Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies Author(S): Ann Swidler Source: American Sociological Review, Vol

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Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies Author(s): Ann Swidler Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 51, No. 2, (Apr., 1986), pp. 273-286 Published by: American Sociological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2095521 Accessed: 21/07/2008 02:35

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http://www.jstor.org CULTURE IN ACTION: SYMBOLS AND STRATEGIES*

ANN SWIDLER StanfordUniversity

Culture influences action not by providing the ultimate values toward which action is oriented, but by shaping a repertoire or "tool kit" of habits, skills, and styles from which people construct "strategies of action." Two models of cultural influence are developed, for settled and unsettled cultural periods. In settled periods, culture inde- pendently influences action, but only by providing resources from which people can construct diverse lines of action. In unsettled cultural periods, explicit ideologies directly govern action, but structural opportunities for action determine which among competing ideologies survive in the long run. This alternative view of culture offers new opportunities for systematic, differentiated arguments about culture's causal role in shaping action.

The reigning model used to understand cul- cultural practices such as language, gossip, ture's effects on action is fundamentallymis- stories, and ritualsof daily life. These symbolic leading. It assumes that culture shapes action forms are the means through which "social by supplying ultimate ends or values toward processes of sharing modes of behavior and which action is directed, thus making values outlook within [a] community" (Hannerz, the central causal element of culture. This 1969:184)take place. paper analyzes the conceptual difficulties into The recent resurgenceof culturalstudies has which this traditionalview of cultureleads and skirtedthe causal issues of greatest interest to offers an alternativemodel. sociologists. Interpretive approaches drawn Among sociologists and anthropologists,de- from anthropology (Clifford Geertz, Victor bate has raged for several academic genera- Turner, Mary Douglas, and Claude Levi- tions over defining the term "culture." Since Strauss)and literarycriticism (Kenneth Burke, the seminal work of Clifford Geertz (1973a), RolandBarthes) allow us better to describe the the older definitionof cultureas the entire way features of culturalproducts and experiences. of life of a people, includingtheir technology Pierre Bourdieuand Michel Foucault have of- and materialartifacts, or that (associated with fered new ways of thinkingabout culture's re- the name of WardGoodenough) as everything lationship to social stratification and power. one would need to know to become a func- For those interested in cultural explanation tioning member of a society, have been dis- (as opposed to "thick description" [Geertz, placed in favor of defining culture as the pub- 1973a]or interpretivesocial science [Rabinow licly available symbolic forms through which and Sullivan, 1979]), however, values remain people experience and express meaning (see the majorlink between cultureand action. This Keesing, 1974). For purposes of this paper, is not because sociologists really believe in the culture consists of such symbolic vehicles of values paradigm. Indeed, it has been thor- meaning, includingbeliefs, ritualpractices, art oughly criticized.' But without an alternative forms, and ceremonies, as well as informal formulation of culture's causal significance, scholars either avoid causal questions or admit * the values paradigmthrough the back door. Address all correspondence to: Ann Swidler, The alternativeanalysis of culture proposed Department of Sociology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. here consists of three steps. First, it offers an A muchearlier version of this paperwas presented image of culture as a "tool kit" of symbols, at the AnnualMeetings of the AmericanSociological stories, rituals, and world-views, which people Association, September1982. For helpfulcomments may use in varyingconfigurations to solve dif- (includingdissents) on earlier drafts and thoughtful ferent kinds of problems. Second, to analyze discussion of the issues raised here, I would like to culture's causal effects, it focuses on "strate- thank Robert Bellah, Bennett Berger, Robert Bell, gies of action," persistent ways of ordering Ross Boylan, Jane Collier, Paul DiMaggio, Frank action through time. Third, it sees culture's Dobbin,James Fernandez,Claude Fischer, Elihu M. causal significance not in defining ends of ac- Gerson, Wendy Griswold, Ron Jepperson, Susan Krieger,Tormod Lunde, John Meyer, John Padgett, tion, but in providingcultural components that RichardA. Peterson, JonathanRieder, Theda Skoc- are used to construct strategies of action. pol, Peter Stromberg, Steven Tipton, R. Stephen Warner, Morris Zelditch, Jr., and two anonymous I See Blakeand Davis (1964)and the empiricaland reviewers. theoreticalcritique in Cancian (1975).

American Sociological Review, 1986, Vol. 51 (April:273-286) 273 274 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEW The paper proceeds, first, by outlining the Parsons substitutedglobal, ahistorical values. failures of cultural explanation based on Unlike ideas, which in Weber's sociology are values. It then arguesfor the superiorintuitive complex historicalconstructions shaped by in- plausibility and explanatory adequacy of the stitutionalinterests, political vicissitudes, and alternativemodel. Finally, it suggests research pragmatic motives, Parsonian values are ab- approachesbased on seeing culturein this new stract, general, and immanent in social sys- way. tems. Social systems exist to realize their core values, and values explain why differentactors make different choices even in similar situa- AS VALUES CULTURE tions. Indeed, Parsons does not treat values as Our underlying view of culture derives from concrete symbolic elements (like doctrines, Max Weber. For Weber, human beings are rituals, or myths) which have histories and can motivatedby ideal and materialinterests. Ideal actually be studied. Rather, values are es- interests, such as the desire to be saved from sences aroundwhich societies are constituted. the torments of hell, are also ends-oriented, They are the unmoved mover in the theory of except that these ends are derived from sym- action. bolic realities.2 In Weber's (1946a [1922- Parsons'"voluntaristic theory of action" de- 3]:280) famous "switchmen"metaphor: scribes an actor who makes choices in a situation, choices limited by objective conditions Not ideas, but material and ideal interests, and governed by normative regulation of the directlygovern men's conduct. Yet very fre- means and ends of action (Warner, 1978:121). been quently the "world images" that have A "cultural tradition," according to Parsons created by "ideas" have, like switchmen, (1951:11-12), provides "value orientations,"a determinedthe tracksalong which action has "value" defined as "an element of a shared of interest. been pushed by the dynamic symbolic system which serves as a criterionor Interests are the engine of action, pushing it standardfor selection among the alternatives along, but ideas define the destinationshuman of orientationwhich are intrinsicallyopen in a beings seek to reach (inner-worldly versus situation." Culture thus affects human action other-worldly possibilities of salvation, for through values that direct it to some ends example) and the