Visualizing Theory

  Yadhira Ramirez Blog Post #2 Jeffrey Alexander introduces civil spheres as having cultural codes and institutional structures that are separated from spheres of political, economic, family and religious life. Furthermore, assimilation is a form of integration of minorities into the dominant culture. Assimilation causes tension between these spheres as one group of individuals has to give up their identity to fulfill the requirements of the superior group. For example, the minutemen are a group of U.S citizens who believe that they are protecting the border from “criminals”. While these individuals are not officially hired to protect the border, they participate in maintaining the American identity alive within the “Americans” rather than accepting any person. One of the reasons that minutemen have a problem with people like Mexicans is due to the fact that they have their own strong culture and beliefs that are hard to surrender to American culture. Jeffrey Alexander states “ I...

  I chose these pictures because I think they relate to many aspects of Alexander’s piece. When the Irish mass immigrated to the United States because of the potato famine, Americans at the time held negative beliefs about the group. In Alexander’s terms, they were associated with the wrong side of the code. People believed the Irish had their loyalties in the Catholic faith rather than in America, and as the cartoon shows, people believed they were violent drunkards. Because of their Catholicism, the Irish were seen as un-American because they were believed to be secretive and not capable of rational decision making. Alexander writes, “If people do not have the capacity for reason, they cannot rationally process information and cannot tell truth from falseness, then they will be loyal foto leaders for purely personal reasons” (2006:61). The political cartoon demonstrates the cultural code while the “no Irish need apply” posting demonstrates a communicative institution. Because t...

By Cynthia Oyarce          When outlining modes of incorporation into the civil sphere, Jeffrey Alexander notes that America has jumped from assimilation to hyphenation to multiculturalism. Through assimilation, outgroups were forced to shed any qualities that did not mix with the norms of the primary civil sphere, resulting in an ambiguous social process stemming from "a contradiction between civil solidarity and primordial exclusion" (Alexander 2006:430). The shift into hyphenation eased the tension between public and private spheres considerably, allowing foreign qualities to "become hyphenated with core identities and blended into a new race" that reflected the "unique particularity of America itself" (Alexander 2006:432). Now, in a time of multiculturalism, displaying one's ethnicity has become a matter of pride in many cases.         As multicultural representation in the United States has grown, so too has the array of restaurant ...

Recently, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law HB 1557, the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, effectively prohibiting “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity.” In response to this, Disney Parks and its CEO Bob Chapek issued criticism of the bill and pledged to devote their resources towards having the law repealed in Florida courts. This condemnation was, however, issued after the fact that Disney has donated $4.8 million to Florida candidates in the 2020 election cycle, making the financial arrangements for the architects of this bill to be positioned in office. This tremendous sum is accompanied by $913,000 to the Republican Party of Florida, and another $586,000 to GOP Senate campaigns, topped with $50,000 donated to DeSantis directly. Now with these political donation records surfaced and scrutinized in the public eye, Disney’s corporate board must suffer the consequences of the disparity between their public and private c...

By Caleb Newman   In The Civil Sphere , Alexander says that a civil sphere is separate from the state, the economy, and the family sphere (2006:53). Furthermore, Alexander says there are three ways to be incorporated into the civil sphere: assimilation, hyphenation, multiculturalism. The picture above shows how people of different identities are being incorporated into the American civil sphere.  The multiculturalism mode of incorporation is not about limiting the characteristics, but rather to purify them and expand the experiences for the members of the base group.  (Alexander 2006:52). In other words, it is about learning and celebrating the characteristics of other groups. In the picture, a local elementary school in Bettendorf, Iowa is having a multicultural night. While they were having a meal together, the purpose of the night was “to learn about and celebrate the diversity in their school” (Anil 2018). If they wanted to have a meal, they could have had burgers an...

  By Luke Kim In The Civil Sphere , sociologist Jeffrey Alexander notes that in Eurocentric societies, there are three main forms of integration that try to encompass out-groups into civic life. Among these, the assimilative mode of integration attempts to mold Others to fit what is considered to be the primordial characteristics of civil society by casting aside their identities in order to “[...] split private and public life in a radical way” (2006:428).  And while there may certainly be instances in which this assimilation is done voluntarily, the contradictions present in the civic sphere “[...] means that civil status for some groups is combined with antidemocratic rule over others” (Alexander 2006:415), to the point that assimilation will oftentimes be forced onto non-conforming minorities.  The bans on the niqab in several European countries present an important case study into both how assimilation operates and is enforced upon marginalized peoples in Eurocen...

                                   By Smrami Patel According to Jeffrey C. Alexander, civil society refers to “a sphere of solidarity in which individual rights and collective obligations are tensely intertwined.” (Alexander 2006: 53) He describes three modes of incorporation – assimilation, hyphenation, and multiculturalism – as methods for the inclusion of excluded groups into this civil sphere, with overlap and fluidity between the different modes.   While Alexander describes the characteristics of all three in his book, the image above highlights two – hyphenation and assimilation. Hyphenation acknowledges that people and minority groups are different, and their rituals and traditions can be allowed to celebrate within civil society. People are ethnic rather than foreign; they are versions of Americans. The institution of a Mosque symbolises the practices and rituals o...

