relies on these conceptions. In Suicide (1897), he links self-destruction to a person's having ties with collective purpose that are too strong or too weak. In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), he sees the totemic plants and insects of aboriginal Australia as symbols of collective unity in directed action. He interprets the native rituals as a generating, regenerating, and intensification of collective purposes: as a making immediate and palpable the "spirit" that empowers collective life and gives meaning to all particular norms and practices. In The Division of Labor (1893), it is not the increase of rates of social interaction that leads to specialization in roles and institutions but of interaction as entailed in joint undertakings and therefore of interaction that has what Durkheim calls moral properties. People may move toward a specialization in their activities for the very reason that Durkheim suggests, that is, to enhance their competitive positions. But, for Durkheim, it is people's participation in collective life that first puts them in the position of being potential competitors and that then provides them with the possibility for specialized contributions that can transform the meaning of their specialization from competition into collaboration. Durkheim sees people's joint undertakings as making available the activities in which they will find it profitable to specialize and continue

as relating specialized roles and institutions to one another. These joint undertakings and their goals are the source of that form of normativity that he calls organic solidarity and on which he builds in the famous preface to the second edition of The Division of Labor . (Contrary to Schnore [1958], there is only a superficial resemblance between this analysis and the one typical among human ecologists where ideas of collective relations and purpose play no part.) [BACK]

4. More specifically, collective purpose refers to the collectively developed motives that people serve when acting as agents of a collectivity. People find that to have a collective relationship they must do more than create and use it. They must meet its requirements and serve its interests. They become the agents of the relationship and not just its creators and users. It is in the actions of participants as agents that a collectivity is sometimes considered a collective actor: as having purposes or interests distinguishable from those of its participants when considered individually and as engaging in a course of collective action. [BACK]

5. All embracive theories of collective action--the "classical texts," old and new--give collective purpose a central place in analyses of collective organization and action. (None gives it an exclusive place. All recognize that behavioristic and other considerations [Buxton 1985] must be taken into account along with the role of values, motives, and motivation.) Durkheim's treatments are only the most extended (see note 1). For Marx (Jay 1984:60-66), collective purposes embody the true nature and situation of mankind; one that is distorted by the dominant position of special interests and by the purposelessness of free markets; one that, like Luther's "true" church, is invisible, authoritative, and certain to prevail but perhaps only at the end of history. For Weber (1925), collective consciousness as focused in collective purposes is the basis for treating the "totality" (Jay 1984; Yack 1986) of a society or civilization through ideal types (Burger 1976:160-179; Hekman 1983). For Park (1938, 1939), it affords the distinction between the ecological order and the cultural, between community and society. For Parsons (1961, 1966), it is a necessary source of the phases of collective action and of the four great spheres of institutionalization, each sphere being an aspect of a larger set of collective efforts and ends. For students of collective behavior and social change, the development of collective beliefs and motivations, and of an organization through which they can be implemented, is a central problem (Smelser 1963:71-73; Swanson 1970). For students of complex organizations, the efforts of organizations to find and employ suitable goals is a major concern (March and Olsen 1976; Mohr 1982; Zander 1985). [BACK]

6. It is, of course, a truism that individuals have values, motives, and motivations of which they are in some sense unaware (cf. Freud 1900; Kahneman and Tversky 1973; Nisbett and Wilson 1977). [BACK]

7. Swanson (1990) presents evidence against Mary Douglas's (1970) claim that certain tribal societies were secularized. [BACK]

8. The conditions under which these normative considerations extend to personal life and personalized relations, or to private contracts, may be quite specialized. What Lukes (1985) treats as Marx's failure to provide a morality omits Marx's stress on collective values and fulfillments (Marcuse 1941). break [BACK]

9. Myths that picture reality as an aspect of deity rather than as its product seem to appear only in rather complex societies (for example, Collins 1982). [BACK]

10. A note on representations of collective purpose in the most complex societies appears in Swanson (1990). [BACK]

11. Swanson (1990) contains a listing of sampled societies according to their origin myths. [BACK]

12. Elsewhere (1987) I discuss the formal similarities between these tricksters and what Freud called pregenital characteristics. [BACK]