means for getting there rather than others. (mystical versus ascetic techniques of salva- The theory of values survives in part, no tion). doubt, because of the intuitive plausibility in Talcott Parsonsadopted Weber's model, but our own culture of the assumptionthat all ac- bluntedits explanatorythrust. To justify a dis- tion is ultimately governed by some means- tinctive role for sociology in face of the ends schema. Culture shapes action by defin- economist's model of rational, interest- ing what people want. maximizingactors, Parsons arguedthat within What people want, however, is of little help a means-ends schema only sociology could in explainingtheir action. To understandboth account for the ends actors pursued.3 For the pervasiveness and the inadequacy of cul- Weber's interest in the historicalrole of ideas, tural values as explanations, let us examine one recent debate in which "culture"has been 2 In The Sociology of Religion (1963[1922]:1), invoked as a majorcausal variable:the debate Weber insists that "[t]he most elementaryforms of over the existence and influence of a "culture behavior motivated by religious or magical factors of poverty."4 are oriented towardthis world." Religious behavior remains ends-oriented,except that both the means and the ends increasinglybecome purely symbolic 4I make no attempt to evaluate the empiricial (pp. 6-7): merits of the culture-of-poverty argument. Insofar as is that behind real things and the argument is waged on both sides as one about Since it assumed it is sociologically there is something else, distinctive and who is to blame for poverty, events to that spiritual,of which real events are only the symp- wrong-headed, since both sides seem agree toms or indeed the symbols, an effort must be structural circumstances are ultimately at fault. not the concrete things, but the Furthermore, neither side seems to have a very clear made to influence, work, if only spiritualpowers that express themselves through notion about how such a culture would concrete things. This is done throughactions that in the sense that neither makes a claim about how hence done long it would take to change cultural patterns in the address themselves to a spiritor soul, those instrumentalitiesthat "mean" something, i.e., face of new structural opportunities, or, for by argument, how fast action symbols. who make the structural might adjust to opportunity. I use the culture-of- 3See the summarychapter of The Structure of poverty argument not because I am sympathetic to Social Action (Parsons, 1937:697-726),where Par- its substantive claims, but because it is so familiar sons explicitly poses the theory of action as a cor- and its basic arguments are so characteristic of other rection to utilitarianviews of action. cultural explanations. CULTURE IN ACTION 275

The Culture of Poverty not take steps to pursue a middle-classpath to success (or indeed asked oneself why one did Why doesn't a memberof the "cultureof pov- not pursuea differentlife direction)the answer Liebow erty" described by Lewis (1966) or might well be not "I don't want that life," but (1967) (or an Italian street-corneryouth of the instead, "Who, me?" One can hardly pursue of sort Whyte [1943]described) take advantage success in a world where the accepted skills, opportunities to assimilate to the dominant style, and informalknow-how are unfamiliar. culture in conduct and dress, acquire the ap- One does better to look for a line of action for propriate educational credentials, and settle which one alreadyhas the culturalequipment. down to a steady job? Much of the argument Indeed, the skills requiredfor adoptinga line the very poor has revolved around whether or more se- of conduct-and for adopting the interests "really" value the same things that values that one could maximize in that line of cure middle- and working-class people do. quotes Oscar Lewis's de- conduct-involve much more than such mat- Valentine (1968:69) ters as how to dress, talk in the appropriate which, typi- scriptionof the culture of poverty style, or take a multiple-choiceexamination. cally, stresses the centralityof culturalvalues: To adopt a line of conduct, one needs an image By the time slum children are age six or of the kind of world in which one is trying to seven, they have usually absorbedthe basic act, a sense that one can read reasonablyaccu- values and attitudes of their subcultureand rately (throughone's own feelings and through are not psychologically geared to take full the responses of others) how one is doing, and advantage of changing conditions or in- a capacity to choose amongalternative lines of creased opportunities which may occur in action. The lack of this ease is what we experi- their lifetime. (Lewis, 1966:xlv) ence as "culture shock" when we move from one cultural community to another. Action is counters Lewis by claiming Valentine (1968) not one's values. Ratheraction behavior can be determinedby that distinctive lower-class and values are organizedto take advantageof circumstances, better explained by structural cultural competences. and that many of the values Lewis cites as a domi- The culture-of-povertyexample suggests typical of the poverty subculture(male our efforts. Stu- the so- misdirection of explanatory nance, for example) characterize larger dents of culture keep looking for cultural ciety as well (pp. 117-19). Liebow (1967), in values that will explain what is distinctive the turn, claims that street-cornermen value about the behavior of groups or societies, and same that men in the dominantsociety things neglect other distinctivelycultural phenomena do, but that their behavior is a defensive cul- which offer greater promise of explainingpat- tural adaptationto structuralbarriers. of be terns action. These factors are better de- The irony of this debate is that it cannot and share scribed as culturally-shapedskills, habits, resolved by evidence that the very poor styles than as values or preferences. the values and aspirationsof the middle class, as indeed they seem to do. In repeated sur- veys, lower-class youth say that they value The Protestant Ethic educationand intendto go to college, and their These causal issues appearagain when we turn et parentssay they want them to go (Jencks al., to the paradigmaticsociological argumentfor seem 1972:34-5).Similarly, lower-class people the importanceof culture in human action- to want secure friendships, stable marriages, Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the steady jobs, and high incomes. But class [1904-51]).6 Weber in resolve the Spiritof Capitalism(1958a similaritiesin aspirations no way to economic of whetherthere are class differences sought explain rational, capitalist question behavior by arguingthat culture, in the shape in culture. People may share common aspirations, while remainingprofoundly different in the way their culture organizes their overall consistent with the logic of challengeand riposte, pattern of behavior (see Hannerz, 1969). and only such practices, by means of countless Culturein this sense is more like a style or a inventions, which the stereotyped unfolding of set of skills and habitsthan a set of preferences ritual would in no way demand (p. 15). or wants.5If one asked a slumyouth why he did 6 There has been no apparentslackening of interest in the Protestantethic. Recent theoreticalreas- sessments by Marshall(1982) and Poggi(1983) testify 5 Bourdieu What I mean here is similar to what to the still powerful appeal of Weber's theoretical (1977) calls "practices." He says, for example, questions, and the rich, new historical studies of What is called the sense of honor is nothingother Marshall(1980), Fulbrook(1983), Camic (1983),and than the cultivated disposition, inscribed in the Zaret(1985), among others, show the continuingfas- body schemaand in the schemes of thought,which cination exerted by demanding,ideological Protes- enables each agent to engender all the practices tants. 