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Edward Tylor had envisioned anthropology to be comprised of ethnology and ethnography in equal parts, but today ethnography dominates the field. In this paper, we examine two reasons for the refugee status of ethnology. First, we look at the notorious "Galton effect." Second, we examine the problem of defining and using cultural units, particularly when positivistic and static theories and methods of culture have been largely discredited by anthropology. We argue against any formulaic solutions to these problems and show that for each research question one needs to reconsider the criteria for how to construct cultural units and how to ensure that the cultures under study are not merely replicas of one another. We show that previous solutions to these issues are limited because they fail to appreciate the contingent and multidimensional nature of culture. We also argue that, instead of a "Galton problem," there is actually a "Galton asset," which can be used to study historical and emergent communicative networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the book "Culture, Bodies and the Sociology of Health," edited by Elizabeth Ettorre.

This article presents a review of the course "Einführung in die Kultursoziologie," which was held in the winter semester 2006/07 at the Universität Frankfurt, in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

The article discusses the book "Structures of Thinking," by Karl Mannheim. It endeavors to show how a sociological account of culture is possible and what distinguishes such a "conceptual level" from other perspectives. It is particularly ironic that the author has so often been charged, by critics of his "relational" account of knowing and his hopes for "free-floating" intellectuals, with a special blindness to the implications of his claims for his own position: with a lack of theoretical self-awareness. It is axiomatic, for the author that "the socialized individual is knowing subject as well subject matter of sociology" and he endeavors always to face squarely the implications. Cultural formations require an account not of the immanent development of a spiritual logic but of their functional relationship to social institutions and processes. The five chapters that make up the 1922 manuscript traces the historical processes by which the concept of "culture," and also that of "society," came to theoretical prominence in the nineteenth century.