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Presents observations on the conference papers on cultural systems and organizational processes in the U.S. Basis for descriptive precision; Identification of the most basic empirical questions regarding culture; Distinct formalization of social systems.

The complexity of the African American community in the United States continues to evolve. The growing number of professional African Americans who grew up in the postcivil rights era combined with the persistent reminders of inequity paints a complex backdrop for understanding African American relationships. The majority of our knowledge about African American couples disproportionately comes from nonclinical social science fields such as sociology and demography. Unfortunately, the scholarly literature on how to work with African American couples is relatively scant. This paper seeks to add to this limited literature by providing clinicians and scholars with a proposed set of issues to consider when conceptualizing and treating African American couples. In particular, the complexity and nuance needed to work with African American couples are best done by using an integrative model. Thus, this paper will discuss how the Integrative Systemic Therapy (IST) model is particularly well suited for working with African American couples. This paper will summarize the science on African American marriages with a focus on salient factors such as gender, SES, and trust, which will then be translated into clinical practice by utilizing a case example. The case example will be of a middle‐class couple in order to delineate the challenges and the growing heterogeneity of African Americans. The article will conclude with a commentary on the evolving heterogeneity of African Americans, which sheds light on how an integrative perspective is important for disentangling and embracing the growing complexity of African American couples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Based on single cross-sectional data, prior research finds evidence of “transportation assimilation” among U.S. immigrants: the length of stay in the U.S. is negatively correlated with public transit use. This paper revisits this question by using repeated cross-sectional data, and examines the trend of transportation assimilation over time. Methods and results: Using 1980, 1990, 2000 1% census and 2010 (1%) American Community Survey, I examine the relationship between the length of stay in the U.S. and public transit ridership among immigrants. I first run regressions separately in four data sets: I regress public transit ridership on the length of stay, controlling for other individual and geographic variables. I then compare the magnitudes of the relationship in four regressions. To study how the rate of transportation assimilation changes over time, I pool the data set and regress public transit ridership on the length of stay and its interactions with year dummies to compare the coefficients across surveys. Results confirm the conclusion of transportation assimilation: as the length of stay in the U.S. increases, an immigrant’s public transit use decreases. However, the repeated cross-section analysis suggests the assimilation rate has been decreasing in the past few decades. Conclusions: This paper finds evidence of transportation assimilation: immigrants become less likely to ride public transit as the length of stay in the U.S. increases. The assimilation rate, however, has been decreasing over time. This paper finds that the rate of public transit ridership among new immigrants upon arrival, the geographic distribution of immigrants, and the changing demographics of the U.S. immigrants play roles in affecting the trend of transportation assimilation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Christian Smith's paper 'The Incoherence of 'Culture' in American Sociology' is a valuable provocation that can prompt us to reflect on the role of concepts and on the role of agreement on the definition of concepts in scientific research. In this comment paper, I raise questions about Smith's empirical expectation that sociologists should agree on a concept of culture based on debates in the sociology of science. I also suggest that in terms of the future agenda for the sociology of culture, we should distinguish between dialogue and clarification on the one hand, which I agree is needed, and standardization on the other hand, which seems incompatible with open-minded empirical research. Rather than work on agreement on what culture is, we might work on clarifying relevant distinctions among dimensions of culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a commentary on Christian Smith's 'The Conceptual Incoherence of 'Culture' in American Cultural Sociology.' This paper accepts Smith's finding of conceptual incoherence at the disciplinary level and argues that it is a symptom of empiricism in American sociology. The paper suggests we employ conceptual analysis as practiced by analytical philosophy and proceeds to show how the use of that methodology can resolve the problem regarding the meaning of culture. In the end, the paper defends a conception of culture along the lines of Archer's (1996) intelligibilia, interpreted as action and its products bearing social reasoning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to describe the contemporary debates in sociology in the context of Ali Shariati and Cemil Meriç who are significant but not popular scholars of the Eastern intellectual world by making comparison with some Western thinkers and issues. In this way, it is dealt with some typical modern sociological matters and criticise indirectly the West-oriented worldview. For this purpose, it is also focused on the question of how the Eastern scholars approach some debates from objectivity to value-judgment; from equality to class conflict; from religion to freedom; from genocide to the problem of intellectuality; and from security to power. At this point it should be underlined that the concepts East and West do not refer to geographical distance but to socio-cultural and ideological differentiation. It is not coincidence that these differentiations are portrayed in the context of essential scholars like Cemil Meriç and Ali Shariati who both internalise the West and, despite this, turn their faces to the East because these two thinkers have significant worth and background in reaching the roots of this civilisation and in constructing