Durkheim sociology

Author: Jeffrey Alexander
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2001-09-01
Features: In the introduction to this book, Jeffrey Alexander elaborates in detail on a new interpretation of Durkheim. This new interpretation runs throughout all the articles in the book. His arguments provide the background for the vivid and thought-provoking chapters that follow. These articles interpret themes such as popular unrest and social movements from a cultural perspective, covering a wide range of topics including the French Revolution and the major upheavals in Poland and Nicaragua in the 1980s, political crises such as Watergate and the crisis of legitimacy in modern capitalism; the creativity and contingent aspects of symbolic behavior, including the symbolic significance of close friendship and the ritual and rhetorical aspects of media activity.