Jeffrey Alexander

Bio

Jeffrey C. Alexander is the Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor Emeritus of Sociology. He has worked in the areas of theory, culture, and politics. An exponent of the “strong program” in cultural sociology, he has investigated the cultural codes and narratives that inform diverse areas of social life.

Books

• Civic Action in the Civil Sphere (with Paul Lichterman). Polity Press, forthcoming.
• Post-Transformation and the Civil Sphere in Central and Eastern Europe (with Bernadette Jaworsky and Susan Worschech), Palgrave forthcoming.   
• The Indian Civil Sphere (with Suryakant Waghmore). Polity Press. 2025.
• Frontlash/Backlash. Polity Press. 2025.
• Civil Repair. Polity Press, 2024.
• Populism in the Civil Sphere (Peter Kivisto and Giuseppe Sciortino). Polity Press, 2021
• The Nordic Civil Sphere (with Anna Lund and Andrea Voyer). Polity Press, 2020.
• Breaching the Civil Order: Radicalism and the Civil Sphere (with Farhard Khosrokhavar and Trevor Stack), Cambridge University Press, 2019.
• What Makes a Social Crisis? The Societalization of Social Problems, Polity Press, 2019.
• The Civil Sphere in East Asia (with David Palmer, Agnes Ku and Sunwoong Park), Cambridge University Press, 2019.
• Politics of Meaning/Meaning of Politics: Cultural Sociology of 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, (With Jason Mast), Palgrave, 2018.
• The Drama of Social Life, Polity Press, 2017.
• The Civil Sphere in Latin America (with Carlo Tognato), Cambridge Univeristy Press, 2016.
• The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered: Cultural Power (edited with Elizabeth Butler Breese and Maria Luengo), Cambridge University Press, 2016
• Obama Power  (with Bernadette Jaworsky), Polity Press, 2014.
• The Dark Side of Modernity  Polity Press, 2013.
• The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology  (edited with Philip Smith and Ronald Jacobs), Oxford University Press, 2012.
• Trauma: A Social Theory  Polity Press, 2012.
• Iconic Power: Materiality and Meaning in Social Life  (edited with Dominik Bartmanski and Bernhard Giesen), Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
• Performative Revolution in Egypt: An Essay in Cultural Power  Bloomsbury Academic, 2011.  
• Performance and Power  Polity Press, 2011.
• Interpreting Clifford Geertz: Cultural Investigations in the Social Sciences  (edited with Philip Smith and Matthew Norton), Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
• Narrating Trauma: On the Impact of Collective Suffering (edited with Ron Eyerman and Elizabeth Breese), Paradigm Publishers, 2011.
• The Performance of Politics: Obama’s Victory and the Democratic Struggle for Power  Oxford University Press, 2010.
• A Contemporary Introduction to Sociology: Culture and Society in Transition  (with Kenneth Thompson). Paradigm Publishers, 2008. (Second Edition, with Kenneth Thompson and Laura Edles, 2011)
• Remembering the Holocaust: A Debate  (editor) Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Meaning and Method: The Cultural Approach to Sociology (edited with Isaac Reed), Paradigm Publishers, 2008
• Culture, Society, and Democracy  (edited with Isaac Reed). Paradigm Publishers, 2007.
• The Civil Sphere  Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics and Ritual  (edited with Bernhard Giesen and Jason Mast). Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• The Cambridge Companion to Durkheim  (edited with Philip Smith). Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity  (with Eyerman, Giesen, Smelser, and Sztompka). University of California Press, 2004.

• The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology  Oxford University Press, 2003.

  Selected Recent Articles

  2025

• “Social Theory between History and Systematics.” Timelines: Newsletter of the History of Sociology and Social Theory Section of the American Sociological Association. October 2025, Issue 33: 24-25. 

• “What Sociology Is for Me.” Perspectives: Newsletter of the Theory Section of the American Sociological Association. 2025 (Spring): 13-15.

  2023

• “Office Obligation as Civil Virtue: The Crisis of American Democracy, November 3, 2020 – January 6, 2021, and After.” Society 60 (2023): 651-669.
• “The Return of Antisemitism? Waves of Societalization and What Conditions Them.” American Journal of Cultural Sociology. OnlineFirst: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-023-00184-7. 

• “Presidential versus Civil Power: Public, Opinion, Second-Wave Feminism, and Party Politics in the USA” (with Willa Sachs). Cultural Sociology. OnlineFirst: https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221130187. 

  2022

• “Civil Sphere and Transitions to Peace: Cultural Trauma and Civil Repair.” The International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 35 (1): 85-93. 2022.

• “Populism and Democracy: A Reply.” Book Symposium: Populism in the Civil Sphere (2020). ASA Sociology of Culture Newsletter, Winter/Spring 2022. 18-22.

  2021

• “To Be Truly Radical is to Make Hope Possible,” Perspectives, Newsletter of the ASA Theory Section, pp. 22-23, December 2021.
• “The Prescience and Paradox of Erich Fromm,” Thesis Eleven 165(1):3-9. 2021.

• “Recovering the Primitive in the Modern: The Cultural Turn and the Origins of Cultural Sociology,” Thesis Eleven 165(1):10-19. 2021.

  2020

• “Performativity of Objects” Sociologisk Forskning, 57(3–4), pp. 381–409. 2020.
• “The Double Whammy Trauma: Narrative and Counter-Narrative during Covid-Floyd,” Thesis Eleven, online project: Living and Thinking Crisis. July 9, 2020.
• “Against the Idea of ‘Western Modernity’: Axial Foundations and Contemporary Civil Spheres in East Asia.” Culture: Newsletter of the Culture Section of the American Sociological Association. Volume 32(1): 10-13, 2020.

• “Cultural sociology in a secular age,” American Journal of Cultural Sociology. 2020 

  2019

• “Frontlash/Backlash: The Crisis of Solidarity and the Threat to Civil Institutions,” Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews: Vol. 48 (1). January 2019.

  2018

• “The Societalization of Social Problems: Church Pedophilia, Phone Hacking, and the Financial Crisis,” American Sociological Review: Online 2018.

  2017

• Raging Against the Enlightenment: The Ideology of Steven Bannon. ASA Sociology of Culture Newsletter, Vol. 29(1 & 2), Spring/Summer 2017. (Portuguese translation, 2018)
• Seizing the Stage: Mao, MLK, and Black Lives Matter . The Drama Review, 61/1, Spring 2017. (Portuguese translation, 2017; Chinese translation, 2017)
• The Facticity of Symbols: A Reply to Morton Keller , with B. Nadya Jaworski. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society.
• Interview: “Was the election a ‘shattering’ experience for you? There is hope, says a Yale sociologist,” Yale News, January 27, 2017