Wholly New Visions: A Response to Thorpe’s Cultural Sociology of Cultural Representations

Christopher Thorpe breaks new ground through his willingness to build theory with concepts and paradigms that are not normally put together in sociological studies of culture. Specifically, Field Theory and the Yale School of Cultural Sociology come together in a study of the historical development of cultural representations of Italy. The result of this experiment is an innovative theoretical framework and a sweeping historical assessment of layered generations’ worth of ideas, myths, and symbols about one of Europe’s most recognizable sources of cultural imagining. Thorpe invites a vigorous discussion about historical and comparative methods, the uses of different kinds of material to make comparisons, and the explanatory affordances of thick description.