My topic is “Cultural Sociology or Cultural Studies?” Obviously, the “or” is the most irritating thing about the title, but probably also the most interesting. Before I can get to that “or,” however, I must first briefly set out the two intellectual projects individually and in their possible interconnections and common features. And only at the end will I explicate that fateful “or.” To begin, then, I offer something like a cultural sociological analysis of the origin and development, first, of (German) cultural sociology and, second, of Anglo- Saxon cultural studies.

Cultural Sociology

The creation of German cultural sociology corresponded from its beginnings with a diagnosis of crisis. The interest in culture was associated with the conviction that the old contents of culture had become obsolete and lifeless. The cultural- sociological analytical perspective was supposed to contribute to an overcoming of the cultural pessimism that had begun spreading in 1900 and ever more strongly during and after World War I. Illustrative of a rather resigned attitude toward the problem of culture are the writings of Georg Simmel. The theme that Freud would capture in 1930 as “the discontent in culture” is first sounded by Simmel. Men and women are unhappy in modern culture; they do not feel at home in it; and this contributes to the pervasive hostility to culture (Freud 1955 [1930]). While this hostility arises for Freud from an inescapable sublimation of the instincts—because culture is built upon denial of instinct, it does not necessarily make anyone happy—the contradiction between soul and culture is central for Simmel. According to Simmel, the “paradox of culture” consists of the emergence of culture “by virtue of the conjunction of two elements, neither of which embodies it in itself, the subjective soul and the objective spiritual product.” The “Tragedy of Culture” diagnosed by Simmel is the “fateful autonomy with which the realm of cultural products grows and grows, as if an inner logical necessity were forcing one element after another into bloom, often almost without any relationship to the will and personality of the producer.”

It is this “immanent logic of the cultural creation of things” that appears to determine development, as if detached from human actors or, more exactly, to use Simmel's term, from the soul.