From Journalism to Cultural Sociology (And Back via Parsons). An Interview With Jeffrey Alexander

Abstract

Along with a general introduction to Jeffrey Alexander’s sociology, in which I comment on some of the main lines taken by his sociological output over the years (social theory and metatheory, neofunctionalism, cultural sociology and the political sociology of civil society), I present here an unpublished interview with the author, conducted in October 2014 in Rio de Janeiro. During this interview, we talked about various aspects of his personal and intellectual trajectory, highlighting especially continuities and discontinuities over his theoretical journey, from the revisions of the classics of sociology to his more recent formulations on the civil sphere, passing through the place of the Parsonian legacy in his work.