Steven visited the James Martin Institute last Monday, and we had a great opportunity to listen to his presentation as well as to have a small meeting session with him.
He kindly commented on Sam’s and my concerns about our own research. Here, I shall pick some points relevant for the blog.
He told us that he [...]
Today we discussed "Political Cultures", Part 3 of Cultural Theory by Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky. Mike Thompson was able to join us, and I video-ed in from Washington.
Part 3 is largely an attempt to resurrect the idea of ‘political culture’ from it’s demise in the 1970s. The first question, then, was what has been done [...]
This week's CT reading group was more about what Cultural Theory can deal with and how we can understand it rather than the book 'Cultural Theory'.
There are two main questions;
- Based on social constructivism, how can we understand the words/terms/concepts used in arguments. For example, Cultural Theory explains how different cultural bias construct [...]
The following is a summary of the discussion we had on this week’s reading: “Cultural Theory” by Thompson, Ellis and Wildavsky.
The session started with an overview by Mike of the three analytical levels supporting Cultural Theory: social relations, cultural biases and relational strategies. Human beings can transact in different ways and hold different constructions [...]
This meeting: Natural Symbols by Mary Douglas
Next Meeting: 3 January 2007, Cultural Theory by Thompson, Ellis, and Wildavsky
This week's reading was Natural Symbols by Mary Douglas. It forms the backbone of grid-group analysis, which was used to develop Cultural Theory.
Douglas' intention with the book was to develop a tool that could be [...]
The meeting discussed the Grid/Group typology introduced by Mary Douglas in Chapter nine of her book “in the active voice”; ‘Cultural bias’. The typology opposes the dimension of individuation to that of social incorporation. ‘Grid’ refers to the rules to which individuals are subject in the course of their interactions whereas ‘Group’ is defined in [...]