Awareness Contexts and Social Interaction

Abstract

evocative and integrative force. Although contract was an important legal notion from an early period in Anglo-American law, it came into its own as a cultural symbol only after the heyday of 18th century contractualism in political theory. To 19th century courts contract symbolized an ideal way of ordering private arrangements, and this symbolism shed a benign light on decisions upholding dubiously free private bargains. Today contract has lost its hold upon the legal imagination, with important results both in and out of the law. A sociologist attempting to investigate the cultural significance of industrial, political, military, or educational activity would get very little help from contemporary concepts of culture. But he would intuitively grasp the need for a selective approach and one that would appraise the symbolic significance of work, politics, war, or education. It is one thing to consider how different technologies affect worker morale. It is another to ask: What role has the assembly line played as a symbol of industrial organization? It is one thing to study the contribution of low levels of political participation to the stability of the political order. It is another to ask: How many voters see politics as a mode of self-expression, with concomitant demands that political programs conform to an appropriate symbolic imagery? Can we expect more of this in times of affluence, when people can afford the luxury of symbolic expression in politics? These questions suggest the selective emphasis of the sociology of culture. Our emphasis on expressive symbolism in no way detracts from the chief pedagogical value of the older anthropological concept-the idea that culture is determining and that men are culture-bound. To participate in culture is to be implicated in a system of symbolic meanings. The content of that system, and its quality, obviously make a difference for the way men think and behave. The symbolic meanings of culture become part of mind and self and this is the chief source of culture-boundedness. It may be argued, indeed, that the interpretation of culture as expressive symbolism only sharpens the insight and heightens the relevance of the traditional analyst of culture. At the same time, a better theoretical foundation is suggested for the study of change and variation in the degree of culture-boundedness and in the significance of cultural determinism for the integrity of the self. The study of cultural particularity is not an end in itself but an avenue to fundamental knowledge regarding man as a moral and psychic being.