From “New Theoretical Movement” to “Cultural Sociology”: Jeffrey Alexander and the Recent Changes in Sociological Discourse

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The present research seeks to shed light on the recent history of sociological ideas through the investigation of the path followed by one of its prominent actors, the North American sociologist Jeffrey Alexander. The assumption here is that the path taken by Alexander from the "new theoretical movement", in the 1980s, to the "cultural sociology", after the 2000s, is indeed representative of a significantly broader shift in sociological discourse. By following his moves in the academic field - from his intellectual networks and institutional affiliations to his thematic choices and intellectual elaborations - since the mid-1970s, the present research seeks to provide not only a first systematic approach to his works. In so doing, it also seeks to illuminate significant aspects of both the recent history of sociological ideas, especially in the United States, and the proper dynamics of the social theoretical field in the last decades. To conduct such an investigation, the present research makes use of distinct methodologies: on the one hand, network analysis and other techniques that are usually employed by intellectual historians and sociologists of science in order to map institutional connections, intellectual alliances, and disputes in the field; on the other, a hermeneutic reconstructive analysis which seeks to grasp the intricacies of the ideational formations and the shifts in (socio)theoretical discourse, a methodology usually employed by historians of ideas, social theorists, and philosophers.