Sociological Forum, Vol. 23, No. 4, December 2008 ( 2008) DOI: 10.1111/j.1573-7861.2008.00096.x

‘‘The Forum’’

The Forum Mailbag Karen A. Cerulo, Editor

The mailbox is back and filled with comments on some of the essays featured in Volume 23. Our first letter, ‘‘Will the Right USA Stand Up? A Response to Etzioni,’’ raises some questions on the Etzioni and Bergesen debate featured in the March issue. In his Sociological Forum article, ‘‘Will the Right Islam Stand Up?’’ Etzioni (2008) raises difficult questions: how to judge contrasting values within modern societies. Bergesen (2008) raises additional questions as well. Contrasting, even opposing values are characteristic of modern societies and their citizens. Sincerely held values, as US religious ones, can be directly opposed by behavior oriented to accumulate material possessions. Warner and Merton puzzled a half century ago at the contradiction between US values of success, personal advancement and status inequalities, and democracy, equality and sacrifice for the good of others (Warner, 1962; Merton, 1957). Their findings: a ‘‘bridge value’’ unites cultural values by explaining those inconsistencies for believers. In the US ‘‘opportunity’’ (Warner) and ‘‘success’’ (Merton) are such bridge values, for equality of opportunity for success assures us that we all begin equally. Some make more of opportunities, yielding vast social inequality that nonetheless we find acceptable and truly ‘‘American.’’ For the Islamic world there are similar inconsistencies discussed by Etzioni and Bergesen explainable in a somewhat different manner. Islamic values assume a hegemonic, religious worldview that transcends nationalism and citizenship within a particular society by creating an Islamic identity that supersedes other values. Democracy may be accepted, but within a homogeneous social order in which clerics and Islamic laws may rule. Free speech, women’s rights and other ‘‘western’’ influences (dress, media, business, customs, etc.) will be accepted when they don’t threaten Islamic hegemony, within the local worldview, as interpreted by the respondent. Local variants (such as honor killings and Hudood laws) are also accepted, up to the point of conflict with the same hegemony. I suggest organizing the Etzioni’s poll questions to better reflect the reality of the Islamic world. First, the questions need to distinguish the subject’s community and ⁄ or personal social milieu from that of the subject’s society or nation, and then those applying globally to the Islamic world in general. These questions should vary enough to measure the many forms of Islam, regarding what Islam is thought to be,

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Cerulo how it intersects with the personal life of the respondent, and the ideal practice as well as the actual practice of the respondent and others. Second, the Etzioni questions need to be raised concerning the rights of others, the minority within Islamic regions and the majority elsewhere, to publicly follow values inconsistent with the Islamic hegemony. Third, the intensity of the response (read: social control) that is felt to be appropriate to perceived threats to the Islamic hegemony needs to be asked, ranging to private disagreement to fatwas and martyrdom. Finally, local and national conflict over the definition of Islam must be addressed, as Bergesen notes. There is much sociology to be done, and Etzioni and Bergesen are on the right track. Keith R. Johnson Oakton Community College