the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers and evaluates Jeffrey Alexander's strong program in cultural sociology, which represents an exercise in paradigm formation and an ambitious attempt to refound American sociology along interpretive lines. Cultural sociology is assessed according to four axes, namely its social constructivist epistemology, culturalizing methodology, analytical realism, and internal and external positioning. In addition to discussing the accomplishments and limitations of cultural sociology in all these areas, the paper indicates ways to strengthen it by setting it in conversation with other and more explicitly critical currents of thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Life story methods in Europe commonly belong to the field of biographical sociology. This paper points out that biographical sociology is missing from American sociology and describes in-depth two well-known methods in this field in Europe, the narrative interview and objective hermeneutics. The absence of biographical sociology from U.S. sociology should be remedied, it is argued, for the following reasons: First, an analysis of biographical patterns could counteract the heavy emphasis on social structure in American sociology and enrich certain subfields within it. For example, some of the concepts used in European biographical sociology, such as the concept of the 'trajectory' can be related to conceptions of agency set forth by American and British sociologists and thus enrich sociology overall. Second, biographical sociology can help counteract the heavy orientation towards quantitative research in American sociology without falling into the pitfalls of purely interpretive methodologies. And third, biographical sociology can significantly enrich the still missing link between culture and cognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses whether and to what extent the field of the sociology of deviance is "dead," relevant to sociology generally, or intellectually vital, and, if it is less vital than it once was, how and why it declined in vigor, and what might be done to return it to its glory days. It also addresses the implications of the election of 2004 for the field of deviance studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper traces developments in Jeffrey Alexander's cultural sociology. The aim is to introduce the reader to the key components of this theory as it developed from a functionalist focus on societal values through semiotics and linguistic structuralism to a theory of cultural trauma and collective performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The practice of social theory is too often given to celebrity hunting, the polemical vulgarizing of one's putative enemies, or the precocious production of totalizing and redemptive theories purporting to rescue social theory from its perennial crises of meaning, naming and explanation. The constructive task of social theory, however, can be both more modest and productive when attention is given to its substantive concern to provide codes, narratives and explanations of modernity, in all its pluralist and democratic dimensions. This is in effect the self-description of Jeffrey Alexander's own work. This paper provides an empathetic account of Alexander's approach to the practice of social theory via a synopsis of his collected essays in Fin de Siècle Social Theory (1995). In particular, it claims that Alexander's critique of the reductionist propensities of Pierre Bourdieu's macro-sociological theory is exemplary in its constructive cast as a systematic analysis of the universalizing contents of the conceptual and methodological claims themselves. Herein lies the use of reason itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper retraces the conceptual development of Jeffrey Alexander's cultural sociology. It centres on three major conceptual achievements: first, the distinction between inside and outside and its more peculiar variants (like system and environment or friend and foe); second, the elaboration of the temporal axis as a distinct dimension of cultural analysis; and finally, the close focus on performativity that took centre-stage in cultural analysis during the last years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a comparative analysis of text and images in Japanese and English software manuals, recipes and other procedures. The Japanese procedures are found to be more elaborate in the extent to which they engage the reader/viewer, in the degree of detail with which they represent the portrayed action, and in the explicitness of marking the procedures' stages. An attempt is made to account for these differences by reference to differences in the socio-cultural context between the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While attention has been paid to the study of panic disorder (PD) with or without agoraphobia among Caucasians, surprisingly little empirical research within the United States has looked at the phenomenology of PD among minority groups. In this paper we present data we have collected and review other research on the phenomenology, social supports, and coping behavior among African-Americans with panic disorder. Our studies indicate that, in comparison to Caucasians, African-Americans with PD reported more intense fears of dying or going crazy, as well as higher levels of numbing and tingling in their extremities. African-Americans reported higher rates of comorbid post traumatic disorder and more depression. African-Americans also used somewhat different coping strategies (such as religiosity and counting one's blessings), less self-blame, and were somewhat more dissatisfied with social supports. The incidence of isolated sleep paralysis was, as per previous reports, higher in African-Americans. These findings, results of other research, and the implications for assessment and treatment are discussed within a semantic network analysis of panic (Hinton and Hinton 2002, this issue). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an introduction to academic papers clustered around sociologist Jeffrey Alexander's work and the project of American cultural sociology and published in the scholarly "Thesis Eleven" periodical. Consistent energy towards renewal; European current in American sociology; Youthful engagement with Marxism at Harvard University; Horizon of culture as the unifying theme; Premise of the intelligence of everyday action.