13. Cheryl Shelmadine. [BACK]

14. Swanson (1990) provides a review of evidence where Murdock's code seems incorrect. [BACK]

15. There is a listing of sampled societies according to presence and activity of high gods in Swanson (1990). [BACK]

16. Hamnett's (1984), Pickering's (1984), and Wuthnow's (1983) criticisms of the methodology of these studies seem not to jeopardize the essential findings. (1) The replication of earlier results in a new sample, and with blind coding, increases both the number of cases and the likelihood that the relations obtained hold for the relevant universe of cases. (2) Whatever the limitations of some ethnographic accounts, they seem adequate for meaningful research on this subject. How, otherwise, could these replicated findings be obtained? (3) The codes used to define sovereign groups were developed for my first study of high gods through my reading of the ethnography on a small sample of simple societies. I did not use those societies in the sample I originally employed to test the hypotheses. Some of those societies in my small "feasibility" sample were stateless, and I found it necessary to be quite circumstantial in detailing the conditions under which such societies did or did not have a wide and embracive level of decision making despite the absence in them of formal and continuously operative political structures. Wuthnow is correct in noting that such specific details are not derivable specifically from a conception of a society or its collective purposes. To permit that derivation, the operational details need to be stated more generally, but they seem to catch the sort of phenomena that are sought in testing these hypotheses. And they direct us to the relevant observations in each of two samples. (4) As I indicate elsewhere (1974b, 1976, 1986), alternative accounts by Simpson and Underhill are insufficient to explain the relationships I report. [BACK]

17. Simpson's suggestion that high gods appear in societies that depend upon the raising or hunting of small animals for their food need not trouble us because the correlation he reports is not statistically significant. [BACK]

18. Jorgensen (1980, 1987) refers to them as sodalities . [BACK]

19. I appreciate Dr. Barnes's permission to use the data from which my analyses were developed. [BACK]

20. There is a listing of sampled societies by code in Swanson (1990). [BACK]

21. There is a listing of sampled societies by number of nonsovereign, communal groups in Swanson (1990). [BACK]

22. Wuthnow (1983:354, 1985, 1987) regrets my not taking up the regimes and religious developments in several parts of Europe. One of these, Russia (but see my discussion, 1967:242-243) was omitted because it was not continue

within the sphere of the Western church; others were omitted (Flanders, Norway, Finland, and Wallachia) because they were controlled by outside regimes and not able to develop religious positions based upon indigenous conditions. He is wrong in saying that I omitted Moravia (it was considered a part of the kingdom of Bohemia) and the Holy Roman Empire (I treated all of the principal states of Germany, including all electoral states [apart from the archbishoprics]: the Palatinate, Bohemia, Brandenburg, and Saxony). It therefore seems unnecessary to share Wuthnow's concern (1985:805) that the sampling was too limited to be taken seriously as evidence. [BACK]

23. Ozment's (1975:9-11) suggestion that what truth there is in my account is due to the acceptance of the Reformation by governments under "popular" control leaves mysterious the retention of Catholicism in places such as the inner Swiss cantons or Poland during the period of the liberum veto . [BACK]

24. Wuthnow must surely misunderstand when he suggests (1985:804) that my not taking that step indicates that I work with a "correspondence" theory. [BACK]

25. Wuthnow overstates when he suggests (1985:803-804) that for collective criteria to be involved people must be self-consciously aware of the criteria to which their interpretations must be faithful. It is unlikely that the people concerned were self-aware of the features of their society that I find are related to their religious interpretations in any of the studies in this paper. With collectivities as with individuals, people often relate in orderly ways to conditions they cannot articulate or, for whatever reason, they misinterpret. [BACK]

26. Wuthnow's own interpretation of the Reformation also relies on indirect evidence. He suggests (1985:804, 812) that Protestantism tended to be accepted where it could be imposed by a strong central authority because "the nobility everywhere remained overwhelmingly resistant to the Reformation." He argues, in elaboration, that the nobility were thus resistant because they did not want to give up the ability to control the resources of the Church or to control appointments to its offices. Wuthnow does not provide direct evidence of any nobleman's making these calculations and, as a consequence, rejecting Protestant views. Fortunately, in his case as in many others, indirect evidence is useful. It shows that his account is incorrect. In or near the first half of the sixteenth century, the period he specifies as relevant, the Reformation had from strong to overwhelming support from the nobility in the following states (dates for the legalization of Protestantism are also given): Prussia, 1525; Wurttemberg, 1535; Denmark, 1536; Sweden, 1536; Brandenburg, 1539; Saxony, 1539; Hungary, 1540; England, 1547-1553; Inner Austria, 1549; Poland, 1555; Transylvania, 1557; Scotland, 1560. [BACK]

1. This homogeneity-differentiation issue should be clearly distinguished from the coherence-incoherence issue; see Neil Smelser, chapter 1 of this volume. [BACK]

