Method of unpacking cultural events, and events that at first glance are not cultural.
Posted here Tuesday, March 16, 2004 at 3:59:21 PM 
I highly recommend this chapter (hard to read in its PDF format) on a new methodology for unpacking social events. Taking "trauma" it shows how a trauma is not a human reaction to a natural event, but a highly culture dependent interpretation into daily life.
http://research.yale.edu/ccs/wpapers/trauma.pdf
and his manifesto paper on cultural sociology
http://research.yale.edu/ccs/strong.html
To believe in the possibility of a “cultural sociology” is to subscribe to the idea that every action, no matter how instrumental, reflexive or coerced vis-a-vis its external environments (Alexander 1988), is embedded to some extent in a horizon of affect and meaning.
Culturally unmusical scholars have depicted human action as insipidly or brutally instrumental, as if it were constructed without reference to the internal environments of actions that are established by the moral structures of sacred-good and profane-evil.
the usefulness for today of
Wendy Griswold (1983), for example, shows how the trickster figure was transformed with the emergence of Restoration drama. In the medieval morality play, the figure of “vice” was evil. He was later to morph into the attractive, quick thinking “gallant”. The new character was one that could appeal to an audience of young, disinherited men who had migrated to the city and had to depend on their wits for social advancement.
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