Lynette Patrice Spillman (born c. 1960) is a sociologist and professor of sociology at the University of Notre Dame, and a Faculty Fellow of the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, as well as the Center for Cultural Sociology, Yale University.^[1] She is particularly known for the application of cultural sociology to the sub-fields of political sociology and economic sociology.

Having completed a BA in sociology and philosophy at the Australian National University in 1982, Lynette Spillman received her MA in 1986 and PhD in 1991 from the University of California-Berkeley, both in sociology.^[2] Her doctoral dissertation at Berkeley was titled: Recognition, Integration and the Mobilization of National Identity: Centennials and Bicentennials in the United States and Australia. It later became her first book: Nation and commemoration: creating national identities in the United States and Australia. In 1983 she received a Fulbright award and in 2001 she was a recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship.

In 2014, Spillman was a keynote speaker at Yale's Center for Cultural Sociology special conference on "Advancing Cultural Sociology".^[3]

Spillman's dissertation and first book published in 1997, Nation and commemoration, "examines meaning-making in politics. It traces the emergence of national identities in two similar “new nations” by comparing ritual and symbol in centennial and bicentennial commemorations."^[1] Prominent Berkeley cultural sociologist Ann Swidler describes the work as "pathbreaking" with how it convincingly describes how "two similar nations [Australia and the USA] end up with divergent images of national identity."^[4] The work was reviewed in several scholarly journals, including the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, International Affairs and the Journal of Intercultural Studies.^[5]

Spillman's 2012 publication Solidarity in Strategy: Making Business Meaningful in American Trade Associations won both the Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book in Cultural Sociology^[6] and the Viviana Zelizer Award for Best Book in Economic Sociology for 2013.^[7] The selection committee for the Zelizer Award included Frank Dobbin (Chair), Stephanie Mudge and Frederick Wherry.^[8] The selection committee for the Douglas Award included Timothy Dowd (Chair), Claudio Benzecry, and Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi. Economic sociologist Nina Bandelj states that "This is a path-breaking study of American trade associations that significantly enriches our understanding of contemporary economic life."^[9] and Yale sociologist Frederick Wherry argues that "Solidarity in Strategy breaks new ground in the discussion of the cultures of capitalism"^[9] Prominent Cornell economic sociologist, Richard Swedberg, considers this work "important because it brings attention to a phenomenon in U.S. life...in a theoretically innovative way that suggests a new - and more sociological - way of looking at the way capitalism operates."^[10]

Spillman is married to fellow sociologist Russell Faeges.^[11]

• Solidarity in Strategy: Making Business Meaningful in American Trade Associations. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2012)
• Cultural Sociology (Editor) (Malden MA and London: Blackwell, 2002)
• Nation and Commemoration: Creating National Identities in the United States and Australia (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997).