Decorative sociology: towards a critique of the cultural turn

In this paper we outline a critique of 'decorative sociology' as a trend in contemporary sociology where 'culture' has eclipsed the 'social' and when literary interpretation has marginalized sociological methods. By the term 'decorative sociology' we mean a branch of modernist aesthetics which is de voted to a politicized, textual reading of society and culture. Although we acknowledge slippage between the textual and material levels of cultural a nalysis, notably in the output of the Birmingham School, we propose that th e intellectual roots of cultural studies inevitably mean that the textual l evel is pre-eminent. In emphasizing the aesthetic dimension we seek to chal lenge the political self-image of decorative sociology as a contribution to political intervention. We argue that while the cultural turn has contribu ted to revising approaches to the relationships between identity and power, race and class, ideology and representation, it has done so chiefly at an aesthetic level. Following Davies (1993), we submit that the greatest achie vement of the cultural turn has been to teach students to 'read politically '. The effect of this upon concrete political action is an empirical questi on. Without wishing to minimize the political importance of cultural studie s, our hypothesis is that, what might be called the 'aestheticization of li fe' has not translated fully into the politicization of culture. We argue that an adequate cultural sociology would have to be driven by an empirical research agenda, embrace an historical and comparative framework, and have a genuinely sociological focus, that is, a focus on the changing balance of power in Western capitalism. We reject the attempt to submerge t he social in the cultural and outline the development of an alternative, in tegrated perspective on body, self and society. We conclude by briefly comm enting on three sociological contributions to the comparative and historica l study of cultural institutions which approximate this research agenda: No rbert Elias, Pierre Bourdieu and Richard Sennett.