276 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEW of Calvinist doctrine, created a distinctive misses the point, since this individualisticway frame of mind which encouragedrationalized, of organizingaction can be directed to many ascetic behavior. The doctrine of predestina- values, among them the establishment of tion channeled the desire to be saved into a 'community" (Varenne, 1977; Bellah, et al., quest for proof of salvationin worldlyconduct, 1985). This reliance on moral "work" on the thus stimulatinganxious self-examinationand self to organize action has, then, been a more relentless self-discipline.Ends createdby ideas enduringfeature of Protestantculture than the (that is, the desire for salvation) powerfully particular ends toward which this work has influenced conduct. been directed. Such examples underline the If we take seriously the causal model Weber need for new ways of thinking about cultural offers (both in The Protestant Ethic and in his explanation. theoretical writings on religion), however, we These two cases illustratethe chronic diffi- cannot understand his larger claim: that the culties with traditionalefforts to use culture as ethos of Protestantismendured even after the an explanatoryvariable and suggest why many spur of the Calvinist quest for proof of salva- have written off the effort altogether. tion had been lost.7 If ideas shape ethos, why did the ethos of ascetic Protestantismoutlast its ideas? CULTURAL EXPLANATION Weberargues for continuitybetween the de- If values have little explanatory power, why sire of early Calvinists to know whether they expect cultureto play any causal role in human were saved or damnedand the secular ethic of action? Why not explain action as the result of Benjamin Franklin. We recognize other con- interests and structuralconstraints, with only a tinuities as well: in the Methodist demand for rational, interest-maximizingactor to link the sobriety, humility, and self-control among the two? working class; and even in the anxious self- The view that action is governed by "inter- scrutiny of contemporaryAmericans seeking ests" is inadequatein the same way as the view psychological health, materialsuccess, or per- that action is governed by non-rationalvalues. sonal authenticity. Both models have a common explanatory How, then, should we understandcontinuity logic, differingonly in assumingdifferent ends in the style or ethos of action, even when ideas of action: either individualistic, arbitrary (and the ends of action they advocate) change? "tastes" or consenual, cultural "values."18 This continuity suggests that what endures is Both views are flawed by an excessive em- the way action is organized, not its ends. In the phasis on the "unit act," the notion that people Protestant West (and especially in Puritan choose their actions one at a time accordingto America), for example, action is assumed to their interests or values. But people do not, dependon the choices of individualpersons, so indeed cannot, build up a sequence of actions that before an individualacts he or she must piece by piece, striving with each act to ask: What kind of self do I have? Saved or maximize a given outcome. Action is neces- damned?Righteous or dissolute? Go-getteror sarily integrated into larger assemblages, plodder? Authentic or false? called here "strategies of action."9 Cul- Collective action is also understood to rest on the choices of individualactors. Groupsare thus seen as collections of like-mindedindivid- 8 See Warner (1978) for an elegant explication and uals who come together to pursue their com- critique of this line of argument in the work of both mon interests (Varenne, 1977). Even large- Talcott Parsons and his critics. scale social purposes are presumed best ac- 9 Bourdieu (1977) also emphasizes the idea of complished through movements of moral re- strategies, and the term is central to a whole tradition in anthropology, which, nonetheless, sees strategies form or education that transform individuals as oriented to the attainment of "values" (see Barth, (McLoughlin, 1978; Boyer, 1978; Gusfield, 1981). Very valuable are Bourdieu's critique of the 1981). To call this culturalapproach to action idea of culture as "rules" and his insistence that we the "value" of individualism,as is often done, can understand the meaning of cultural traditions only if we see the ways they unfold and can be altered over time. For him, cultural patterns provide 7Weber himself attempts to deal with this issue the structure against which individuals can develop from the beginning,first in the ProtestantEthic, by particular strategies (see the brilliant analysis of mar- trying to assimilate non-Calvinistvarieties of Prot- riage in Bourdieu, 1977:58-71). For me, strategies estantism to the Calvinistmodel, and second in his are the larger ways of trying to organize a life (trying, essay on the Protestantsects (Weber, 1946b[1922- for example, to secure position by allying with pres- 23]) where he argues that market incentives sus- tigious families through marriage) within which par- tained habits of conduct from which the spirit had ticular choices make sense, and for which particular, gone. But that argumentis not sufficientif it is in fact culturally shaped skills and habits (what Bourdieu the spirit which has lasted. calls "habitus") are useful. CULTURE IN ACTION 277 ture has an independent causal role because tural theory should lead us to expect not pass- it shapes the capacities from which such strat- ive "culturaldopes" (Garfinkel, 1967; Wrong, egies of action are constructed. 1961),but ratherthe active, sometimes skilled The term "strategy"is not used here in the users of culture whom we actually observe. conventional sense of a plan consciously de- If culture influences action through end vised to attain a goal. It is, rather, a general values, people in changing circumstances way of organizing action (depending upon a should hold on to their preferred ends while network of kin and friends, for example, or alteringtheir strategiesfor attainingthem. But relying on selling one's skills in a market)that if cultureprovides the tools with which persons might allow one to reach several differentlife construct lines of action, then styles or strate- goals. Strategies of action incorporate, and gies of action will be more persistent than the thus depend on, habits, moods, sensibilities, ends people seek to attain. Indeed, people will and views of the world (Geertz, 1973a).People come to value ends for which their cultural do not build lines of action from scratch, equipment is well suited (cf. Mancini, 1980). choosing actions one at a time as efficient To returnto the culture of poverty example, a means to given ends. Instead, they construct ghetto youth who can expertly "read" signs of chains of action beginning with at least some friendshipand loyalty (Hannerz, 1969),or who pre-fabricatedlinks. Cultureinfluences action can recognize with practised acuity threats to through the shape and organizationof those turf or dignity (Horowitz, 1983), may pursue links, not by determiningthe ends to which ends that place group loyalty above individual they are put. achievement, not because he disdains what in- Our alternativemodel also rests on the fact dividualachievement could bring, but because that all real cultures contain diverse, often the cultural meanings and social skills