Books by Jeffrey C. (Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology Alexander

The Performance of Politics develops a new way of looking at democratic struggles for big time power by explaining and analysing the 2008 Presidential campaign in the United States. Through a series of simple but telling concepts about meaning and performance in public life, Jeffrey Alexander argues that images, emotion, and performance are the central features of the battle for power

Presents an approach to how culture works in societies. Exposing our everyday myths and narratives in a series of empirical studies that range from Watergate to the Holocaust, this work shows how these unseen cultural structures translate into concrete actions and institutions.

Societies are not governed only by power and self-interest. What then does make societies function? How do real individuals live together in real societies in the real world? This work addresses this central paradox of modern life.