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Cultural Structures (cultural + structure)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

Reconstructing Culture in Historical Explanation: Narratives as Cultural Structure and Practice

HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 3 2000
Anne Kane
The problem of how to access and deploy the explanatory power of culture in historical accounts has long remained vexing. A recent approach, combining and transcending the "culture as structure"/"culture as practice" divide among social historians, puts explanatory focus on the recursivity of meaning, agency, and structure in historical transformation. This article argues that meaning construction is at the nexus of culture, social structure, and social action, and must be the explicit target of investigation into the cultural dimension of historical explanation. Through an empirical analysis of political alliance during the Irish Land War, 1879,1882, I demonstrate that historians can uncover meaning construction by analyzing the symbolic structures and practices of narrative discourse. [source]

Cultural Meanings and Cultural Structures in Historical Explanation

HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 3 2000
John R. Hall
One way to recast the problem of cultural explanation in historical inquiry is to distinguish two conceptualizations involving culture: (1) cultural meanings as contents of signification (however theorized) that inform meaningful courses of action in historically unfolding circumstances; and (2) cultural structures as institutionalized patterns of social life that may be elaborated in more than one concrete construction of meaning. This distinction helps to suggest how explanation can operate in accounting for cultural processes of meaning-formation, as well as in other ways that transcend specific meanings, yet are nonetheless cultural. Examples of historical explanation involving each construct are offered, and their potential examined. [source]

Cultural structures and political life: The cultural matrix of democracy in Spain1

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2004
JORGE BENEDICTO
It uses as a case study the democratization process that has been taking place in Spain for the last 25 years. The Spanish case is especially interesting because of the powerful cultural framework established around the process of transition to democracy; a framework from which most political symbols and meanings of the new Spanish democracy emanate. After analyzing the basic categories of this cultural structure and the main consequences for the functioning of political life, the article goes on to argue that these cultural elements have shaped a special relationship between citizens and politics. [source]

Cultural Meanings and Cultural Structures in Historical Explanation

HISTORY AND THEORY, Issue 3 2000
John R. Hall
One way to recast the problem of cultural explanation in historical inquiry is to distinguish two conceptualizations involving culture: (1) cultural meanings as contents of signification (however theorized) that inform meaningful courses of action in historically unfolding circumstances; and (2) cultural structures as institutionalized patterns of social life that may be elaborated in more than one concrete construction of meaning. This distinction helps to suggest how explanation can operate in accounting for cultural processes of meaning-formation, as well as in other ways that transcend specific meanings, yet are nonetheless cultural. Examples of historical explanation involving each construct are offered, and their potential examined. [source]

The Role of Religion in the Postwar Settlement Patterns of Dutch Canadians,

CANADIAN REVIEW OF SOCIOLOGY/REVUE CANADIENNE DE SOCIOLOGIE, Issue 1 2001
Joanne van Dijk
Dans cet article, nous examinons l'influence de la religion sur les modèles de colonies de peuplement des Hollandais au Canada après la guerre. D'après les données historiques, des différences existaient dans l'assimilation des catholiques hollandais et des calvinistes hollandais au Canada. Lorsque les immigrants hollandais sont arrivés au Canada au début des années cinquante, les catholiques se sont inté-grés aux églises et aux écoles catholiques existantes alors que les calvinistes orthodoxes ont entrepris de forger leurs propres structures sociales et culturelles, car, selon eux, les institutions canadiennes ne reflétaient pas leurs croyances idéologiques et religieuses. La religion a joué un rôle important dans l'émergence de communautés hollando-canadiennes contrastées. Nous partons du modèle de pluralisme et d'intégration volontaires de Driedger (1996: 39) afin d'élaborer le cadre théorique de cet article. In this paper the influence of religion on the postwar settlement patterns of Dutch-Canadian immigrants is examined. Historical data show that there were differences in the assimilation patterns of Dutch Catholics and Dutch Calvinists within Canada. When Dutch immigrants arrived in Canada in the early 1950s, the Dutch Catholics joined existing Catholic churches and schools, while the orthodox Dutch Calvinists undertook the building of their own social and cultural structures because they could not find Canadian organizations based on their ideological and religious beliefs. Religion played an important role in the emergence of contrasting Dutch-Canadian communities. Driedger's (1996:39) model of voluntary pluralism and integration provides the theoretical framework for this study. [source]