neces- conflicting symbols, rituals, stories, and sary for playing that game well would require guides to action.'0 The readerof the Bible can drastic and costly culturalretooling. find a passage to justify almost any act, and This revised imagery-culture as a "tool kit" traditionalwisdom usually comes in pairedad- for constructing"strategies of action," rather ages counseling opposite behaviors. A culture than as a switchmandirecting an engine prop- is not a unified system that pushes action in a elled by interests-turns our attention toward consistent direction. Rather, it is more like a differentcausal issues than do traditionalper- "tool kit" or repertoire(Hannerz, 1969:186-88) spectives in the sociology of culture. from which actors select differing pieces for When do we invoke cultural explanation? constructing lines of action. Both individuals And just what is it that we take culture to and groups know how to do differentkinds of explain? Usually, we invoke culture to explain things in different circumstances (see, for continuities in action in the face of structural example, Gilbert and Mulkay, 1984). People changes. Immigrants,for example, are said to may have in readiness culturalcapacities they act in culturally determined ways when they rarely employ; and all people know more cul- preserve traditional habits in new circum- ture than they use (if only in the sense that they stances (Thomas and Znaniecki, 1918). More ignore much that they hear)."I A realistic cul- generally, we use culture to explain why different groups behave differently in the same structuralsituation (compare, for example, the I0 The problemof cultural"dissensus" or diversity argument of Glazer and Moynihan [1970] to has recently received some explicit theoretical at- Lieberson [1981]or Bonacich [1976]). Finally, tention (Fernandez, 1965; Stromberg, 1981; New- However, we make the intuitivelyappealing but theoreti- comb and Hirsch, 1983; Rosaldo, 1985). assumptionthat cultureaccounts these advances are partiallyoffset by the vogue for cally vacuous theories of "hegemony" among Marxists and by approaches which see cultures as codes semiotic even some of that en- within which any meaning must be communicated derived from school, and countered within the ghetto community, other (see Stromberg,1985). may 11 Writing of the simultaneous participationof components of an individual's repertoire ghetto dwellers in mainstreamand ghetto subcul- come in more useful. tures, Ulf Hannerz (1969:186)notes: Bourdieu (1977:82-3) also emphasizes how a is not a mindless culturalautomaton. ... "habitus" provides resources for constructing di- [M]an last- of all, when people develop a cultural rep- verse lines of action. A habitusis "a system of First past ertoire by being at the receiving end of cultural ing, transposabledispositions which, integrating transmission, this certainly does not mean that experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix will put every part of it to use. Rather, the of perceptions, appreciations, and actions and they diversi- repertoireto some measure constitutes adaptive makes possible the achievementof infinitely potential. While some of the cultural goods re- fied tasks, thanks to analogicaltransfers of schemes ceived may be situationally irrelevant, such as permittingthe solution of similarlyshaped problems most of that picked up at the movies, muchof that ... (emphasisin original). 278 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEW for any observed continuitiesin the way life of Two Models of Cultural Influence particulargroups. We need two different models to understand Does culture account for continuities in ac- two situations in which culture works very tion independentof structuralcircumstance? It does, but in ways differentfrom those the con- differently. In one case, culture accounts for ventional approachwould predict. continuitiesin "settled lives." In settled lives, cultureis is Let us return to the explanatory prob- intimatelyintegrated with action; it lems raised by Max Weber'sProtestant Ethic, here that we are most temptedto see values as organizing this time examining Weber's larger and anchoring patterns of action; and here it is most difficultto disentanglewhat comparative-historicalproject. In his compar- is uniquely "cultural," since culture and China India ative studies of and (1951 [1916]; structural to 1958b [1916-17]) and his general sociology of circumstanceseem reinforceeach other. This is the situation about which a religion (1963 [1922]), Weber argued that reli- theorist like CliffordGeertz (1973b) writes so gious ideas made an independentcausal con- persuasively:culture is a model of and a model tribution to the economic trajectories of different societies. Other-worldly and mystical for experience; and culturalsymbols reinforce an ethos, a which religiosity led people away from rational eco- makingplausible world-view in turn the ethos. nomic action. justifies The second case is that of "unsettledlives." If culture plays the independentcausal role The distinctionis less between settled and un- Weber attributedto it,12 it must not change settled lives, however, than between culture's more easily than the structuraland economic role in sustainingexisting strategies of action it patterns supposedly shapes. Precisely here, and its role in constructing new ones. This the Weberian however, modelfails empirically. contrastis not, of course, absolute. Even when Weberianstudents of culture have been embar- they lead settled lives, people do active cul- rassed by their success in finding functional tural work to maintainor refine their cultural equivalentsto the Protestantethic in societies capacities. Conversely, even the most fanatical that Weber would have considered other- ideological movement, which seeks to remake worldly, mystical, or otherwise averse to ra- completely the culturalcapacities of its mem- tional economic activity. If there was initial bers, will inevitably draw on many tacit as- triumph in discovering independent religious sumptionsfrom the existing culture.There are, sources of a transcendental, ascetic, and nonetheless, more and less settled lives, and potentially rationalizingethic in one remark- more and less settled culturalperiods. Individ- able, non-western modernizer,Japan (Bellah, uals in certainphases of their lives, and groups 1957),the frequentreplication of such parallels or entire societies in certain historicalperiods, has undermined the very argument for the are involved in new of causal of constructing strategies influence Protestantism (see action. It is for the latter situation that our Eisenstadt, 1970a). usual models of culture's effects are most in- to Weber's According model, culture should adequate. have enduring effects on economic action. Cultures change, though; and the ends have in societies pursue changed dramatically Unsettled the modern era, from Chinese communism Lives (Schurmann, 1970), to Islamic scripturalism Periods of social transformationseem to pro- (Geertz, 1968), to the various resurgent vide simultaneouslythe best and the worst evi- nationalisms(Geertz, 1963; Gourevitch, 1979; dence for culture's influence on social action. Hannan, 1979).Faced with the challengeof the Established cultural ends are jettisoned with modern West, late-developing nations have apparent ease, and yet explicitly articulated constructed ascetic, this-worldly,modernizing cultural models, such as ideologies, play a ideologies (Wuthnow, 1980). Far from main- powerful role in organizingsocial life (see, for taining continuity despite changed circum- examples, Geertz, 1%8; Schurmann, 1970; stances, a surge of ideological and