Character and Culture.

The ?characterological? approach to culture in American interpretive sociology is contrasted with the ?structural? approach common to many European sociologies, with the aim of bringing out the analytic weaknesses of the former. Goffman?s Presentation of Self is placed in opposition to Simmel?s essay on the nature of historical understanding. Elements of the American approach to culture found in Goffman are traced back to William James, and forwards to current strands in American sociology, particularly those represented by Swidler and Collins, and are referenced to broader trends in American thought, in particular individualism and optimistic pragmatism. For American sociologists, it is in the area of culture that the compromise between its disciplinary impetus to explain via reference to supra-individual phenomena and the common sense notion that ?individuals are all that exists? is tendered ? that is, they have an almost pathological unwillingness to understand ?ideas? in an adequately collective manner. Thus while the empirical insights of interactionism remain valuable, the influence of characterlogicism on social theory, and in particular on the sociology of culture, is incapacitating, and the interactionist position is inferior to the structural position, which can account for the analysis of character within a larger study of discourses and collective structures of meaning. This is evidenced by Simmel?s essay, which begins with the interactional situation, and, through careful theoretical advancement, shows the necessity of a structural approach, not only to institutions, but to culture as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]