In ‘‘Which ‘Right’ Islam?: A Commentary on Etzioni and Bergesen,’’ Mustafa Gurbuz weighs in on the debate as well. Etzioni’s inquiry on the right Islam and Bergesen’s emphasis on the electoral processes are thought provoking; yet, they do not pay sufficient attention to the socio-historical and cultural differences among the Muslim polity. First, there is neither one unified ‘‘Islam’’ nor a ‘‘Muslim World’’ in reality. Vatican is not equivalent of Saudi Arabia. While Saudi Arabia remains a great ally of United States, Iran has long been in the Soviet camp. Thus, one cannot understand the facts of Muslim populated nations without realizing the power game in world politics as well as political elite hegemonies of the nation-states. Obviously, colonized Muslim territories such as Egypt and Pakistan have been very different from places that never been colonized by the Western powers in terms of democratic experience (i.e. Turkey, Indonesia). Second, Etzioni is right in pointing out deficits of the quantitative measures; however, the qualitative techniques also become misleading when the Western academia is obsessed with its disciplining methodology. Danish cartoons, for example, have been overwhelmingly debated with minimum references to the structural and systemic reasons behind the mass protests, which offered the implication that Muslims are inherently reactionary because of their distinct religious beliefs. The culture of violence myth obstructs to recognize the events that Bergesen successfully presented in brief. A very recent event would suffice to challenge the question on ‘‘right’’ Islam: Turkey’s most pro-Western, reformist party along the path of European Union, Justice and Development Party, was accused of being anti-secularist activities because of the party’s support for students’ freedom of choice in wearing headscarves in the colleges. On March 14, 2008, the Chief Prosecutor of the Higher Court of Appeals of Turkey opened a case against the Party (JDP) and demanded the Party to be closed and its 71 officials barred from politics for five years, including the current president Abdullah Gul and the Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.1 Although the JDP has been a pro-Western party, the secularist establishment in Turkey does not want to allow observant Muslims to stand up for the right Islam, which is compatible with the Western democracy, since it would mean the end of their socio-economic privileges. Therefore, Etzioni’s suggestion for standing up for the right Islam is not an easy task for observant Muslims when the project of Westernization has been held by the power elite monopolies. In Muslim populated nations, the ‘‘right Islam’’ and the ‘‘good Muslims’’ are defined in certain and divergent ways, which is not necessarily related being pro-Western or pro-democracy. Mustafa Gurbuz University of Connecticut 1

‘‘Call it a Coup,’’ Newsweek, March 31, 2008.

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In another letter, ‘‘Individualism Revisited,’’ one reader responded to the June articles by Cerulo and Fischer, re: American Individualism. What explains the considerable evidence that Americans are both individualistic and communalistic? Karen Cerulo contends that Americans are ‘‘polyphonous,’’ espousing and ⁄ or practicing more individualism or communalism at different times, depending on events and social structures. Claude Fischer, in contrast, argues that Americans’ individualism is not selfish or anti-social but rather ‘‘voluntaristic.’’ By this Fischer means: Americans tend to feel that if you join a group (from a couple getting married, to becoming a citizen of a nation), you should ‘‘love it or leave it,’’ i.e., abide by its rules and commitments, or get out. This voluntarism, Fischer says, explains why Americans can assert individual agency in some domains yet oppose divorce, extramarital affairs, resisting employers’ authority, breaking laws when they conflict with one’s conscience, refusing to support one’s nation when it has done wrong, etc. I would like to propose a third answer to contrast with Cerulo’s and Fischer’s. Following Robert Bellah, Steven Lukes and others, it seems to me that there is not one single form of individualism, but rather several—soft, hard, expressive, utilitarian, personalist, popular, political, economic, ethical, and epistemological individualisms are just some of the forms social scientists have identified—and that the prevalence of one or another form depends on structural and historical circumstances. This bears some similarity to Cerulo’s argument, although she contends that Americans are less individualistic, and more ‘‘bilateral,’’ ‘‘pluralistic,’’ or ‘‘communalistic’’ in different circumstances whereas I am suggesting that Americans have been more or less continuously individualistic, but that the form of individualism varies with time and place. More importantly, it seems to me that equating individualism with selfishness or ‘‘me-centeredness’’ as Cerulo and many others do obscures more than it illuminates, even if it makes it easier to debunk facile claims that Americans are selfish. In my own developing research on American individualism, I have so far found little evidence of what I call Ebenezer’s individualism, named after the mythically lonely and selfish Ebenezer Scrooge, but a lot of evidence of what I call intimate individualism, i.e., an inclination to seek self-fulfillment through intimate bonds with friends and ⁄ or family. Intimate individualism has grown as, for instance, American families have evolved from sites of religiously-grounded hierarchy and obligation to sites for the sometimes consuming pursuit of intimacy. This is one reason why contemporary Americans are both individualistic and communalistic, and a consequential reason. Contrary to the popular notion that American individualism gone bad means rampant selfishness and isolation, I suggest, following Tocqueville’s prescient definition of individualism, that the more common yet less noticed danger is of a withdrawal into one’s ‘‘small private circles’’ of family and friends. Americans readily recognize and denounce selfishness, but intimate individualism appears altogether sweet and virtuous, the sign of a caring person. Yet the risk therein is that Americans come to imagine that in caring for their small private circles they fulfill themselves as caring human beings, even as their tangible impact as consumers, taxpayers and voters on the wider world grows. Paul Lachelier Stetson University