religious Eisenstadt, 1970b; Walzer, 1974; Madsen, activity has propelled the transformations 1984; Hunt, 1984). modernizingsocieties seek. Culturethus plays In such periods, ideologies-explicit, ar- a central role in contemporarysocial change, ticulated, highly organized meaning systems but it is not the role our conventional models (both political and religious)-establish new would predict. styles or strategiesof action. When people are learningnew ways of organizingindividual and collective action, practicing unfamiliarhabits 12 The analytic independence of culture's causal until they become familiar, then doctrine, role is at issue here, not its magnitude. symbol, and ritual directly shape action. CULTURE IN ACTION 279 Assumed here is a continuumfrom ideology such situations, culture may indeed be said to tradition to common sense (see Stromberg, to directly shape action. Members of a reli- 1985).13 An "ideology" is a highly articulated, gious cult wear orange, or share their property, self-consciousbelief and ritualsystem, aspiring or dissolve their marriagesbecause their be- to offer a unified answer to problemsof social liefs tell them to. Protestantssimplify worship, action.Ideology may be thoughtof as a phase in read the Bible, and work in a callingbecause of the developmentof a system of culturalmean- their faith. Doctrine and casuistry tell people ing. "Traditions,"on the other hand, are ar- how to act and provide blueprintsfor commu- ticulatedcultural beliefs and practices,but ones nity life. taken for grantedso that they seem inevitable During such periods, differences in ritual parts of life. Diverse, ratherthan unified, par- practice or doctrine may become highly tial rather than all-embracing,they do not al- charged, so that statuaryin churches (Baxan- ways inspire enthusiastic assent. (A wedding, dall, 1980),the clothingand preachingstyles of in our own culture, may seem odd, forced, or ministers (Davis, 1975; Zaret, 1985), or the unnatural when we actually attend one, for style and decoration of religious objects are example. But it will still seem the naturalway fraughtwith significance. to get married,so that going to a justice of the Ritualacquires such significancein unsettled peace requires special explanation.) lives because ritual changes reorganize Traditions, whether the routine ones of taken-for-grantedhabits and modes of experi- daily life or the extraordinaryones of com- ence. People developing new strategies of ac- munal ceremony, nonetheless seem ordained tion depend on culturalmodels to learn styles in the order of things, so that people may rest of self, relationship, cooperation, authority, in the certaintythat they exist, without neces- and so forth. Commitmentto such an ideology, sarily participatingin them. The same belief originatingperhaps in conversion, is more con- system- a religion, for example-may be held scious than is the embeddednessof individuals by some people as an ideology and by others as in settled cultures, representinga break with tradition; and what has been tradition may some alternativeway of life. under certain historicalcircumstances become These explicit cultures might well be called ideology. (This is the distinction Geertz ",systems." While not perfectly consistent, [1968:61]makes when he writes about a loss of they aspire to offer not multiple answers, but traditional religious certainty in modern one unified answer to the question of how "ideologized"Islam-coming to "hold" rather human beings should live. In conflict with than be "held by" one's beliefs.) "Common other culturalmodels, these culturesare coher- sense," finally, is the set of assumptions so ent because they must battle to dominate the unselfconsciousas to seem a natural,transpar- world-views, assumptions, and habits of their ent, undeniable part of the structure of the members. world (Geertz, 1975). Such culturalmodels are thus causally pow- Bursts of ideological activism occur in pe- erful, but in a restricted sense. Rather than riods when competing ways of organizingac- providing the underlying assumptions of an tion are developing or contending for domi- entire way of life, they make explicit demands nance.14 People formulate, flesh out, and put in a contested cultural arena. Their indepen- into practice new habits of action. In dent causal influenceis limitedfirst because, at least at their origins, such ideological movements are not complete cultures, in the sense 13 Other scholars have recently made distinctions that much of their taken-for-grantedunder- similarto the ones drawn here. Skocpol (1985) dis- standingof the world and many of their daily tinguishes "ideology" from "cultural idioms," and practices still depend on traditionalpatterns.15 Stromberg(1985) contrasts ideology, tradition, and semiotic code. Geertz, in his writings on religion Second, in a period of cultural transforma- (1973b), ideology (1973d), art (1976), and common tion, ideology forms aroundethos, ratherthan sense (1975) has made an importantcontribution by vice versa. To illustratethis we may turn once noting that differentorders of experience live con- tinuously side by side while people make transitions from one to another.For my purposeshere, the most 15 Over time, as an ideology establishes itself, it importantdimension of comparisonis that between may deepen its critique of the existing order and culturewhich seems real, independentof the efforts extend its claims increasingly into taken-for-granted individualsmake to maintainit (commonsense), ver- areas of daily life (e.g., the escalating Puritan critique sus that which requiresactive humaneffort or par- of vestments, ritual, and preaching [Zaret, 1985]). ticipationto be sustained (religioustraditions) or to Nonetheless, whatever the new ideology does not become true (ideology). explicitly regulate still falls under the sway of the old 14 Todd Gitlin(personal communication) observes order. Old orders are thus resilient, hiding their that ideology is contested culture. premises in the minutiae of daily life. 280 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEW again to argumentsabout the Protestantethic. ways of organizingaction are being developed. Remember that for Max Weber the conse- Such ideologies, often carriedby social move- quences of Calvinismflowed from its doctrine, ments, model new ways to organizeaction and operatingon believers' overwhelmingpsycho- to structure human communities. These logical interest in salvation. But even in The ideologicalmovements, however, are in active Protestant Ethic (1958a [1904-5]), Weber is competition with other cultural frame- hard pressed to explain why the doctrines of works-at the least in competition with com- predestinationand proof produced the ration- mon sense and usually with alternative alized, ascetic conduct of the saint (as opposed traditions and ideologies as well. Explaining to fatalistic resignation, or even hedonism).16 cultural outcomes therefore requires not only In The Revolution of the Saints (1974), understandingthe direct influence of an ideol- Michael Walzer makes a very different argu- ogy on action. It also requires explainingwhy ment about the relation between ethos and one ideology rather than another triumphs(or doctrinallogic in Calvinism.Walzer shows that at least endures). And such explanation de- the ethos of methodicalself-control was not an pends on analyzing the structuralconstraints accidental byproduct of Calvinism'sdoctrine. and historical circumstances within which Rather, Calvinrepeatedly adjusted the logic of ideological movements struggle for domi- this theology to stimulatethe disciplinehe saw nance.1 7 as necessary for fallen man. He "opportunisti- Culturehas independentcausal influence in cally" revised and reworked his doctrine in unsettled cultural periods because it makes order to achieve a particularpsychological ef- possible new strategiesof action-constructing fect. Calvinneeded potent theological imagery entities that can act (selves, families, corpo- to inscribe within his congregantsthe rigorous rations), shaping the styles and skills with control of thought and action he sought. In- which they act, and modeling forms of au- deed, tightly argued doctrine, austere ritual, thority and cooperation. It is, however, the and potent imagery were the weapons Calvin concrete situations in which these cultural crafted to teach a new ethos. But doctrine models are enacted that determinewhich take "caused" ethos only in an immediate sense. root and thrive, and which wither and die. In a larger explanatory perspective, commitment to a specific ethos, a style of regulating Settled Lives action, shaped the selection and development of doctrine. The causal connections between culture and Walzer also suggests a new way of thinking action are very differentin settled culturalpe- about the relationship between ideology and riods. Culture provides the materials from interests. As the ruler of a small theocracy, which individualsand groups construct strate- Calvin certainly had immediate interests in gies of action. Such cultural resources are di- controllingthe citizens of Geneva, and he bent verse, however, and normallygroups and indi- his doctrineto those ends. Walzeralso argues, viduals call upon these resources selectively, however, that the wider appeal of Calvinism bringingto bear different styles and habits of was to those displaced clergy and insecure action in different situations. Settled cultures gentrywho were lookingfor new ways to exer- thus support varied patterns of action, cise authorityand a new ethos to regulatetheir obscuring culture's independentinfluence. own conduct as elites. Interests are thus im- Specifyingculture's causal role is made more portantin shapingideas, but an ideology serves difficult in settled cultural periods by the interests throughits potential to construct and "loose coupling"between cultureand action.18 regulate patterns of conduct. And indeed, People profess ideals they do not follow, utter those new capacities for action and for regu- platitudes without examiningtheir validity, or lating the action of others shape the interests fall into cynicism or indifferencewith the as- its adherents come to have. surancethat the world will go on just the same. To understandculture's causal role in such Such gaps between the explicit norms, world- high-ideologyperiods, we need, third, to con- views, and rules of conduct individuals es- sider ideologies in a larger explanatory con- pouse and the ways they habituallyact create text. Coherent ideologies emerge when new little difficulty within settled strategies of action. People naturally "know" how to act.

16 Weber, of course, acknowledges the tension between the "logical and psychological" conse- 17 This section draws on arguments found in quences of Calvinism in a famous footnote (Weber, Skocpol, 1985. 1958a [1904-05]: 232, n. 66). He and later commen- 18 There is by now a large literature on the weak tators have also stressed the pastoral context in relationship between attitudes and behavior (Schu- which Calvinism was interpreted as crucial to under- man and Johnson, 1976; Hill, 1981). See Cancian standing the doctrine's effects (see Zaret, 1985). (1975) for one interpretation of this gap. CULTURE IN ACTION 281 Cultural experience may reinforce or re- has an effect in that the ability to put together fine the skills, habits, and attitudes important such a strategydepends on the available set of for common strategies of action, but estab- cultural resources. Furthermore, as certain lished ways of acting do not depend upon such cultural resources become more central in a immediate cultural support. given life, and become more fully invested with In settled culturalperiods, then, culture and meaning, they anchor the strategies of action social structure are simultaneouslytoo fused people have developed. and too disconnectedfor easy analysis. On the Such cultural influence can be observed in one hand, people in settled periods can live "culturallag." People do not readily take ad- with great discontinuitybetween talk and ac- vantage of new structuralopportunities which tion. On the other hand, in settled lives it is would require them to abandon established particularlydifficult to disentanglecultural and ways of life. This is not because they cling to structuralinfluences on action. That is because culturalvalues, but because they are reluctant ideology has both diversified,by being adapted to abandon familiar strategies of action for to varied life circumstances, and gone under- which they have the cultural equipment. Be- ground,so pervadingordinary experience as to cause culturalexpertise underliesthe ability of blend imperceptibly into common-sense as- both individualsand groups to construct effec- sumptionsabout what is true. Settled cultures tive strategies of action, such matters as the are thus more encompassing then are style or ethos of action and related ways of ideologies, in that they are not in open com- organizing authority and cooperation are en- petition with alternative models for organiz- duringaspects of individual,and especially of ing experience. Instead, they have the undis- collective, life. puted authorityof habit, normality, and com- Second, the influence of culture in settled mon sense. Such culture does not impose a lives is especially strong in structuringthose single, unifiedpattern on action, in the sense of uninstitutionalized,but recurrentsituations in imposing norms, styles, values, or ends on in- which people act in concert. When Americans dividual actors. Rather, settled cultures con- try to get something done, they are likely to strain action by providinga limited set of re- create voluntaristsocial movements-from resources out of which individuals and groups ligious revivals (McLoughlin,1978), to reform construct strategies of action.'9 campaigns(Boyer, 1978),to the voluntarylocal There is nonetheless a distinctive kind of initiativesthat created much of Americanpub- cultural explanation appropriate to settled lic schooling(Meyers, et al., 1979).Such strate- cultures. First, while such cultures provide a gies of action rest on the cultural assumption "tool kit" of resources from which people can that social groups-indeed, society itself-are construct diverse strategies of action, to con- constituted by the voluntary choices of indi- struct such a strategy means selecting certain viduals. Yet such voluntarismdoes not, in fact, cultural elements (both such tacit culture as dominate most of our institutionallife. A bu- attitudes and styles and, sometimes, such ex- reaucraticstate, large corporations,and an im- plicit cultural materials as rituals and beliefs) personal market run many spheres of Ameri- and investingthem with particularmeanings in can life without voluntary individualcoopera- concrete life circumstances.An example might tion. American voluntarismpersists, nonethe- by young adults who become more church- less, as the predominant collective way of going when they marryand have children, and dealing with situations that are not taken care who then, in turn, find themselves with re- of by institutions.20 awakened religious feelings. In such cases Cultureaffects action, but in differentways culture cannot be said to have "caused" the in settled versus unsettled periods. Disen- choices people make, in