2. This comes our very clearly in Dierkes's (1988) survey of the literature; see, particularly, Schein (1983). [BACK]

3. The sample was stratified by sex, party affiliation, and length of service in the Bundestag. We interviewed five women and twenty-five men; seven were deputies of the Christian Democrats, three of its Bavarian sister party the CSU, eleven of the Social Democrats, four of the Free Democrats, and five of the Green party. Of the thirty interviews, all but eight were conducted by Friedhelm Neidhardt and myself, the remaining ones by Peter Stadler, a part-time collaborator on the project whose main job was parliamentary assistant. The interview period extended over twenty-two months, with most interviews conducted between the summer of 1986 and the fall of 1987. All interviews were guided by a schedule containing twenty questions, though they were not always in a standard sequence and sometimes varied in their phrasing. To undercut the defenses of interview partners as highly skilled impression managers (as parlia- soft

mentarians are), we used no preformulated statements and only open questions and avoided asking for the verbalization of prescriptions. Instead we asked for proscriptions and sanctions (from general disapproval over open criticism and withdrawal of support to ostracism) and discussed the reactions to well-known "scandalous" incidents and the irritations caused by the behavior of Green deputies in order to get at the normative expectations underlying them. [BACK]

4. Gesetz 좥r die Rechtsverhältnisse der Mitglieder des Deutschen Bundestages, passed on 18 February 1977. [BACK]

5. For this distinction of decision styles and their implications for decision outcomes see Scharpf (1988). [BACK]

6. The existence of these two categories of deputies, those elected by majority vote in their district and those getting into parliament via a party's list of candidates, follows from the German election law, which mixes elements of proportional and majoritarian representation. [BACK]

7. It would require a separate discussion to establish whether power per se can also be called a subcultural value. We have found hints that striving for power for oneself and for one's group are accepted among deputies, while the person who confuses politics with a morality play is regarded with suspicion and ridicule. But toward the electorate and the public, it is still necessary to display a primary policy orientation and to convey the impression of working for the common welfare. One also should not discount completely the effects of the disappointment that deputies strongly motivated to shape some aspect of reality experience invariably when they realize that individually attributable success in policy matters is virtually impossible. This disappointment may lead to a displacement of the criteria defining success from policy to power. [BACK]

8. The cutting edge of available social sanctions, incidentally, aims precisely at that type of deputy who is under the strongest pressure to infringe the norms curbing disintegrative tendencies, that is, the career politician who wants to "make it" in Bonn. Within a parliamentary party group, task-oriented cooperation and special resources cannot be withdrawn without harming the effectiveness of the group, as both are to a large extent functionally determined. Other sanctions, such as publicly reprimanding or ousting a member, would be to the direct advantage of the opposition. What remains is, above all, the withdrawal of support in seeking offices and in reelection--the very core of the careerist's striving. [BACK]

9. This cultural difference is time and again experienced by Europeans in contact with Americans, whose immediate and direct inquiry into matters considered private, and therefore to be raised at the utmost only by close friends, they consider indiscreet and difficult to deal with. [BACK]

1. These theoretical foundations are further elaborated in M쮣h (1987, 1988). [BACK]

2. This essay works on the comparative study elaborated in M쮣h (1986). [BACK]

3. On the shaping of the cultural code of German society in the nineteenth century see Plessner (1959), Dahrendorf (1965), Ringer (1969), Krieger (1957), M쮣h (1986, 683-846). [BACK]

4. On the shaping of German social structure in the nineteenth century see Ringer (1969, 14-80). [BACK]

5. On the substantial rise of living standards and the increasing role of consumption in the Federal Republic of Germany, see Kreikebaum and Rinsche (1961), Mooser (1983), Thränhardt (1986), and Glaser (1986). [BACK]

6. On the long-term trend toward income and status leveling, see Hardach (1985), Wilensky (1986), Thränhardt (1986), and Glaser (1986, 75-80). [BACK]

7. Additional material on the social structure of the Federal Republic of Germany is provided by Lepsius (1974, 1978), Bolte and Hradil (1984), and Franz, Kruse, and Rolff (1986). On the "two-thirds society," see Kleining (1975, 273) and Schäfers (1985, 87). [BACK]

8. According to Klingemann's (1984) analysis of workers' subjective stratum identification, German workers tend to regard themselves as middle class to a substantially higher degree than British and American workers. [BACK]

9. On individualization see Beck (1983, 1986) and Hradil (1983). [BACK]

10. At least in parts of society, an "outward life-style" was able to develop (Thränhardt 1986, 168), though that does not mean consumption has lost its distinctive function, as is shown by Pappi (1978) for example. Furthermore, according to Mooser (1983, 287-88) and Handl, Mayer, and M쬬er (1977, 60-62), the workers' participation in consumption is by no means universal. [BACK]

