Understanding culture as deeply intertwined with social life is a key issue sociology needs to address. Photo: TUCHONG

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Understanding culture and genuinely embracing it as deeply intertwined with social life, in a disciplinary sense, is one of the key issues sociology, particularly Chinese sociology, urgently needs to address. The incorporation of culture into sociology has evolved through three historical phases. The first was marked by the incidental discussion of cultural issues within traditional sociology. In the second phase, sociologists began to engage in cultural studies, and the cultural turn in sociology gave rise to cultural sociology. The third phase was centered on the development of theoretical tools for cultural sociology. Beginning with these three phases, this article analyzes the connections and distinctions between “cultural sociology,” a subdiscipline of sociology, and “cultural studies,” an interdisciplinary field. 

The great figures of traditional sociology have all contributed profound insights into culture. Far from neglecting culture, they emphasized its importance. However, their emphasis on culture was always framed within a broader concern for macro social structures. In other words, traditional sociology examined cultural dimensions closely interwoven with social structural phenomena, such as ideologies and social values. It did not view culture as a separate disciplinary branch, but rather as an integral part of the study of social structures. 

In the 1950s and 1960s, however, the European academic community as a whole shifted its focus to culture, sparking a boom in “cultural studies,” which saw the participation of sociology and other social sciences. From the turn of the 21st century through the 2010s, the discipline of sociology, led by the American sociological community, underwent a deliberate and active cultural turn. This shift not only challenged the traditional sociological emphasis on culture as incidental to social structures but also clarified the distinctions between “cultural sociology” and “cultural studies.” 

First, cultural sociology and cultural studies differ in terms of disciplinary subjects. Cultural studies emerged from the collective shift across multiple disciplines and the “hybridization” of diverse subjects. While it manifests novel and critical postmodern attributes in breaking with tradition, it risks losing its own identity amid excessive deconstruction and blending. Conversely, cultural sociology arose from sociology’s internal shift, characterized by a clear disciplinary stance and distinct features. 

Second, the divergence between cultural sociology and cultural studies continues to expand in terms of research objects. In spite of its initial sociological tendency, cultural studies has gradually evolved into a field that studies cultural products, cultural practices, or all cultural phenomena from linguistic, literary, and aesthetic perspectives. It is increasingly becoming a humanistic endeavor, with texts rather than social categories as its research objects. It should be noted that, in cultural studies, texts encompass both written words and all meaningful cultural products including films, museums, fashion, and photography. 

While cultural studies has produced a vast body of work, it has yet to establish schools of thought with specific theoretical orientations. In contrast, cultural sociology exhibits distinctive disciplinary features and can be further subdivided into the “sociology of culture” and “cultural sociology.” The former examines cultural phenomena including the cultural industries, art, knowledge, beliefs, morality, and customs, which overlap with the scope of cultural studies, but it relies solely on sociological methods and theories. The latter studies social structural phenomena such as social stratification, organizations, and families, analyzed through a cultural lens or using cultural analytical tools. 

Although the international sociological community now refers to these two subfields collectively as “cultural sociology,” the shift from the “sociology of culture” to “cultural sociology” represents one of the most significant implications of sociology’s cultural turn. This shift was enabled by the development of a set of theoretical tools for cultural analysis. The application of these tools in interpreting the structural phenomena central to mainstream sociology is a key factor in cultural sociology’s rise from the discipline’s periphery to its center. 

Third, methodologically, the differences between cultural sociology and cultural studies can be metaphorically described as “disciplinary” versus “anti-disciplinary.” Cultural studies follows an interdisciplinary approach, advocating for mutual influence among diverse academic discourses. It shows a postmodernist inclination in its deconstruction of disciplinary boundaries and claims not to consistently adhere to any singular research methodology. Instead, it employs various discipline-specific methods to analyze the same social phenomena. Cultural sociology, whether using qualitative or quantitative methods, adheres to rigorous research norms and presents its research findings with primary data or material evidence. 

In this regard, the methodological difference between cultural studies and cultural sociology reflects the distinction between humanism and positivism, as well as the difference between speculative and empirical approaches. 

Zhou Yi is a professor from the School of Social Development and Public Policy at Fudan University. 

Edited by WANG YOURAN