Philip Smith is Professor of Sociology, Director of the Center for Cultural Sociology and co-editor of the American Journal of Cultural Sociology. Smith writes in the area of social and cultural theory as well as engaging in empirical cultural sociology. He works mostly from a Durkheimian perspective and is a noted contributor to the Strong Program. His most recent book, Collective Effervescence (Temple UP 2026) is a co-edited collection of original essays that attempts to stretch and rethink the concept. Before that Durkheim and After: The Durkheimian Tradition, 1893-2020 (Polity, 2020) was first sustained attempt at a big picture view of both Durkheim’s work and his legacy in sociology, anthropology and explanatory social theory. Other research monographs include Why War? The Cultural Logic of Iraq, the Gulf War and Suez (Chicago, 2005); Punishment and Culture (Chicago 2008); Incivility: The Rude Stranger in Everyday Life (co-authored. Cambridge, 2010) and Climate Change as Social Drama (with N. Howe. Cambridge 2016). In addition Smith is author or editor of several textbooks and other edited volumes, and over seventy chapters and refereed articles. His ongoing projects in the academic year 2025/26 include a mixed method study of the composer Richard Wagner and the Bayreuth Festival and thinking about the role of ‘mystery’ in social life as a dimension of the sacred.