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Finally, we received two thoughtful comments on the Vaisey-Swidler debate that appeared in our September issue. In ‘‘Comment on Stephen Vaisey’s ‘Socrates, Skinner and Aristotle’,’’ Paul DiMaggio notes: Stephen Vaisey’s paper is one of the most thoughtful discussions of the tionship between cultural and cognitive processes that I have read in a time. My major reaction to his paper is delight that he is digging this material so seriously, as well as a sense that he is heading in the direction.

relalong into right

I have only three critical reactions at the margins of his overall argument. 1. The dual-process theory is extremely important, precisely because, as Professor Vaisey says, it points to the possibility that reason and even deliberative ethics can override superficial action on the basis of prejudice, short-term passions, or habit.2 But I would qualify this observation in two ways. First, research suggests that people spend most of their time in the ‘‘hot’’ mode and relatively little in the ‘‘cool’’ mode (because the latter is so much less efficient). Psychologists ordinarily study deliberative (cool) cognition by tricking people into reflection—even literally, for example, by making them look into a mirror as they choose to act (or not) in a way that is relevant to their self-conception. I take Haidt’s work as an example of how difficult it is to get people out of the hot mode, especially on matters that carry strong emotional loadings (like sex with a sibling, or eating one’s pet). In the experiments with which I am familiar, the subjects defend their judgments (no sex with a sibling, no pet meat for dinner) with reasons; the experimenter notes specific conditions that render the reasons they give inapplicable in a hypothetical situation (what if you and your sibling had been separated at birth?); the subject provides another principle, the experimenter counters—and, ultimately, the subject gets angry and goes back to moral absolutes. This strikes me as very similar to Garfinkel’s breaching experiments, which indicate the limits of discursive consciousness, not its power. So although dual process theory is correct and important, for explaining most behavior most of the time, automatic cognition is a safer assumption. 2. Although the Skinner label certainly captures the reader’s attention, I agree with Professor Swidler that it is inapt as a characterization of post-values approaches to the sociology of culture. There is a big difference between environmental influence and environmental determinism. The Skinnerian approach (which I take to be the approach that focuses on culture’s role in post-hoc accounting and sensemaking, the latter an activity in which Skinner did not put much stock) is much more about interactions with the environment than about environmental determinism. I think the implicit model in most of this work is one of environmental selection not environmental determinism: of people into situations for which their toolkits equip them, to be sure; but also of schematic representations into more or less chronic states of activation relative competing representations. The environment of symbols that surround us every day in no way determines our behavior; but it does exert substantial selection pressures on the cultural understandings (or, from the standpoint of psychology, schematic representations) that interact with situations to shape our behavior. (These approaches bear important affinities to Berger and Luckman’s institutional theory of culture, which features prominently in my personal account of the post-value approach to culture.) 2

Recent work suggests that automatic and reflective processing actually interpenetrate in complicated ways, so the dichotomous view is a bit misleading, though serviceable for present purposes. See Lieberman et al. (2002).

