Cultural analysis in Greece

Nicolas Demertzis

Nicos Souliotis

George Markatas

pp. 99-116

in: Stephan Moebius, Frithjof Nungesser, Katharina Scherke (eds), Handbuch Kultursoziologie 1, Berlin, Springer, 2019

Abstract

The chapter presents an overview of cultural analysis in Greece during the last three decades, accounting for its institutional determinants. The "cultural turn" promoted a notably rich but no less scattered discussion. We showcase this using Diana Crane's concept of "free-floating paradigm" which fits well enough to the cultural analysis in Greece as an open-ended set of theoretical and methodological settings shared by different social science disciplines. We also employ Wendy Griswold's "cultural diamond" as a heuristic tool to classify a corpus of more than 250 theoretical and empirical studies. Greek scholars preferred qualitative media content analysis (mainly TV and cinema), focusing on issues of general interest like national identity, immigration, and city life. They are less interested in the sociology of cultural producers, the consumption of cultural goods and the shaping of cultural policy, while just a few of them are self-defined as cultural sociologists. Most of the studies are individual-centered desk research projects.