Abstract

Since the 1970s, the so-called ‘crisis of sociology’ has sparked intellectual quests for a ‘disenchanted’ sociology. This is a sociology that acknowledges its incapacity to legislate ‘objective’ meaning on the basis of an alleged scientific insight in ‘social reality as it really is’. One major outcome of these quests for intellectual reconstruction was the emergence of cultural sociology as a new field that takes the cultural understandings of those who are studied much more seriously than other types of sociology have traditionally done. Despite the field’s vitality and popularity today, it displays two weaknesses that detract from its potential significance within sociology and beyond. The first is its tendency to confine itself thematically to the social aspects of art, popular culture and media and the second its excessive reliance on ethnographic and otherwise qualitative research methods. This article therefore pleads for the use of culturally enriched experimental research designs by cultural sociologists to convincingly demonstrate the causal consequences of culture to non-(cultural] sociologists. Two recent examples are given, one about intercultural communication and one about science communication, and promises of cultural-experimental research for fields like psychology and medical science are discussed.

How to Cite:

Houtman, D. & Achterberg, P. & Manevska, K., (2013) “Als de dingen slechts 'zijn' en 'gebeuren': Naar een onttoverde experimentele cultuursociologie”, Tijdschrift voor Sociologie 34(3-4), 197–226. doi: https://doi.org/10.21825/sociologos.86829