the sense that both the tanglingthese two modes of culture'sinfluence cultural elements and the life strategy are, in and specifyingmore clearly how culture works effect, chosen simultaneously. Indeed, the in the two situations, creates new possibilities meanings of particularcultural elements depend, in part, on the strategyof action in which they are embedded (so, for example, religious 20 Renato Rosaldo (1985) has written provoca- ritual may have special meaning as part of a tively of anthropology's overreliance on images of family's weekly routine). Nonetheless, culture culture as sets of plans or rules. He argues that culture is better thought of as providing resources for dealing with the unexpected, for improvising. While 19 Ulf Hannerz's Soulside (1969:177-95) has an my argument stays close to the culture as plan im- excellent discussion of this issue, stressing both the agery, it nonetheless stresses that what is cultur- ways in which the ghetto dwellers he studied drew on ally regulated is that part of social life which has to a flexible repertoire of cultural expertise, and how be continually created and recreated, not that part much of the specific ghetto subculture was adapted which is so institutionalized that it requires little to the exigencies of ghetto life. active support by those it regulates. 282 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEW for cultural explanation. The following "equality," "an exciting life," "family secur- schematicdiagram summarizes the two models ity"). Such values differ in plausible ways of culturalexplanation proposed here. Neither by class, race, and occupation, and are, at least model looks like the Parsonian theory of in some circumstances, modestly related to values, the Weberianmodel of how ideas influ- actual behavior. ence action, or the Marxianmodel of the re- We may reconcile these two images of the lationship of ideas and interests. However, role of values in human action by thinkingof between them the two models account for them as parts of settled versus unsettled lives. much of what has been persuasive about these In unsettled lives, values are unlikely to be earlier images of cultural influence while good predictorsof action, or indeed of future avoiding those expectations that cannot be values. Kathleen Gerson (1985), for example, supportedby evidence. in an insightful study of women's career and family choices, notes what a small role is played by the values and plans young women IMPLICATIONSFOR RESEARCH have, and how much their choices are shaped First, these two models of cultural causation by theirimmediate situations-a firstjob which identify the limited sense in which values are works out, or a boyfriendwho does not. Young important in shaping action. James March women's choices are not driven by their (1978:596)can argue that values neither can values, but by what they find they have be- nor do guide decision makingin the ways that come good at, or at least accustomed to. rationalchoice theorists suppose: Within an established way of life, however, values-both "terminal" and "in- Choices are often made without respect to strumental"-may play a significant role. A tastes. Humandecision makers routinelyig- woman preoccupiedwith juggling the demands nore their own, fully conscious, preferences of husband and children against those of her in making decisions. They follow rules, work may well have developed a settled policy traditions, hunches, and the advice or ac- about whether"happiness," "an exciting life," Tastes change over time in tions of others. "self-respect," or "social recognition" are such a way that predicting future tastes is more importantto her. She may even refer to often difficult. Tastes are inconsistent. Indi- those values in making particularchoices. In- the viduals and organizationsare aware of deed, values are importantpieces of cultural extent to which some of their preferences equipmentfor established strategies of action, conflict with other of their preferences; yet since partof what it means to have a strategyof inconsisten- they do nothingto resolve those action is to have a way of makingthe choices cies. . . . While tastes are used to choose that ordinarilyconfront one within it. We can among actions, it is often also true that ac- thus recognize the significanceof values, if we tions and experiences with their conse- acknowledge that values do not shape action quences affect tastes. by defining its ends, but rather fine-tune the On the other hand, Milton Rokeach (1973)has regulationof action within established ways of spent a fruitful career investigating the life. significance of "values." He finds that indi- This perspective could reorient research on viduals can produce reliable forced-choice culture in a second way, by directingattention rankings of eighteen "terminal"values (e.g., to a set of historical questions about the in-

Figure 1. Two Models of Culture Characteristics Short-Term Effects Long-Term Effects Low coherence, Weak direct control Provides resources for Settled Culture consistency over action constructing strategies of (traditions and action common sense) Encapsulates Refines and reinforces skills, habits, modes of Creates continuities in experience style or ethos, and especially in organization of strategies of action

High coherence, Strong control over ac- Creates new strategies of Unsettled Cul- consistency tion action, but long-term influ- ture ence depends on structural (ideology) Competes with other Teaches new modes of opportunities for survival cultural views action of competing ideologies CULTURE IN ACTION 283 teraction of culture and social structure. Dis- egies of action, we should expect the greatest tinguishingculture's role in settled and unset- "traditionalism"among the old (see Portes, tled periods, we can focus on those historical 1984:391)and those from culturally encapsu- junctures where new culturalcomplexes make lated backgrounds,people for whom the costs possible new or reorganized strategies of ac- of learning new cultural skills would be tion. We can then ask how concrete structural greatest. If culture shapes action through circumstances affect the relative success of values, on the other hand, we should expect competingcultural systems. We could also ask the most socially advantagedto show greatest how the capacity of particularideas, rituals, resistance to change, since they would have and symbols to organize given kinds of action the greatest resources with which to protect affects the historical opportunities actors are and pursue those values. able to seize. Such questions might finally break down? When begin to give us a systematic view of the -How do belief systems Beliefs about culture and so- do they lose their plausibility? dynamic interactionsbetween that hard work cial structure. the social world, for example A third reorientation of cultural research determines individual success (Huber and Form, 1973),do not seem to dependdirectly on would focus not on cultures as unified wholes, their descriptive accuracy. Instead, they are but on chunks of culture, each with its own linked to social-structuralrealities throughthe history. Culture provides resources for con- strategies of action they support. The English action. Par- structing organized strategies of upper classes abandoned medieval concep- ticular cultural resources can be integrated, tions of the inevitable dependence of the however, into quite different strategies of ac- poor when the system of poor laws they had tion. A crucial task for research is to under- developed became unworkable(Polanyi, 1944; stand how cultural capacities created in one Bendix, 1956). Similarly, the