ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects broadly on the rise of interest in the study of culture. The sociological interest in culture as it emerged in the second half of the twentieth century is associated with major societal change. The attention to culture has roots in major social, economic, technological, and political transformations that prompted sociology to rethink older classical views. Although there has been an obvious proliferation of sociologies attendant to the problems of culture, this chapter considers the broader conditions that underlie theoretical and analytical differences among them. Terms that appear to foster differences and divisions obscure an underlying narcissism of small differences. Battles over “schools” of thought (even when they intersect and overlap) are seen as less important when historical problems that unleash transformations render fragile the situated and temporal competencies of analytical cases. The author advocates reconceptualizing the sociologies of culture and cultural studies through a sociology of knowledge that is historically sensitized and applicable to the contemporary challenges in which modern culture and society face broad, rapid, unprecedented, and profound transformation.
