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The Meaningful Construction of Inequality and the Struggles Against It: A ‘Strong Program’ Approach to How Social Boundaries Change

Yale University, USA

When it comes to issues of equality and redistribution, sociologists are particularly prone to think in anti-cultural terms. External, objective, and material forces are conceived as determining unequal distributions without reference to the wills of actors - via hegemony, domination, subordination. But if inequality is imposed by material and coercive force, then it can be remedied only by accumulating power and counter-force, and by exercising them in an instrumental and potentially coercive way.What is missing from this account is meaning, the recognition of its relative autonomy. The imposition of inequality, and struggles over justice, inclusion, and distribution, are mediated by cultural structures. Inequalities are nested inside the discourse of civil society, and so are demands for equality. Vis-à-vis the binary codes of civil society, protest movements pollute hegemonic forces and purify subordinate groups in its name.

Key Words: civil society • culture • cultural sociology • inequalities • strong program • symbolic boundaries

References

• Alexander, Jeffrey C. (1982-83) Theoretical Logic in Sociology (4 volumes). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
• Alexander, Jeffrey C. (2003) The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Alexander, Jeffrey C. (2005) ‘Performance and Power’, Culture, Fall: 1-5.
• Alexander, Jeffrey C. (2006a) The Civil Sphere. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Alexander, Jeffrey C. (2006b) ‘Performance and Counter-Power (1): The Civil Rights Movement and the Civil Sphere’, Culture, Winter: 1-6.
• Alexander, Jeffrey C. (2006c) ‘Performance and Counter-Power (2): The Civil Rights Movement and the Civil Sphere’, Culture, Spring: 1-4.
• Alexander, Jeffrey C. and Smith, Philip (2003) ‘The Strong Program in Cultural Sociology: Elements of a Structural Hermeneutics’, in Jeffrey C. Alexander (2003) The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology, pp. 11-26. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Lamont, Michele (2000) The Dignity of Working Men: Morality and the Boundaries of Race, Class, and Immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Mast, Jason (2006) ‘The Cultural Pragmatics of Event-ness: The Clinton/Lewinsky Affair’, in Jeffrey C. Alexander, Bernhard Giesen and Jason Mast (eds) Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual, pp. 115-145. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Reed, Isaac and Alexander, Jeffrey C. (2006) ‘Culture’, in B. Turner (ed.) The Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology, p. 111-111. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Walzer, Michael (1984) Spheres of Justice. New York: Basic Books.

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This Article Abstract Full Text (PDF) Free Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Google Scholar Articles by Alexander, J. C. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                   What's this?