Publication details
The Drama of Politics : Jeffrey Alexander’s Liberal Sociology of Political Performances
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2017 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Thesis Eleven |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0725513617727793 |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0725513617727904 |
| Field | Sociology, demography |
| Keywords | American politics; Barrack Obama; cultural sociology; Donald Trump; Egyptian revolution; political culture; social performance |
| Attached files | |
| Description | The concept of social performance is a major theoretical innovation of the strong program in cultural sociology, championed by Jeffrey C. Alexander. This article offers a critical assessment of Alexander’s last four monographs on political performances with the explicit aim of contributing to the future development of the performance approach. After an outline of Alexander’s theory of performance, I continue to discuss his book-length empirical contributions, highlighting the innovations introduced by each study. Confronting Alexander’s research strategies with his theoretical framework, I propose a recalibration of his ‘liberal’ sociology of performance, bringing ‘conservative’ aspects of political culture back in, first of all particularity and historicity. This entails a rethinking of performance effects in terms of ‘resonances’ attuned to particular audiences and a deeper hermeneutic engagement with specific historical backgrounds of collective representations in order to overcome the one-sidedness of Alexander’s constructivist approach. |