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Talk is easily regarded as having lesser value in studies of social phenomena than action, interaction, and organization. Yet talk is an important way in which humans act, interact, and organize themselves. In this article, I examine how talk has been used in recent decades in the study of religion and in related work on culture and institutions. I argue that careful empirical examination of talk has already significantly increased our understanding of both the micro and macro processes involved in the construction of social life. I discuss four objections to taking talk seriously and show that these objections should not deter investigations in which talk plays a central role. I offer examples of recent work that poses new conceptual and theoretical questions, complements quantitative studies, and provides insights about changing historical and contemporary social conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The determinants of and variations in processes of cultural valorization are of increasing interest to sociologists. In the case of high-culture literary texts, the central evaluation process takes place through canon formation. We explore the mechanisms of canon formation and of cultural valorization processes more generally by analyzing the critical history of Zora Neale Hurston's novel Their Eyes Were Watching God. Published in 1937 to lukewarm reviews, the novel is currently considered a core canonical text. We specify three processes involved in the reconstruction of Hurston's novel and in the establishment of the African American literary canon: (1) the application of new evaluative criteria, (2) the reconstruction of textual meaning through newly available interpretative strategies, and (3) changes in the institutional and organizational environment that allowed new claims on high-status critical positions to be made by those previously outside the literary hierarchy. The implications of this study for theoretical models of cultural valorization in sociology are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political conflict poses questions about social cohesion, power, and change that culturalist and materialist theories answer very differently. Comparative sociology requires a method for the integrated and weighted use of their answers. The following case study of environmental politics in Japan develops and illustrates the use of such a method. The types of sanctions used to build influence relations, analyzed through graphs and network matrices, indicate the relative validity of different theories. In this case, a class structure determines the main direction of environmental politics, but cultural legitimations sometimes divert it to other tracks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]