Editing a European journal of cultural and political sociology at a time when so many aspects of the idea of Europe itself are facing great uncertainty is an exciting, humbling, and illuminating endeavour. It is exciting because the intertwining of culture and politics that define this journal's mission seems to us right at the centre of today's sociological inquiry. Intense analytical debate is needed to offer deeper understanding of what is going on in our societies. Humbling and illuminating are, in many ways, both the lives of the societies and individuals we read of and the lives and experiences of the academics who write about them.
Contemporary shifts of old and new allegiances and lines of separation between groups and nations, in particular where legislation and attitudes towards migrants are concerned, put into question our most fundamental political orientations, not to speak of the cultural and moral values we hope to share. The ‘European’ in this journal's name is far from a merely geographical reference; although we are based in Europe and our home is the European Sociological Association, we do not deal only with authors or topics from a single part of the world. Yet one facet of what is European about us, something undoubtedly worth preserving in academia, wherever we can, however we can, is this: a space for open, critical, keenly scrutinised debate for courageous, enlightened, trenchant arguments, and for conflicts between opinions, not persons. We would scarcely argue that these ideals are exclusive to Europe; but they are a key part of what makes Europe worth having.
How well we manage to live up to these ideals will be judged by our readers and authors over the course of time. Assessing the issues of the journal to date, however, it seems to us that both the variety of topics and the themes that recur during its life so far underline the creativity and drive generated by exploring cultural and political sociology together.
An understanding of the compelling social and political impact of events that seem small-scale, and of the complexity of engagements between social actors and the cultural world(s) they inhabit, has famously been extended by scholars such as Laurent Thévenot, who was also represented in our first issue. His influence can be felt in several texts published in subsequent issues, such as Anders Blok's intriguing theoretical insights into architectural projects in city planning, and, in another vein, Mathieu Berger's fine-grained ethnographic analysis of micro-resistance in democratic participation. This line of inquiry is again strongly present in the issue at hand, in both the opening articles. These are ethnographic reconstructions of the mutual influence of global/national social pressures and individuals’ struggles in daily life, in bottom-up process of different kinds in France and in Russia. Marion Carrel's article explores the fragility of attempting to evolve ‘participative’ democracy on the ground, in this case near Grenoble, and at the same time casts searching light on theoretical discussions associated with such projects. Her approach evolves from a need for democratic involvement stemming directly from the predicaments of people living in neglected suburbs and inadequate housing; significantly, she shows how the officials tasked with housing administration are also engaged in the process, sometimes to the mutual enlightenment of all participants. Karine Clément presents a moving but analytical testimony of ‘unlikely mobilisations’: direct social action is not the rule in any circumstances, but is particularly unlikely in Russia, where cultural tradition and political pressure often combine to crush it. Clément shows in detail how participation in local political movements can arise in rare circumstances, given certain triggers and opportunities. This understanding of the intermeshing of culture and politics would appeal to students of the human condition such as Robert Bellah, recalled in our first issue with affection and respect by Hans Joas. In the present issue, while making use of a very different methodological approach from the former pieces, Diana Miller and Daniel Silver also stress the neighbourhood and people's attachments to locality. Their objective is to try to determine what effects people's neighbourhoods may have on their political persuasions in local electoral districts in Canada. We warmly welcome contributions that continue this line of inquiry: one that addresses politics through analysis of culture, and provides snapshots of both the unexpected and the ordinary that can conceal the grains of change as well as the roots of persistence.
Another strong theme that has recurred among our contributors is that of epistemic governance, led off by Pertti Alasuutari's and Ali Qadir's article in the first issue: exploring ‘the actual mechanics of how influence is wielded and social change effected’ shows how these are managed by impacts on how the world is perceived. This preoccupation paradigmatically blends culture and politics, taking very seriously the ways in which powerful social conceptualisations evolve, are communicated and take force through interaction, convention and habit. Convention and habit themselves are ever-changing even as they present themselves both to actors and to institutions as ‘the way to do things’. A new contribution, in the present issue, to the theme of governmentality explores the fascinating case of the rise to prominence of national bioethics committees, illustrating the ways policies develop in the very course of spreading: a nicely judged account of how borrowing policies simultaneously changes the common understanding of what it is that is borrowed. This article cries out, in the future, for a companion piece interrogating the social construction of the ‘ethical turn’: what exactly is implied by the use and officialising, so to speak, of ethical language? We have alluded already to a crisis in ethics, not least political ethics. On the one hand, both key moral and political values and even the very possibility of ethical discourse seem to be in doubt; on the other hand, the role of ethics as a practice is enshrined in national administrations. This paradox reflects a crisis in accounts of what ethics is: espousing, disputing and establishing values is a practice that increasingly often teeters on the shaky foundations of consensus politics and the overwhelming fear of giving offence. Even some of those most committed to promoting public ethics embrace an understanding of morality that is fundamentally relativistic. We would welcome future articles wrestling with conundrums like these.
