New Addition to the Sociology Dept: ORVILLE LEE

One important development at the Sociology Department this year was the hiring of a new Assistant Professor, Orville Lee. Orville Lee comes to the New School via Northwestern University, Smith College and University of California, Berkley. His primary areas of specialization are Cultural Sociology, Historical Sociology and Social and Political Theory.

His PhD disseration concerned 'Culture and the construction of an Agrarian Ideology in Wilhemine Germany 1871 - 1914' - sociologically analyzing the effects of culture on political action. However, his more recent work has focused on the United States - while carrying forward similar lines of theoretical and empirical inquiry, examining the cultural constitution of social practices and institutions and the forms of power and inequality that pertain to these cultural practices.

Orville Lee has published extensively and in 1999 his article on 'Culture and Democratic Theory: toward a theory of Symbolic Democracy' (Constellations - 5 : 1998 p.433-455) was awarded the 'Outstanding Article of 1999' by the Sociology of Culture Section of the American Sociological Association. He is currently working on a book; Culture as Politics: Publics, Discourse and Power in Social Analysis.

In summarizing his past projects Lee states; "At the center of much of my work to date are two basic questions: what precisely is the power of culture - and how does it influence social action?". More recently, however, he is focusing particularly on attempts to move discussions of the relationship of culture and politics beyond an oppositional impasse, through projects which "synthesize what are normally treated as opposed categories of analysis (interests and ideas, particularity and universality, symbols and resources, structure and agency)". The aim being, to "show the mutual constitution of material, symbolic, and normative domains of social life".

This year Orville Lee taught courses in 'Foundations of Sociology I' and 'Race, Ethnicity, Nation' at the Graduate Faculty of Political and Social Science' in addition to courses on 'Social and Historical Studies I' and 'The Category of Race in America' at Eugene Lang College - where he is a joint appointee. In the coming year he looks forward to teaching a new Graduate course on 'Culture and Politics in the United States since WW2' which will look at neo-conservatism, pluralism and multiculturalism.