HOW DO CONFLICT AND CULTURE WORK?
“Culture” is a very popular yet deceivingly complex concept, and so asking how it works, whatever that or the concept itself means, can be a strained enterprise. I take issue with how collective self-definitions and other expressive aspects of social life influence what people think (their attitudes) and how they act (their behavior). This problem of meaning, along with its behavioral links, forms the infrastructure of my research program. I have approached this puzzle through what I call “the 3 Cs”: how culture works when meaning systems are competitive, contradictory, and convergent. Whether I specifically study the effects of infighting in March on Washington organizing (competitive meaning systems), the strained relationship between annual Dyke Marches and Gay Pride parades (contradictory meaning systems), the integration of straight people into gay neighborhoods and commercial establishments (convergent meaning systems), or other such projects, my work consistently hones in on the effects of social conflict on people’s meaning-making efforts. In other words, my research project can be expressed by asking the more general question of how conflict and culture work: Under what conditions do groups hold together—or fall apart—in light of currents that threaten to tear them apart?  How do groups maintain cultural cohesion in the face of fragmenting forces? 

Amin Ghaziani's CV

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS:
Ghaziani, Amin. 2009. “An ‘Amorphous Mist’? The Problem of Measurement in the Study of Culture.” Theory and Society 38(6).

Brown-Saracino, Japonica and Amin Ghaziani 2009. “The Constraints of Culture: Evidence from the Chicago Dyke March.” Cultural Sociology 3(1): 51-75.

Ghaziani, Amin and Gary Alan Fine 2008. “Infighting and Ideology: How Conflict Informs the Local Culture of the Chicago Dyke March.” International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society 20(1-4): 51-67.

Ghaziani, Amin. 2008. The Dividends of Dissent: How Conflict and Culture Work in Lesbian and Gay Marches on Washington. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Zuniga, José M., Alan Whiteside, Amin Ghaziani, and John G. Bartlett (Eds.) (2008). A Decade of HAART: The Development and Global Impact of Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press

Ghaziani, Amin and Marc J. Ventresca 2005. “Keywords and Cultural Change: Frame Analysis of Business Model Public Talk, 1975-2000.” Sociological Forum 20(4): 523-559.