LA TROBE UNIVERSITY, MELBOURNE/CHARLES UNIVERSITY, PRAGUE

But to begin with, the defining problematic of civilizational analysis must be

situated within the orbit of the cultural turn, and more specifically in relation to

cultural sociology.

The distinction between a strong and a weak program for cultural sociology,

proposed by Jeffrey Alexander and Philip Smith, is a convenient starting-point

for this preliminary mapping of the field. The two authors use the terms ‘cultural

sociology’ and ‘sociology of culture’ to draw the same dividing line: cultural

sociology then becomes synonymous with the strong program, and sociology of

culture is equated with the weak one. As I will argue, the agenda of civilizational

analysis can link up with the framework sketched out by Alexander and Smith,

but it also gives a more specific twist to the basic distinction. Civilizational

perspectives involve, on the one hand, a particularly strong version of the strong

program. They represent, in other words, an attempt to theorize and thematize

broader horizons and frontier areas neglected by the main currents of sociological

thought. But they can, on the other hand, also serve to enrich and develop

the weak program, by adding new dimensions to the social context of cultural

patterns. To sum up, civilizational analysis is, in the first instance, an extension

and a radical version of cultural sociology, but precisely in that capacity, it has

to deal with an enlarged spectrum of factors and conditions with which ‘culture

intersects . . . in the concrete social world’ (Alexander and Smith, 2003: 14).

For Alexander and Smith, the idea of cultural sociology begins with the claim

that ‘every action, no matter how instrumental, reflexive or coerced, vis-à-vis its

external environments, is embedded to some extent in a horizon of affect and

meaning’ (2003: 12). For present purposes, the focus is on constellations of

meaning and their civilizational dimensions. Alexander and Smith spell out the

basic principles of meaning-centred sociology in three steps which they describe

as analytical and methodological; but as will be seen, all three points have to do

with social-historical ontology, and this aspect becomes more visible when we

add to each step the further implications needed to clarify the civilizational

connection. The first step is a ‘sharp analytical uncoupling of culture from social

structure, which is what we mean by cultural autonomy . . . As compared to the

sociology of culture, cultural sociology depends on establishing this autonomy’

(p. 13). On this view, the sociology of culture may throw light on a wide range

of social phenomena with cultural backgrounds or implications, but the inability

to accept a radical autonomy of culture – and thus to move beyond a conception

of culture as a dependent and adaptable factor of varying relative weight – sets

strict limits to its insights. However, this autonomy and the ‘analytical uncoupling’

in which it is expressed call for a more substantive grounding. If culture is irreducible

to social structure, that is primarily due to its meta-social dimension: the

interpretation of the world (which may also be understood as a unity of world

articulation and world disclosure). Civilizational analysts, classical and contem-