It is important, and compelling in itself, to learn to appreciate the different sociological approaches and methods used in various parts of Europe, which themselves construct cultural realities that can form part of the phenomena they are exploring. The present issue contains a contribution by Bram Spruyt and Toon Kuppens that problematises this very issue, pointing to the ways in which national sociologies – for example, those of Flanders, Denmark or the Netherlands versus Great Britain – differ about what it is acceptable to say or to think about class and education. They offer their own analysis of the hegemonic processes involved in the social and political construction of education and being ‘well educated’. Their attempt to carry forward this issue, rightly a preoccupation of sociology at least since the 1960s, finds both echoes and contradictions in the work of Jeroen van der Waal and Willem de Koster. They compare explanations for why ‘less educated’ respondents to their surveys oppose ‘trade openness’, conceived of in terms of deregulated flows of goods and services across national borders, and conventionally accounted for in terms of perceived threats to working-class jobs. If these authors have reasons for arguing that people with less ‘cultural capital’ tend to have ‘reified’ worldviews that are relatively hostile to diversity, readers might wish to seek additional explications: for example, suggesting features of contemporary political culture that cause dissent from below to be expressed in this particular way, or exploring whether other methods of enquiry might throw additional light on this state of affairs.
The centrality of habit and practice to human beings’ efforts to live together within constructive political cultures has been emphasised, implicitly and explicitly, since Aristotle's time; Kant's influence has added the role of ‘unsocial sociability’ to the impetus to understand how these efforts can be undermined. Previous issues have highlighted the contributions of thinkers such as Hannah Arendt to grappling with such challenges; we have published Peter Baehr's account of Arendt's work on ‘ex’-communists and former communists, as well as an impressive special issue edited by Rodrigo Cordero, Robert Fine and Wolfhart Totschnig on Arendt and her understanding of revolution. In this issue, Christopher Adair-Toteff recalls the centrality Weber attributed to the work of Nietzsche as well as Marx; he contrasts reactions to Nietzsche by Tönnies and Simmel in terms of their own views on community and conflict.
Previous issues have dealt with cultural/political questions involving racism and citizenship, as did for instance Christopher Kyriakides’ article on Scotland. Paul Silverstein's article on colonialism and decolonisation in Algeria, not least his exploration of Camus’ responses to them, demonstrated in intricate detail how analyses of political events are both inspired and constrained by the cultural frame of the commentator. This should not be taken to suggest that such frames have predictable effects, which is far from being the case – not least because of the unexpected divagations of cultural and political change themselves. We saw this in relation to German attitudes to the Eastern regions now parts of Poland, whose centrality to the history of Germany is now almost forgotten in many quarters. In this case, Shikegi Sato argued that politicians’ commitment to reacting to the implications of the Holocaust overwhelmed attachment to once-central parts of the nation. We look forward to receiving more explorations of different aspects of cultural life, for example new openings in the debate on religion and its role in politics, as well as on the private and public – and, indeed, political – role of art. Obviously, too, analyses of protest culture, social movements, and the cultural construction, practices, and processes of the political establishment and power, are permanent desiderata for a journal such as this one.
The book reviews in this issue echo many of the themes we have addressed here – both those treated in articles and those on which we hope to see more debate. They touch on a genealogy of human rights to complement Judeo-Christian traditions; the ways in which ‘cross-borderedness’ collides with ideas of the ‘here’ and the ‘now’ in migration politics; how social movements influence one another and what is the significance of protest to them; what can be learned through a comparative examination of different politics of social cohesion; how the concept of liminality can contribute to analysing the relationship between agency, social order and cultural transmission; and finally, the questions raised by a focus on trauma, dark tourism and nostalgia about the ethics of memory in museum politics – all these are themes of the present issue's review section. We believe that the review section in this journal underlines close connections, sometimes interactions, between its themes and its authors. Our review section aims to be a space for perspicuous and lively debate; we cordially invite readers both to suggest books for review and to contribute reviews themselves.
Developments in today's academic world allow decreasing space for risky, new ideas. We aspire to be hospitable to a sociological public that pursues integrity and insight but nourishes a healthy disrespect for standardised thinking, artificial classifications, or misconceptions of competition and ‘measurement’. This disrespect will unfold in the variety of research approaches, methods and topics we welcome: we do not wish to publish only articles and reviews we entirely support, but rather, convincing texts no matter the approach or the argument. If unconventional or controversial interlinkages between culture and politics can be discovered and imagined, so much the better. We want, too, to pay particular attention to publishing texts by authors writing in their second or third languages, and by those ambitious to break away from the dull formats of standardised presentation. We are keen to support authors who take the risk of thinking, testing thoughts, writing thought-provokingly.
In sum, it is impossible to find politics without culture or culture without politics, and we believe that all sociological work displays elements of each. Major issues of our time, the movements of peoples, cultures and forms of power, the fissiparous features of the contemporary world and constructive contributions to repairing them, all show very clearly how crucial it is to go on exploring culture and politics together.