WHO WE ARE 

The Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture is an interdisciplinary research center at the University of Virginia. Its research focuses on understanding the deep cultural changes taking place in the world today. These cultural changes are affecting the ways that people make sense of their lives and their worlds, the ways that public life is understood and organized, and the ways that meaning itself is constituted and narrated. To address these areas affected by the deep cultural changes now occurring, the Institute organizes its research around three foci involving questions of the human person, the ordering of public life, and the problems of meaning.

OUR ASSUMPTIONS

While the scholars of the Institute are a diverse group in both their areas of research and their methodologies, the research questions they pursue and the manner of intellectual life they engage in are informed by some shared assumptions.

First, investigation into the deep structures of our culture is necessary to understand what is happening in our world today. The growing processes of globalization; the increasing pervasiveness of technology, including the ever-expanding field of biotechnology; the diffusion of market and bureaucratic rationality into all spheres of life; the changing challenges of diversity and public life; the variously reductionistic theories that theoretically erase the complexity of individuals, worlds, and meaning—all these are processes that are far deeper and more complex than any of their individual manifestations.

Second, cultures are about the good. They involve visions of the good person, the good life, the good society, and the ideal of the good. This normativity is not one element of culture but rather characterizes it through and through, in no small part because humans are normative through and through—they are always involved in evaluative processes about what is good, sacred, desirable, or admirable and what is bad, profane, undesirable, or contemptible.

Third, comparative and historical approaches to culture are indispensable, for neither the other nor the past can be relegated to the sidelines. The shape of a culture is determined in large part by what it has been and by what it is not.

Fourth, no discipline is adequate to the task of understanding the complex changes taking place today, so interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary work is necessary. Because of this, Institute scholars work together to arrive at richer and better understandings of our world. They are involved in sustained conversations over time, work together on major research projects, read and comment on each other’s writing, and engage with other scholars who take up shared questions. 

OUR GOAL

With these shared affirmations guiding our work, the Institute seeks to become the premier research center for understanding the cultural changes taking place today through a process of retrieval, engagement, and development.

First, we seek to retrieve resources and insights from research that has already been done, from overlooked sources, and from works with which we strongly disagree but see as containing elements that should be affirmed.

Second, we engage in discussion and collaboration with scholars currently doing the most significant research on culture and cultural change.

Third, we seek to develop new paradigms of thought and new terms of debate, particularly in areas where scholarly conversations have reached an impasse. 

OUR WORK

While our work may have social and political implications, we do not do public policy, take political positions, or seek to influence public policy in one direction or another.  We are interested in asking those questions about the nature of our moment that have an enduring connection to the human condition. Our first task is to see clearly. Our second task is to analyze what we see in its relation to the complexity and depth of the human person, of public and communal life, and of the ideals and narratives by which individuals and communities comprehend their identities, purposes, and relationships to each other.

Engaging the Cultural Complexities of Our Time
an introductory essay by IASC Director James Davison Hunter