question raised historical context are reappropriatedand al- by Thomas Kuhn's (1962) analysis of tered in new circumstances. An example of science-when and how anomalies accumu- such research is WilliamSewell's (1974; 1980) lated by an aging paradigmprecipitate a "sci- examinationof how, faced with the threats of entific revolution"-might be solved by atten- early industrialism,nineteenth-century French tion to strategies of action. Paradigmsbreak artisansdrew on traditionsof corporateorgani- down, according to this argument,when they zation to construct a new ideology of radical fail to regulate adequately normal scientific socialism. work-when, for example, scientists have dif- At least since E.P. Thompson'sThe Making ficulty knowingwhich explanationsfit the rules of the English Working Class (1963), of course, of the game and which do not, how to award sociologists have examined how established power and prestige within the field, or how to cultural resources are reappropriatedin new make effective guesses about which new re- contexts. The argument proposed here goes search directions are likely to prove fruitful. beyond this, however. The significanceof specific cultural symbols can be understood only -What capacities do particularcultural pat- in relation to the strategies of action they sus- terns give those who hold them?2' For exam- tain. Culture does not influence how groups ple, one mightobserve that in the early-modern organize action via enduring psychological period, those groups armed with ascetic Prot- proclivities implanted in individuals by their estant ideologies very often won their social socialization. Instead, publicly available battles. One could point to practical links be- meanings facilitate certain patterns of action, tween ideology and social organization, such making them readily available, while dis- as the popular egalitarianismof Cromwell's couragingothers. It is thus not the rearrange- Puritan army. Protestantism also facilitated ment of some free-floating heritage of ideas, distinctive strategies of action, however, such myths, or symbols that is significant for as the creation of activist voluntary associ- sociological analysis. Rather, it is the reappro- ations (Thompson, 1963:350-400) and the priation of larger, culturally organized ca- legitimationof more systematicforms of politi- pacities for action that gives culture its endur- cal authority(Walzer, 1974). Some argue that ing effects. Attention to strategies of action also suggests a numberof specific research questions, 21 J am indebted to Douglas Roeder for the argu- answers to which would give us more precise ment of this paragraph, and particularly for noting of how culture works: that Mary Fulbrook's (1983) work could be inter- understanding preted as showing not only that pietist Protestantism had very different political implications in different -In new circumstances(after immigration, for historical contexts, but that whatever their political example), who remains traditionallonger? If orientations or alliances, in the cases Fulbrook culture influences action by constrainingstrat- studied, the pietist Protestants won out politically. 284 AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICALREVIEW Protestantism succeeded because it was constructed.Thus cultureappears to shape ac- adopted by "rising" groups challenging tion only in that the cultural repertoirelimits traditionalauthority (Wallerstein, 1974). The the availablerange of strategiesof action. Such systematic comparative work of Fulbrook "settled cultures" are nonetheless constrain- (1983), however, indicates that even when ing. Although internally diverse and often pietist Protestants allied with established au- contradictory,they providethe ritualtraditions thorities, they won. In a similar way, third- that regulateordinary patterns of authorityand world nation-buildersseem often to have felt cooperation,and they so define common sense that Marxistideology provides valuablepoliti- that alternativeways of organizingaction seem cal capacities (see Huntington, 1968). unimaginable,or at least implausible. Settled cultures constrainaction over time because of How do ideologies become tradition or the high costs of cultural retooling to adopt common sense? If ideologies are not distinctive new patterns of action. kinds of belief systems (see Geertz, 1973d),but In unsettled periods, in contrast, cultural ratherdistinctive phases in the developmentof are more highly articulatedand ex- cultural some former meanings systems, ideologies may plicit, because they model patterns of action become so uncontestedthat they are no longer that do not "come naturally."Belief and ritual organized as self-conscious belief systems. practice directly shape action for the commu- One might investigate when and under what adheres to a given ideology. Such circumstances such ideological relaxa- nity that ideologies are, however, in competition with tion occurs, and when it fails to occur. Is other sets of culturalassumptions. Ultimately, hegemony alone enough to soften the self- structural and historical opportunities deter- conscious boundaries of an ideology? One mine which strategies, and thus which cultural might suggest that an ideology will resist being systems, succeed. absorbed into common sense when it is the In neither case is it culturalend-values that organizational ideology for a special cadre action in the long run. Indeed, a culture within a society 1963 shape (Weber, [1922], on has enduringeffects on those who hold it, not priests; Mann, 1973, on European Communist by shaping the ends they pursue, but by pro- parties; and Schurmann,1970, on the Chinese viding the characteristicrepertoire from which CommunistParty). It would also be important, they build lines of action. however, to study popularMarxism, for exam- A focus on culturalvalues was attractivefor ple, in nations where the Marxist idiom has sociology because it suggestedthat culture, not been dominant for more than a generation. materialcircumstances, was determinative"in Does it become Marxist common sense? the last instance." In Parsons'(1966) ingenious "cyberneticmodel," social structuremay have constrained opportunitiesfor action, but cul- CONCLUSION tural ends directed it. The challenge for the The approachdeveloped here may seem at first contemporary sociology of culture is not, to relegate culture to a subordinate,purely in- however, to try to estimate how much culture strumental role in social life. The attentive shapes action. Instead, sociologists should reader will see, though, that what this paper search for new analytic perspectives that will has suggestedis precisely the opposite. Strate- allow more effective concrete analyses of how gies of action are cultural products; the sym- culture is used by actors, how cultural ele- bolic experiences, mythic lore, and ritualprac- ments constrainor facilitatepatterns of action, tices of a group or society create moods and what aspects of a cultural heritage have en- motivations, ways of organizing experience during effects on action, and what specific and evaluating reality, modes of regulating historical changes undermine the vitality of conduct, and ways of forming social bonds, some culturalpatterns and give rise to others. which provideresources for constructingstrat- The suggestionthat both the influence and the egies of action. When we notice cultural dif- fate of culturalmeanings depend on the strate- ferences we recognize that people do not all go gies of action they support is made in an at- about their business in the same ways; how tempt to fill this gap. 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