POLITICAL-CULTURE WARS 1960S STYLE - EQUAL-EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITY - AFFIRMATIVE-ACTION LAW AND THE PHILADELPHIA PLAN

This article empirically examines contextually conditioned constructio n of symbolic resources during political debate over the 1969 revised Philadelphia Plan-a crucial moment in the shaping of federal equal emp loyment law. Tying together political sociology's concept of policy fe edback with legal and cultural sociology's concept of culture as a res ource, the article explains how actors who were hampered by the explic it language used to embed equal opportunity values into law turned app arent constraint into an opportunity to transform law. The article sim ultaneously illuminates an underdeveloped aspect of equal employment l aw's unfolding and builds more general theory to help explain how law' s language, general cultural values expressed in law, and alternative methods used to interpret law mediate the effects of past law on futur e law. Defining concepts of value centrality and explicitness of legal language, the article uses its case study to suggest hypotheses about how variation in centrality of cultural values and explicitness of la nguage used to incorporate these values into law affect variation in m obilization of different types of cultural strategies by actors strugg ling over law interpretation and enforcement.