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3. That people have somewhat stable dispositions is also undeniable. I agree with Pofessor Vaisey that this stability is insufficiently apprehended by most approaches to the sociology of culture with the exception of Bourdieu’s notion of the habitus, which I agree is an attractive construct, and Swidler’s ‘‘toolkit’’ theory. Athough Bourdieu the ethnographer brilliantly explained the habitus by providing vivid examples of what appeared to be habitus-driven behavior, for Bourdieu the theorist, habitus remained an analytic placeholder—as suggestive as the toolkit metaphor, but no more complete. So I see it as one of a family of approaches, along with the ‘‘toolkit’’ approach, that views culture as a set of resources, accounts, and understandings, rather than a set of values. The environment plays similar roles in both Swidler’s and Bourdieu’s work, forming (in a roughly causal sense) a set of dispositions (Bourdieu) or available strategies (Swidler) that recursively shape people’s responses to further environmental variation throughout their lives. The challenge is to figure out how these operate in specific situations. To that end, let me suggest three kinds of research that would, I believe, press forward the approach to cultural sociology that I believe Vaisey, Swidler and I share. Implicit in these suggestions is that now that sociologists of culture have engaged the best work in cognitive psychology and increasingly are grounding our theories in it, the next step is to examine how cognitive processes like dual-process dynamics and person-situation interactions are influenced by (and, in turn, influence) distinctly social processes in which culture is produced and diffused. Three such processes stand out as especially important: 1. Given that people have at their disposal multiple representations and interpretations of any event, how do social processes trigger some of these representations and interpretations while inhibiting others? Swidler’s Talk of Love invokes institutional settings as the key framers; Ann Mische’s work calls attention to the role of networks in evoking particular understandings; Nina Eliasoph and Paul Lichterman emphasize scenes and settings. All of this work points to interactions between culture and context that transcend the values-dominant ⁄ environmentdetermines dichotomy that Mr. Vaisey wisely rejects. 2. As noted earlier, deliberative cognition is precious but rare, at least in a relatively undiluted form. Social technologies—psychotherapy, undergraduate philosophy classes, 12-step programs, and, most important, certain kinds of social-movement activities—employ systematic forms of interaction to increase its prevalence. We know relatively little about the ability of such processes to induce meaningful cultural change, though there is certainly anecdotal evidence in accounts of consciousness-raising groups and radicalization processes. Systematic research is needed. 3. Most writing about culture and cognition (including my own) has failed to theorize the role of intense affect—in reframing cultural understandings, in impeding deliberation, in vitalizing cultural symbols. Randall Collins’s (2004) work points to ways of bringing ritual process and affect more prominently into our understanding of how cultural elements emerge, acquire power, spread, and subside. I am grateful to Professor Vaisey for focusing on these issues so fruitfully and for pushing the discussion forward, and look forward to his continuing collaboration around these issues. Paul DiMaggio Princeton University

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And in ‘‘Comments to the Editor,’’ Omar Lizardo had this to say. In a fascinating study, Wilson and Nisbett (1978:123–124) report an intriguing finding: when asked to judge the quality of objects which unbeknownst to the person are identical, individuals are disproportionately more likely to choose the object that is located towards the right over that which is located towards the left. In an unrelated study, Meier and Robinson (2004) show that subjects are significantly quicker in processing the meaning of words with positive moral and affective connotations when these words are presented toward the top of a computer screen than when they are presented towards the bottom and vice versa. On the surface, it might appear as if these results have nothing to do with the topic of the role of culture in action. That is, until we remember the classical studies in the tradition of Durkheim and Mauss’ Primitive Classification regarding the pervasive role of left and the right hand in political, religious and moral cosmologies (Hertz, 1973), and the ubiquity of spatial positioning in the vertical axis in the formation of moral and social judgments of worth and power (Schwartz, 1981). That is if we think of the linkage between moral and spatial categories as they influence choice and judgment as a bona fide example of the operation ‘‘culture in action,’’ then culture as here defined is certainly playing a role in action. However, none of the participants when asked would have a clue that ‘‘culture’’ was in fact playing a role in their choices (Wilson and Nisbett, 1978). I believe that these studies provide strong support for Vaisey’s claim that studying actors’ accounts of the reasons for their action will not get us very far in understanding the role of culture in action. These results demonstrate that culture and meaning may be located where you least expect it: orientations in space grounded in the body (Bourdieu, 1971). I am also convinced that it would be a mistake to conclude from the chronic failure to find explicit, linguistically articulated culture not matching up with action and judgment that therefore ‘‘culture’’ has no role to play in action and judgment (and thus that the vacuum opened up by rejecting culture should be filled by such usually under-theorized entities as ‘‘networks,’’ ‘‘institutions’’ or ‘‘context’’ by default). Instead, I believe that we need to rethink what we count as culture (and partially what we count as ‘‘action’’). In this respect it is important to move beyond the habitual tendency to reduce ‘‘culture’’ to that which can be expressed through language or symbolized linguistically (for promising starts see Sewell [1998] and Biernacki [2000]). As noted by anthropologist Maurice Bloch (1991) most culture is simply non-linguistic: it is stored in procedural rather than declarative memory and it is certainly not ‘‘symbolic’’ in the way that language is (it does not consist in arbitrary couplings of meaning and physical form). Finally, I think it is useful to think for a moment about the ‘‘default setting’’ (Eliasoph and Lichterman, 2003) in which this ‘‘culture using people’’ effect appears to be most likely to be observed: rapid-fire decision-making or judgment (in the original Kantian sense) under time (or other social) constraints. This is precisely the type of default setting that is least studied in the sociology of culture today. Yet when it comes to many of the outcomes that we care about, especially those at the intersection of culture and stratification, the implicit role of culture in framing and driving choices (of friends, romantic partners, of interaction settings, of meaning-bearing goods) are crucial, and I would argue more important than the traditional Weberian concern with the role of explicit culture as a ‘‘legitimation tool’’ (and the associated study of ‘‘repertoires’’ of such tools) for current social position. Thus, one of the primary

