Maximal Interpretation in Clifford Geertz and the Strong Program in Cultural Sociology: Toward a New Epistemology

Abstract

The defining epistemological tension of the “cultural turn” is the question as to whether culture should be brought in as one more cause in the study of society and history or whether culture constitutes a world unto itself whose study necessarily eschews explanation and invites or even demands interpretation instead. The strong program in cultural sociology is but one example of a mode of research and research in the human sciences that has forced itself to navigate, mitigate, or live with (and perhaps sublimate) this tension between explanation and interpretation. Insofar as the strong program as it was defined by Alexander and Smith¹ is proposed as a research program in the Lakatosian sense, and insofar as it intends to produce sociologists who present at annual meetings of sociological associations, address the discipline at large through publication in core sociological journals, and internalize the imperative to explain social behavior/action, then it necessarily takes on the burden of explanation and the problem of making clear to a set of scientistically inclined gatekeepers why “culture matters.” However, insofar as the strong program is “strong” precisely in its willingness to put meaning, rather than social structure as it has usually been conceived in sociology, at the center of its program of study, it engages a series of influences and imperatives from hermeneutics, poststructuralist theory, and the more literary and humanistic disciplines that are of only passing interest to most sociologists.