Ann Swidler

Ann Swidler is an American sociologist, born in 1944, and a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her 1986 article Culture in Action, one of the most cited articles in the discipline, proposed that culture functions less as a set of internalized values that directly determine behavior and more as a tool kit of symbols, stories, rituals and worldviews that people draw upon selectively to construct strategies of action. She was a co-author of the influential and Pulitzer Prize finalist book Habits of the Heart (1985), on individualism and commitment in American life, and later wrote Talk of Love (2001), examining how people use cultural resources to make sense of romantic relationships, and Inequality by Design (1996), a response to The Bell Curve. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982.