11. The "marginal groups" have been investigated by Roth (1979), Hauser, Cremer-Schäfer, and Nouvertne (1981), and K쨲t (1982). [BACK]

12. On the development of mass culture via television, see Knilli (1972) and Eurich and W첺berg (1983). The development of tourism in Federal Germany exemplifies almost all of the phenomena that determine overall societal developments: the increased standard of living, broadened participation, demonstrative consumption, rituals of association and also of distinction, and the exclusion of the "periphery." See Datzer (1981), Weymar (1983), Maase (1983, 214), and Glaser (1986, 145-152). [BACK]

13. For an introduction to the discussion on the "educational emergency" of the 1960s, see Dahrendorf (1963) and Picht (1964). According to Bolder (1978) and Klemm and Rolff (1986), worker participation in the competitive struggle for educational certificates is not yet universal--a presumption that applies for women as well: see Blossfeld (1983), Frevert (1986), and M쬬er, Willms, and Handl (1983). [BACK]

14. On the mixture of social groups and strata in residential areas, see Niethammer (1979) and Mooser (1983, 297), who identify a fundamental change in this respect during the 1960s. break [BACK]

15. On the sphere of conflict in the Federal Republic of Germany, see Erd (1978), Kudera, Ruff, and Schmidt (1982), Uffelmann (1982), M쬬er-Jentsch (1986), and Abelshauser (1987). [BACK]

1. The relationship between values and action is complex, as the secondary literature on Weber's Protestant Ethic thesis attests (see Marshall 1982:64ff.). Bendix's (1970:146ff.) discussion of the Protestant Ethic is a useful clarification continue

of the different ways in which cultural values are transmitted to the populace under contrasting conditions of intense religiosity and secularization. Campbell's study unfortunately does not direct sufficient attention to the interpersonal nexus of conduct and the key role that cultural specialists play in attempting to promote, transmit, and sustain beliefs under conditions of increased secularization in which one can presume a greater hiatus between high culture and everyday experience. Although we do know that the middle classes have a greater capacity to take beliefs seriously, we need more evidence of the effects of beliefs on actual conduct. [BACK]

1. In this respect, I could not disagree more with Rochberg-Halton's assertion that it is the semiotic and Parsonian position that leads to reification and that the pragmatic one is their antidote. It is Rochberg-Halton's commitment to Peircean semiotics that underlines his naturalism. Saussurian semiotics, by contrast, make it possible to see naturalism's fatal weaknesses. Where Saussure and Parsons emphasize the constructed meaning of objects, Peirce (1985) is obsessed with the relative "realness" of signs, in the sense of both their scientific truthfulness and their tactile representatives. On the one hand, this emphasis on the motivated, rather than the arbitrary, relation of signifier and signified (see the discussion of Saussure below) is an advantage, as demonstrated by Peirce's extremely interesting theorizing about icons and indexes. At the same time, Peirce's emphasis on the growing truthfulness of signs-- symbols in his vocabulary--and their relationship to experience can cause serious problems, allowing Peircean analysts to emphasize the pragmatics of culture in place of the semiotics. [BACK]

2. Mann's (1985) work attempts to blend micro and macro sides of the post-Parsonian response, even while it begins to move beyond them. While I believe the historical aspects of his account of the Western world are not only highly original but also largely correct, the work suffers from an anticultural theoretical bias despite the significant empirical openings it makes to religion. Mann insists that one can and should study the infrastructures of ideas, the concrete networks and communications systems through which ideas are expressed rather than the ideas themselves. His premise is that ideas are not in themselves legitimate social causes. Yet one of the major sociological explanations for these infrastructures must always be the influence of the ideas themselves. [BACK]

3. I have criticized Parsons's repeated effort to apportion different variables to different disciplines in Alexander 1983: 272-276. In that discussion, how- soft

ever, I related this tendency to Parsons's idealism, for he apportioned to sociology the specialization in normative rather than material forces (in his later work, it was the study of the integrative subsystem of general action, which specializes in affect). Here I criticize this disciplinary apportionment because it allowed Parsons to escape from a true confrontation with symbolic codes. Although Parsons provided the baseline for any contemporary effort to create a multidimensional cultural sociology, he blocked its development by insisting that sociology focus only on the institutionalized segment of culture, in his terms not the cultural system , but the latency , or pattern maintenance, subsystem of the social system. Only these specialized elements are called values in Parsons's theory, as Bellah (1970b) makes particularly clear in some of his work. Yet, as I have argued elsewhere (1988a, 1990), values are only one of several areas of focus for a true cultural sociology. [BACK]

