Vol. 8, Issue 3: The Covid Crisis and Cultural Sociology: Alone Together

Vol. 8, Issue 1: Cognition and Culture

Vol. 5, Issue 3: 2016 US Election

Guest Editor: Jason L. Mast

American politics are now hurtling forward into unanticipated territories. What mad switchmen placed the US on this set of tracks?

In this special issue of the American Journal of Cultural Sociology, Guest Edited by Jason L. Mast, leading sociologists explain the mystery of how the 2016 US presidential election created a sense of rupture even while the cultural elements that facilitated Trump’s victory have been shaping America’s political, religious, news media and entertainment spheres for some time.

The articles in this issue explain how and why Donald Trump won the presidency, and they outline how his victory will impact the future of democratic politics, journalism, the US’s positioning in the global order, and America’s model of multicultural citizenship. The contributors present new theorizing on post-rupture politics, and charts innovative pathways forward for analysing democratic elections occurring in contexts of fractured civic epistemologies and troubled legitimacies.

Read the issue in full here.

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Fragments, ruptures, and resurgent structures in the 2016 US presidential election – cultural sociology’s new pathways forward
by Jason L. Mast


Politics as a vacation
by Robin Wagner-Pacifici and Iddo Tavory


On the construction sites of history: Where did Donald Trump come from?
by Mabel Berezin


Why evangelicals voted for Trump: A critical cultural sociology
by Philip Gorski


Muslims as outsiders, enemies, and others: The 2016 presidential election and the politics of religious exclusion
by Ruth Braunstein


A period of “wild and fierce fanaticism”: Populism, theo-political militarism, and the crisis of US hegemony
by Julia Hell and George Steinmetz


Deep stories, nostalgia narratives, and fake news: Storytelling in the Trump era
by Francesca Polletta and Jessica Callahan


Journalism after Trump
by Ronald N. Jacobs


When voters are voting, what are they doing?: Symbolic selection and the 2016 U.S. presidential election
by Matthew Norton


The fragmenting of the civil sphere: How partisan identity shapes the moral evaluation of candidates and epistemology
by Daniel Kreiss


Legitimacy troubles and performances of power in the 2016 US presidential election
by Jason L. Mast

Vol. 5, Issue 1-2: Inequality

Inequality has come roaring back onto the public agenda, punctuated by Barack Obama’s December 2013 claim that income inequality is “a defining challenge of our time”.

... But if the new object of civil concern is economic, the nature of that concern remains centrally cultural. In a special double-length issue of the American Journal of Cultural Sociology, nine original articles explore the social meanings that inform contemporary discussions about inequality. Examining prisoner re-entry narratives, racialized exclusion, support programs for former foster youth, discourses of cultural mobility, and elite parenting strategies, these articles provide important new resources for thinking about culture and inequality.

Read the issue in full here.

Click here to download a flyer for the issue.


Conflicted cultivation: Parenting, privilege, and moral worth in wealthy New York families

by Rachel Sherman


A critical strong program: Cultural power and racialized civil exclusion

by Stephen F. Ostertag and Lucas Dìaz


Cultural implications of historical exclusion for the racial wealth gap: How ideal financial behavior varies by race

by Zawadi Rucks-Ahidiana


Perceived positions along the social spectrum: The subjective social status of contemporary Chinese in a coastal metropolis

by Chi Phoenix Wang


The unbalanced theoretical toolkit: Problems and partial solutions to studying culture and reproduction but not culture and mobility

by Jessi Streib


“I’m not gonna be another statistic”: The imagined futures of former foster youth

by Julianne M. Smith


Work, welfare, and the values of voluntarism: Rethinking Anscombe’s “action under a description” in postwar markets for human subjects

by Laura Stark


Historicizing social inequality: A Victorian archive for contemporary moral discourse

by Michael Strand


Narrative change, narrative stability, and structural constraint: The case of prisoner reentry narratives

by David J. Harding, Cheyney C. Dobson, Jessica J. B. Wyse and Jeffrey D. Morenoff