From the start, seven years ago, the European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology has explored ways in which cultural and political analyses go hand-in-hand. Our view of sociology stresses the cultural and the political in all that takes place; hence, the journal welcomes a remarkably wide range of sociological work. When we interrogate how people envisage the world, and how they interact with each other on micro-, meso- and macro-levels, we need to take recourse to analyses including practices, symbols, or complexes of power relations. What do human beings, or groups composed in various ways, expect of everyday practices and public ones, from intimate (family) relations to politics, from traditional depictions of the world to large-scale backgrounds of assumptions and expectations informing what is done? Cultural meanings affect people’s perceptions of their own bodies, of the ways they age, of the ethical meanings of different phases of their lives and the ways these can be enhanced or erased; they affect what they do to each other and to themselves. Patterns of dialogue and resistance are key to understanding these phenomena. This journal has covered topics from right-wing politics to the culture of tourism, from practices relating to racism and citizenship in Germany or Scotland to Italian patterns of self-representation and to Russian processes of experiential mobilisation.
At this stage, we want to give an impression of the journal’s interests by briefly discussing the people involved in it. Most, incidentally, have lived and worked in cultures other than those they were born in. The current editors (in alphabetical order, since we edit as a collective) are Ricca Edmondson, Siobhan Kattago and Eeva Luhtakallio. Ricca Edmondson’s main interests stem from four interconnected areas: she begins from the sociality of reasoning and rhetorical argumentation, including what she terms ‘cultures of reasoning’, practices in connection with what particular judges regard as reasonable, admissible or convincing. This leads her to study phenomena less connected with negative forms of debate, such as manipulation or deceit, than with efforts at excellent reasoning, many under the ancient heading of ‘wisdom’. This brings her to issues connected with ageing, the life course, and life-course meaning; and, lastly, interculturality, translation and innovative qualitative methods such as ‘reconstructive ethnography’, necessary to put all these interests into practice. Siobhan Kattago’s academic interests include collective memory, the philosophy of history, political and social philosophy and twentieth-century European history. In particular, she is interested in ways in which the democratisation of the public sphere, the politics of memory and social acceleration of time influence how we think about history, and about our relation to the past, to one another, and to the world. Much of her research addresses the work of post-war philosophers such as Hannah Arendt, Reinhart Koselleck, Jacques Derrida, Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas. Eeva Luhtakallio’s research has addressed a variety of social practices connected to concepts such as democracy, political culture, citizenship, politicisation and participation in different cultural contexts. By stressing an ‘adverbial’ use of sociological concepts, she has looked at how, at actor and group level, cultural and political processes emerge, sustain, and change. Besides empirical interests in, among others, climate activism, political participation of the marginalised, or young people’s visual activism, her aim is to develop theoretical tools of political and cultural sociology with a pragmatist orientation. Throughout her research she has emphasised the importance of methodological development in sociology, from theorising comparative research to developing visual and ethnographic methods in sociology and to pursuing novel combinations of qualitative tools, notably ethnographic and machine-learning-based methods, in order to respond to the demands of interpreting cultural and political phenomena in ways that span the diverse levels of social life.
In 2020, we hand over the editorship to the able hands of (in alphabetical order) Paul Blokker, Veikko Eranti and Ulrike M. Vieten. They have all worked, in different but complimentary ways, on conjunctions between culture and power, as does our managing editor, Linda Haapajärvi, who is a researcher at the Centre Maurice Halbwachs in Paris. Her work has focused on citizenship, gender, and migration, centring on how state agents fashion ‘good’ citizens out of migrant women in the framework of participatory public policies. She is now doing postdoctoral work on how belonging is negotiated in the context of migrant deaths in France and Finland. Paul Blokker’s current speciality is constitutional politics, in particular conflict around how people interpret and reform constitutions as well as how social mobilisation around constitutional claims occurs. His interest in interactions between law and society has led him to carry out research on populism and perceptions of the law and legitimacy, as well as different interpretations of modernity from the nineteenth century onwards. In a third, connected sphere he is also concerned with transnational social movements and the political imaginary of antitotalitarianism. He has studied the ways in which modernity, citizenship and aims for democracy have worked out in countries including Romania and Hungary; thus his approach to democracy in Europe takes into account the intricacies of political culture in a wide variety of contrasting settings.
All Veikko Eranti’s work is, likewise, concerned with the interaction of culture and politics, especially in connection with urban and political sociology, pragmatic sociology, and issues concerning democracy and power. He is also qualified in literary studies. Currently, he is exploring land use and how people use vehicles in this connection. This involves interrogating participation in politics, including on-line participation, using cultural and political conceptual tools; in the past, he has explored gaming, NIMBYism, crowdsourcing and climate change. He is now beginning a project exploring what he terms ‘the para-democratic system’: how large consumer co-operatives, democratic elements in the Lutheran Church, and the housing model in Finland contrast with, challenge, and expand what we understand as democracy.