4. This concrete approach to culture as high culture has been subject to criticism by Greenfield (1987) in a recent round of discussion about approaches to cultural sociology in the newsletter of the Culture Section of the American Sociological Association. [BACK]

5. Such a treatment is manifest, for example, in much of Wuthnow's (1987) recent work. Although Wuthnow sets out to reinsert culture into sociology, and provides some important illustrations of how to do so, he throws a roadblock in his own path by insisting that cultural analysis should take an "objective" approach that avoids the problem of meaning. This avoidance is epistemologically impossible, for any effort to understand a social element, even from the outside, is based upon assumptions about its subjective orientation or inner patterns, that is, its meaning (see Alexander 1987: 281-301). An analyst can no more avoid the meaning problem than an actor can. Indeed, in the methodologically ideal case, the same organized set provides a reference point for both.

The principle of avoiding meaning allows Wuthnow a rationale for not entering into the "thicket of symbolism." With some important exceptions (1987: 66-96), this has the effect of undermining the authenticity of his references to cultural patterns, which he often reduces to such vague and general themes as individualism, socialism , and rationality (for example, 1987: 187-214), that is, he glosses over meaningful sets rather than attempts to understand them. Not surprisingly, as his book progresses, Wuthnow's theorizing of culture as variable gives increasing, and eventually almost exclusive, attention to the institutional and ecological forces in culture's environment. For an insightful discussion of the limitations of what they call Wuthnow's "positive structuralism," see Rambo and Chan 1990. [BACK]

6. By orthodox interactionists, I am referring to those, such as Blumer, who manifest the individualist current (see Alexander 1987: 215-237). An attractive counterexample within the interactionist tradition is found in Fine's (1987) interpretation of the culture of little league baseball players in the United States. Motivated by interactionist theory, Fine develops the concept of idioculture to describe the specific and unique belief set developed within each team; yet this individualizing variant is placed deftly within a more general cultural framework that Fine interprets and finds to be widely shared. break [BACK]

7. Swidler takes quite the opposite position, criticizing recent movements toward thicker cultural analysis as mere efforts "to describe the features of cultural products and experiences" (italics added) in contrast to efforts at " cultural explanation ," which she prefers (Swidler 1986: 273, original italics). By searching for "effects" and "causes" and by offering "an image of culture as a 'tool kit' of symbols," Swidler moves from culture to the levels of social system and action. Her essay actually reinforces the very tendencies that have prevented social science from taking culture seriously. Kane's (1991) theoretical essay is the most systematic and successful effort to argue that the analytic autonomy of culture is essential for any realistic assessment of its relation to more structural variables to be attained. [BACK]

8. Indeed, rather than investigate the texture of new meaning configurations, most contemporary Weberians take over the ideal-typical patterns of modernity that Weber identified at the beginning of this century, for example, value rationality, ethic of responsibility, and so on. [BACK]

9. Bellah emphasized this distinction between symbols and values in his early work on Japan (Bellah 1970b). As he moved toward symbolic realism and his civil religion concept, this distinction became blurred for he became less interested in institutionalized systems and more interested in symbolic references in and of themselves. In Bellah's most recent work, the internal analysis of meaning systems has received less attention. [BACK]

10. Eisenstadt is one of the few contemporary sociologists of culture who continues this early Parsonian focus on institutionalization. By incorporating elements of Shils's more cultural program and by expanding the Weberian elements that are incorporated into institutionalization theory, however, Eisenstadt has significantly extended the Parsonian cultural program (see Alexander and Colomy 1985). For a critique by Eisenstadt of contemporary macrosociological analyses on the grounds they take an ontological approach to culture rather than an analytical one--a critique parallel to my discussion of the problems with the culture-as-variable approach--see Eisenstadt 1987. [BACK]

11. For an extremely interesting study of contemporary society that makes use of Eco's conception of an interwoven web of symbols, see Edles's (1990) study of Spanish political culture in the transition to democracy after Franco's death. [BACK]

12. Rather than a relation between symbolic and social systems, Foucault would call this the manner in which discourse is shaped by discursive relations.

Discursive relations are, in a sense, at the limit of discourse: they offer it objects of which it can speak, or rather . . . they determine the group of relations that discourse must establish in order to speak of this or that object, in order to deal with them, name them, analyze them, classify them, explain them, etc. These relations characterize . . . rules that are immanent in a practice, and define it in its specificity (1972: 47).