WEDEEN, Lisa <br/><br/>
Conceptualizing culture :  possibilities for political science 

 -  dec.2002 
<br/><br/> This essay makes a case for an anthropological conceptualization of culture as "semiotic practices" and demonstrates how it adds value to political analyses. " Semiotic practices" refers to the processes of meaning-making in which agents' practices (e.g., their work habits, self-policing strategies, and leisure patterns) interact with their language and other symbolic systems. This version of culture can be employed on two levels. First, it refers to what symbols do - how symbols are inscribed in practices that operate to produce observable political effects. Second, "culture" is an abstract theoretical category, a lens that focuses on meaning, rather than on, say, prices or votes. By thinking of meaning construction in terms that emphasize intelligibility, as opposed to deep-seated psuchological orientations, a practice-oriented approach avoids unacknowledged ambiguities that have bedeviled sholarly thinking and generated incommensurable understandings of what culture is. Through a brief exploration of two concerns central to political science- compliance and ethnic identity-formation - this paper ends by showing how culture as semiotic practices can be applied as a causal variable