Ulrike M. Vieten’s research interests resonate with ongoing transformations of and across European societies while tracing specific national cultural and political pathways encompassing these processes. Focusing on the situated notions and the normalisation of difference and otherness, her feminist approach is led by the question of how group boundaries have become racialised over time, and in different countries, and in what ways these racialising regimes can be pinpointed and overcome. Her work spans critical work on cosmopolitanism, European citizenship, migration, social inequalities, and, more recently, the entanglements of populism, gender and the racist far right. Thus, she traces the operations of power within particular sociospatial contexts. Her previous work on cosmopolitanism explored the ways in which points of view that are initially intended to be universal work themselves out as heavily partial to certain sections of society, notably dominant classes inhabited by influential persons.
While our editors’ interests by no means limit those of potential contributors, or readers, they do give some sense of the journal’s range. It is above all a hospitable journal, open to any approach that explores cultural – political interactions with a sociological lens. We are confident that with the new editorial team, the journal will continue developing the traditions it has built up. Next year we shall be publishing, among many other pieces, papers on activation strategies for young people and how they aim fundamentally to reshape the young people’s self-perception, on policies in higher education and in childhood education. In addition, we are issuing a call for papers on sociological approaches to the climate crisis.
In this issue, all the articles take different approaches to exploring how argumentation and discourse are shaped by cultural and political settings and concerns. The first two deal directly with political cultures. We begin with Dorit Geva’s work on French ‘Catholic bourgeois contestations against “le gender”, and against “bourgeois-bohemians”’, in the context of campaigning against the legalisation of same-sex marriage. Geva uses her observations of this campaign, and her interviews with participants, to explore the central role of ‘moral epistemics’: ‘knowledge politics oriented around moral issues’. She shows how these debates are framed so as to critique both the production and the dissemination of what her participants see as irresponsible gender positions. These participants want to carve out a presentation of themselves as thoughtful, educated and independent-minded, resisting the idea that they might be dominated by the Catholic Church.
Using Bourdieusian field analysis to explore how ‘moral-epistemic interventions’ can result from ‘battles between competing factions’ of the bourgeoisie, Geva sees her participants as contesting the role of the secular bourgeoisie in France. While they tend to belong to high-status groups who derive their social prestige in large part from the university world, their views on family and marriage are close to those of the Catholic Church. Hence they ‘struggle for recognition in a field of bourgeois distinction where they cannot convert their moral knowledge into cultural capital in the secular field of distinction.’ Disputing ‘le gender’, for them, is based on questioning how knowledge is produced in the secular field, trying to delegitimise university-based accounts of gender; but they also resent the position of people close to their own ‘social space’, whom they view ‘as competitors in the field of distinction’. While critical, the piece is sensitive to the points of view of those involved, exploring how they come to see the world as they do, and helping to make their strategies intelligible.
Also drawing on approaches by Bourdieu, Aniket Nandan’s and R. Santhosh’s explorations of caste violence in Bihar, in central India, combines historical with ethnographic exploration during a key election period. They explore the violence of upper-caste Bhumihars in Northern India ‘in the context of land relations, mythologies and cultural constructions that are used to lend legitimacy to such violence’. Socio-political developments over time have led Bhumihars to veer away from a violence which was formerly so concentrated that it included the formation of caste armies in the latter part of the twentieth century; their efforts can frequently be described, now, in terms of symbolic violence. Not least, this article casts light on the efforts of Bhumihars to preserve their dominant position in the context of contemporary Hindutva politics.
Despite making up a very low percentage of the population, Bhumihars have ‘succeeded in dominating the economic as well as political landscape of Bihar since the late colonial period’ but now face challenges arising from both economic changes, including land redistribution, and cultural and political developments associated with the mobilisation of ‘lower’ castes. Their caste armies, or senas, ‘presented caste as a carrier of distinctive innate qualities and moral essence rooted in the notion of purity and impurity’, strongly associated with Hindu tradition as well as their class position, and drawing on myths and legends explored by the authors. It was not until 1997, with numerous killings, that the government finally took action to curb ‘massive’ Sena violence. At the same time, coalitions of other caste groups, as well as Muslims, were gaining in empowerment and autonomy. Other changes included the fact that some Bhumihars were becoming urban professionals who rejected the violence; and ideologues of Hindutva wanted to project a united image rather than one defending caste differences. The importance of employment opportunities grew, with Bhumihars feeling increasingly threatened vis-à-vis other castes, and keen to support political parties they saw as favouring them. Their opposition to ‘lower’ castes and the symbolic, cultural/political violence they use to protect their own position are explored in this paper.
Next, Philipp Korom’s contribution, on the political sociologist Seymour Lipset, takes a novel approach to interdisciplinarity, an academic inclination often commended by sociologists (and indeed by our editors and in this journal). In a sense he can be seen as exploring disciplinary ‘cultures of reasoning’. His interest is in asking why some writers appeal to particular disciplinary audiences but are neglected by others; in this case, Lipset is considered a central figure in the canon of political science but disregarded, if not denigrated, by sociologists. Sociologists are apt to consider themselves beacons of disciplinary open-mindedness, so it is appropriate to recall that this may not necessarily be the case. Korom reminds us that Lipset was hugely influential in inventing the subfield of political sociology – President of the American Political Science Association and subsequently of the American Sociological Association. His remarkable career saw him serve as colleague and mentor to a fascinating range of colleagues. Lipset remains one of the most frequently quoted social scientists ever to have lived – though, of course, latterly much more often by political scientists.
