Swidler1986-Exzerpt

Aus Leowiki

“The alternative analysis of culture proposed here consists of three steps. First, it offers an image of culture as a ‘tool kit’ of symbols, stories, rituals, and world-views, which people may use in varying configurations to solve different kinds of problems. Second, to analyze cultures causal effects, it focuses on ‘strategies of action,” persistent ways of ordering action through time. Third, it sees culture’s causal significance not in defining ends of action, but in providing cultural components that are used to construct strategies of action.” (S. 273)

“Interests are the engine of action, pushing it along, but ideas define the destinations human beings seek to reach (inner-wordly versus other-wordly possibilities of salvation, for examply) and the means for getting there (mystical versus ascetic techniques of salvation).” (S. 274; Anm.: in einem Rekurs auf Max Weber)

“For Weber’s interest in the historical role of ideas, Parsons substituted global, ahistorical values. Unlike ideas, which in Weber’s sociology are complex historical constructions shaped by institutional interests, political vicissitudes, and pragmatic motives, Parsonian values are abstract, general, and immanent in social systems. […] Indeed, Parsons does not treat values as concrete symbolic elements (like doctrines, rituals, or myths) which have histories and can actualle be studied.” (S. 274)

“Action is not determined by one’s values. Rather action and values are organized to take advantage of cultural competences.” (S. 275)

“If ideas shape ethos, why did the ethos of ascetic Protestantism outlast its ideas?” (S. 276)

“To call this cultural approach to action the ‘value’ of individualism, as is often done, misses the point, since this individualistic way of organizing action can be directed to many values, among them the establishment of ‘community’” (S. 276)

“The view that action is governed by ‘interests’ is inadequate in the same way as the view that action is governed by non-rational values. […] Action is necessarily integrated into larger assemblages, called here ‘strategies of action.’” (S. 276)

“People do not build lines of action from scratch, shoosing actions one at a time as efficient means to given ends. Instead, they construct chains of action beginning with at least some pr-fabricated links. Culture influences action through the shape and organization of those links, not by determining the ends to which they are put. Our alternative model also rests on the fact that all real cultures contain diverse, often conflicting symbols, rituals, stories and guides to action. […] Rather, it is more like a ‘tool kit’ or repertoire […] from which actors select differing pieces for constructing lines of action.” (S. 277)

“But if culture provides the tools with which persons construct lines of action, then styles or strategies of action will be more persistent than the ends people seek to attain. Indeed, people will come to value ends for which their cultural equipment is well suited.” (S. 277)

“If culture plays the independent causal role Weber attributed to it, it must not change more easily than the structural and economic patterns it supposedly shapes. Precisely here, however, the Weberian model fails empirically.” (S. 278; WRONG: Natürlich kann Kultur/Ethik für eine spezifische Entwicklung ein unabhängiger Auslöser sein, deren neue Strukturen sich dann mit einer völlig anderen Logik reproduzieren, während die Kultur sich verändert. Genau das ist einer der Punkte Webers. Eine besondere Dauerhaftigkeit ist überhaupt nicht notwendig.)

„The distinction is less between settled and unsettled lives, howeber, than between culture’s role in sustaining existing strategies of action and its role in constructing new ones.” (S. 278)

“Periods of social transformation seem to provide simultaneously the best and the worst evidence for culture’s influence on social action. […] In such periods, ideologies – explicit, articulated, highly organized meaning systems (both political and religious) – establish new styles or strategies of action. When people are learning new ways of organizing individual and collective action, practicing unfamiliar habits until they become familiar, then doctrine, symbol, and ritual directly shape action.” (S. 278, Herv. i. Orig.)

“The same belief system – a religion, for example – may be held by some people as an ideology and by others as tradition; […] ‘Common sense’, finally, is the set of assumptions so unselfconscious as to seem a natural, transparent, undeniable part of the structure of the world (Geertz, 1975). Bursts of ideological activism occur in periods when competing ways of organizing action are developing or contending for dominance.” (S. 279; Ja, aber warum kommt es überhaupt zu solch einem Wettbewerb, bzw. warum wird er so sichtbar, dass von „unsettled lives“ gesprochen werden kann?)

„Walzer also suggests a new way of thinking about the relationship between ideology and interests. […] Interests are thus important in shaping ideas, but an ideology serves interests through its potential to construct and regulate patterns of conduct. […] To understand culture’s causal role in such high-ideology periods, we need, third, to consider ideologies in a larger explanatory context. Coherent ideologies emerge when new ways of organizing action are being developed. Such ideologies, often carried by social movements, model new ways to organize action and to structure human communities. These ideological movements, however, are in active competition with other cultural frameworks – at least in competition with common sense and usually with alternative traditions and ideologies as well.” (S. 280; Anm.: Innovation und soziale Bewegungen als Grund für Entstehung von „unsettled lives“)

„On the one hand, people in settled periods can live with great discontinuity between talk and action.“ (S. 281; Anm.: Warum nur in “settled periods”?)

“Long-Term effects” of “Unsettled Culture (ideology)” “creates new strategies of action, but long-term influence depends on structural opportunities for survival of competing ideologies.” (Aus Figure 1, S. 282)

“Distinguishing culture’s role in settled and unsettled periods, we can focus on those historical junctures where new cultural complexes make possible new or reorganized strategies of action.” (S. 283)

“In new circumstances (after immigration, for example), who remains traditional longer? If culture influences action by constraining strategies of action, we should expect the greatest ‘traditionlism’ among the old […] and those from culturally encapsulated backgrounds, people for whom the costs of learning new cultural skills would be greatest. If culture shapes action through values, on the other hand, we should expect the most socially advantaged to show greatest resistance to change, since they would have the greatest resources with which to protect and pursue those values.” (S. 283)

“Paradigms break down, according to this argument, when they fail to regulate adequately normal scientific work – when, for example, scientists have difficulty knowing which explanation fits the rules of the game and which not, how to award power and prestige within the field, […]” (S. 283; Anm.: greift schon nach Kuhn selbst viel zu kurz: Entscheidend für die Überwindung eines Paradigmas ist weniger dessen Unzulänglichkeit als vielmehr die Existenz einer Alternative.)

„How do ideologies become tradition of common sense? If ideologies are not distinctive kinds of belief systems […], but rather distinctive phases in the development of cultural systems, some former ideologies may become so uncontested that they are no longer orgnized as self-conscious belief systems. […] Is hegemony alone enough to soften the self-conscious boundaries of an ideology?” (S. 284)

“Ultimately, structural and historical opportunities determine which strategies, and thus which cultural systems succeed. In neither case is it cultural end-values that shape action in the long run. Indeed, a culture hast enduring effects on those who hold it, not by shaping the ends they pursue, but by providing the characteristic repertoire from which they build lines of action.” (S. 284)