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problems in the sociology of culture today, is not only that culture may be staring us in the face without our recognizing it, but that by relying on retrospective linguistic reports of action, we may not have much of a footing to begin to theorize the second term of culture-action couplet in the first place. Omar Lizardo Notre Dame University

Want to enter the debate on these essays or respond to previous exchanges in ‘‘The Forum’’? Send your comments to me (500 words maximum) at [email protected]. REFERENCES Bergesen, Albert J. 2008. ‘‘Islam and Democracy: A Response to Amitai Etzioni,’’ Sociological Forum 23: 183–184. Biernacki, Richard. 2000. ‘‘Language and the Shift from Signs to Practices in Cultural Inquiry,’’ History and Theory 39: 289–310. Bloch, Maurice. 1991. ‘‘Language, Anthropology and Cognitive Science,’’ Man 26: 183–198. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1971. ‘‘The Berber House or the World Reversed,’’ Social Science Information 9: 151–170. Collins, Randall. 2004. Interaction Ritual Chains. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Eliasoph, Nina, and Paul Lichterman. 2003. ‘‘Culture in Interaction,’’ American Journal of Sociology 108: 735–794. Etzioni, Amitai. 2008. ‘‘Will the Real Islam Stand Up?’’ Sociological Forum 23: 174–182. Hertz, Robert. 1973. ‘‘The Pre-Eminence of the Right Hand: A Study in Religious Polarity,’’ In R. Needham (ed.), Right and Left: Essays on Dual Symbolic Classification: pp. 3–31. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press (Orig. pub. 1909). Lieberman, Matthew D., Ruth Gaunt, Daniel Gilbert, and Yaacov Trope. 2002. ‘‘Reflection and Reflexion: A Social Cognitive Neuroscience Approach to Attributional Inference,’’ Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 34: 199–249. Meier, Brian P., and Michael D. Robinson. 2004. ‘‘Why the Sunny Side is Up. Associations Between Affect and Vertical Position,’’ Psychological Science 15: 243–247. Merton, Robert K. 1957. Social Theory and Social Structure. Glencoe, IL: Free Press. Schwartz, Barry. 1981. Vertical Classification: A Study in Structuralism and the Sociology of Knowledge. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Sewell, William H. 1998. ‘‘Language and Practice in Cultural History: Backing Away from the Edge of the Cliff,’’ French Historical Studies 21: 241–254. Warner, W. Lloyd. 1962. American Life: Dream and Reality. Chicago, Il: University of Chicago Press. Wilson, Timothy de Camp, and Richard E. Nisbett. 1978. ‘‘The Accuracy of Verbal Reports About the Effects of Stimuli on Evaluations and Behavior,’’ Social Psychology 41: 118–131.