Given ‘the hybridity and vastness’ of Lipset’s work, Korom investigates why this should be so. There are many (sociological) explanations for particular authors’ popularity, including relentless campaigning by various supporters, but Korom points out that overall, given the vast range of ideas that sociologists put forward, it is hard to predict which will take root among colleagues. Seeking to be neutral among theoretical positions, he uses quantitative methods of content analysis to establish which of Lipset’s ideas might be considered major, how attention is paid to them, and by whom. Lipset’s unbounded interests included the characteristics of and conditions for democracy, the question of American exceptionalism, authoritarianism and working-class politics – all issues of lasting concern. Korom suggests that sociologists’ interests have become too fragmented, and possibly too little political, to pay appropriate attention to Lipset, and too little concerned with ‘democracy research’ – even despite populist developments in many democracies that had previously been considered established and stable. This is an area that sociologists might, indeed, do well to expand – and indeed our new editors themselves seek to do so.
Taking a contrasting approach to the analysis of argumentation, Valtteri Vähä-Savo, Jukka Syväterä and Leena Tervonen-Gonçalves start from the fact that ‘meta-organisations’, organisations of organisations, are no strangers to the need to make themselves meaningful, useful and attractive to potential members. The authors examine the ‘epistemic work’ involved, which is to say the efforts these organisations (must) go to in order to exhibit those of their features that make most sense to other organisations that might join them. The notion of ‘epistemic work’, work on apprehensions about the world and how it works, is a speciality of this group in Tampere. In effect, this approach can be welcomed as carrying on much of the notion of rhetoric developed, and debated over, in ancient Greece. Some Greek commentators at that time claimed that ‘sophists’ taught argumentation in order to compel, cajole or trick hearers into adopting positions without merit; yet Aristotle argued that any effective communication needs to take into account what hearers feel, believe and expect. Making an impact on others’ apprehensions of the world is what arguing and communication are all about. While this may be practised in deeply negative ways, it is not inherently illegitimate, nor can it be divorced from trying (as Aristotle did) to map the worlds of assumptions within which listeners live.
Vähä-Savo and his fellow authors are interested in the role of global meta-organisations as part of the contemporary regime of international governance, most prominently exemplified by cases such as the UN, the EU or NATO, but present in most policy fields. They examine the International Association of National Public Health Institutes by using documents published on the IANPHI’s website, exploring the types of authority this organisation uses: that is, the culturally accepted expertise and capacities it draws on so as to influence the views of reality that potential organisations may have. In line with the Tampere approach they point, rather comprehensively, to the ways an environment is thought of and presented, the actors and identifications involved, and the norms and ideals in question. This adds up to an absorbing dissection of the types of argumentative authority built up so that it becomes acceptable to take the IANPHI seriously. Besides advancing the application of the ‘epistemic governance’ framework, moreover, the article also aims to flesh out a neo-institutionalist account of what international meta-organisations do, and how they fit into overall patterns of global governance.
Our reviews begin with Simon Barker’s review of Freedom, by Kevin Ryan and Fiona Whelan. This work examines the interrelationship between freedom and power in contemporary Ireland, part of a series that aims to challenge the status quo via a disciplinarily and socially diverse ‘re-imagination’ of Irish society. The authors, a political theorist and a collaborative artist, work with both powerful and disempowered groups, pursuing an understanding that is built on collaborative encounters and exchanges, with the aim of exploring the varying ways in which people ‘act and struggle in the name of freedom’. Next, Riccardo Emilio Chesta reviews We, the Sovereign, by the Brazilian-American sociologist Gianpaulo Baiocchi. This is an essay ‘in the synthetic social sciences’ that ensues from years of participant observation of phenomena connected with urban sociology, social movements and political participation. Its aim is to enhance experiments in empancipatory politics, starting from the question what it means actually to rule. Lastly, Thomas O’Brien reviews Eric Uslaner’s edition, the Oxford Handbook of Social and Political Trust. Uslaner has been studying trust for many decades, as have many of his contributors, and this handbook offers a comprehensive survey of current research on trust. While Uslaner sees political trust as more fragile than social trust, he offers compelling views on the political and social circumstances that might enhance it. This volume explores different types of trust in a range of social settings, from North and South America to sub-Saharan Africa, with the institutional impacts that particular arrangements have on the social constructions concerned – and vice versa.
We want to thank both authors and readers for their contributions and feedback through the years, and sincerely hope that, in the sometimes harsh world of academic publishing, we have managed to convey to you some of the moments of inspiration, pleasure and admiration we have experienced in editing this journal. We wish the new editorial team similar moments, along with courage in interesting times, and invite both old and new potential contributors and readers to participate in exciting future explorations with the European Journal of Cultural and Political Sociology.