  Shelby Goodwin        In The Civil Sphere , Jeffrey Alexander argues that the assimilative mode of incorporation involves a split between the public and private spheres. During time periods when assimilation was the dominant mode of incorporation, marginalized groups were only conditionally included in the civil sphere. Alexander writes that individuals who possessed polluted, “non-American” qualities could only take part in “... the discourse and institutions of American civil society insofar as they completely shed these identities upon entering the public domain” (Alexander 2006: 429). Assimilation – rather than challenging the negative attitudes attached to outsiders’ identities – reinforces the belief in primordial American qualities as superior and others as inferior. If assimilation requires that the identities, cultures, and practices of minority groups become “invisible to the public eye,” can minority groups achieve meaningful participation in the ci...

  By Reanna Phillips      The summer of 2020 was a uniquely agitated time in the context of the 21st century. Amidst the pandemic, racial tensions were especially fraught, particularly in regards to police brutality against black people. The stance of America’s 45th president was a surprise to no one- he was a vocal critic of Colin Kapernick’s public resistance to police brutality in 2016, and in 2020, his stance was unwavering and more pronounced.      Pictured above is the product of the forceful abuse of power by the police to clear Black Lives Matter protesters from Lafayette Park (Mangan). Though the government insists that the photo was not the cause of that abuse, it doesn’t seem unfair to say that there seems to be a clear correlation between the actions of the police and the fact that then-President Trump emerged from the White House only eleven minutes later in order to take this picture. The picture was taken in front of St John’s church, a ...

  Mary Douglas speculates that ‘primitive’ religions banish dirt and bodily pollution as a positive motion against the disordered environments they leave. In Purity and Danger , she notes how social taboos are metaphorically “reproduced in small on the human body” (1966:142), and such rituals do not imply primacy. Autoplastic religions ritually reconfigure the body not out of infantile sexual fantasies; rather, they understand that “all margins are dangerous… The mistake is to treat bodily margins in isolation from all other margins” (1966:150). Orifices are typically associated with corrupt power because the nature of marginality is that when borders dislocate and shift culturally, threatening the unity of experience. Thus, religions respond creatively; what has “traversed the boundary of the body” (1966:150) is “never to be re-admitted (1966:152).  This image offers a glimpse into the Kedasso festival of South India’s Tulu Nadu region, where locals celebrate the menstrua...

  This image pictures President Joe Biden being sworn in to office. Civil religion is pictured here as a gathering, every four years on January 20th, the use of a religious text (in this case the bible), to commemorate the transition of power. These types of celebrations allow for people to celebrate a deeper set of values, understood by society.  In this photo, we see President Joe Biden being sworn in. In the photo it appears as if his wife is holding the bible with his left hand placed on it whilst he is raising his right hand. He seems to be reciting the oath of office, given to him by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Further, the significance of the bible indicates that the oath is worth swearing in God's name for. Typically, the presidents inauguration ceremony is broadcasted globally, allowing citizens of any country to watch this sacred ceremony of the president. In the second image, taken from the "Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies'...

  The photograph above shows military aircraft flying over the Washington Monument on July 4th, 2020. This fitting commemoration of Trump’s presidency was intended to unite the deeply divided country by inciting a sense of national pride through a demonstration of military power. For a large part of a country a demonstration like this works, it invokes a sense of national pride that unites the country. However, this is what Bellah was warning against when he said that in the Vietnam war the US has “been tempted to rely on our overwhelming physical power rather than on our intelligence” (Bellah, 17). This was for him “the third time of trial” for the American civil religion, which Bellah conceived as the “generalized religion of the American Way of Life” (Bellah, 1). This photo clearly shows the unity that it can produce, spectators line the reflecting pool clad in red, white, and blue. Showing love for the flag at demonstrations like this, especially wearing the colors, is a clear ...

  Yadhira Ramirez Professor Villegas According to Mary Douglas, society constructs the idea of what is pure and what is dangerous. When individuals are exposed to an idea that seems ordinary it is considered to be pure while the unordinary can be seen as a threat towards society. Furthermore, the differences between ideologies also affect the social relationships between genders. In “Purity and Danger '' , Douglas states “ Pollution ideas work in the life of society at two levels, one largely instrumental, one expressive. At the first level, the more obvious one, we find people trying to influence one another’s behaviour. Beliefs reinforce social pressures: all the powers of the universe are called in to guarantee an old man’s dying wish, a mother’s dignity, and the rights of the weak and innocent” (Douglas 3). The pollution might not have negative aspects, yet we think of it as something bad due to societal pressures and trying to assimilate with other people. Similarly, ab...

  -Julián A. Clivillés Morales According to the National Park Service, the Arlington National Cemetery, founded in 1866, serves as the resting grounds for over three hundred thousand veterans of every American conflict. Traditionally, every year on Memorial Day, a ceremony is held at Arlington National Cemetery in which either the President or Vice-President place a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Using Bellah’s frame of analysis, one can interpret this act of remembrance as the nation’s way of providing an “annual ritual calendar” for the civil religion (Bellah, 11). Through this act of remembrance, the nation gives new meaning to its civil religion, which has existed from the earliest years of the republic. It was and continues to be a collection of “beliefs, symbols, and rituals with respect to sacred things and institutionalized in a collectivity” (8). A national cemetery alongside a day of remembrance honoring the nation’s heroes encapsulates that idea perfectly, he...