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Structures of feeling and socio‐cultural formations: the significance of literature and experience to Raymond Williams's sociology of culture
Author(s) -
Filmer Paul
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
the british journal of sociology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.826
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 1468-4446
pISSN - 0007-1315
DOI - 10.1080/0007131032000080203
Subject(s) - habitus , sociology , reflexivity , epistemology , operationalization , articulation (sociology) , field (mathematics) , feeling , sociology of culture , relation (database) , politics , aesthetics , social science , cultural capital , philosophy , mathematics , database , political science , computer science , pure mathematics , law
Williams elaborates the concept of structures of feeling in different ways at important points in his writings. This gives it a particular methodological significance in relating the extraordinariness of imaginative literature to the ordinariness of cultural process. It is employed particularly to show the significance of literature for the articulation of alternatives to dominant world views, and thus to the politics of social change. Williams's different formulations of the concept are discussed in terms of their ways of relating reflexive experience to institutional structures and in relation to the genetic structuralism of Goldmann and Bourdieu's concepts of habitus and cultural field. Three types of criticisms are considered, which have in common the contention that the concept is unclear. Operationalized in analysing literature and its symbols, it can contribute towards clarification of the complexity of the processes of reflexive communication of experience which are at the root of social order and change.