Abstract:  This paper contributes to an explanation of the largest witch hunt in North American history via reference to the cultural structuring of action. To understand and explain how and why the Salem Witch Trials happened requires inquiry into the complex and deeply felt meanings active in Puritan life at the time. Such an investigation reveals a crisis in Puritan culture. The Trials which resulted in the hanging of 19 English men and women were led by accusers, ministers and judges embedded within, operating with, and ultimately defending via legally sanctioned violence a meaningful worldview. That worldview is reconstructed, in this paper, in terms of its points of tension and controversy: the place of women in society, the relationship of the Colony to God, and metaphysical beliefs about of how the world worked (e.g. witchcraft and spellcasting). This investigation of the Salem Witch Trials raises questions about culture, interpretation, and sociological explanation. In answer to these questions, the paper suggests that explanations in cultural sociology: (1) include, but also move beyond, the stated intentions, conscious and spoken meanings, and strategic maneuvers of actors; (2) consider the intersection of symbolic structures with political economy, but do not reduce the former to the latter; and (3) that the direction that a crisis or event takes is intertwined with the interpretation of that crisis by those participating in it. This suggests, then, that cultural sociology transcends the longstanding distinction between understanding and explanation, offering instead a causal hermeneutics of social life.

Key words: puritan culture , cultural sociology , the Salem Witch Trials, the cultural structuring of action