^ you have no idea what you are talking about. There are plenty of jobs in polisci for political pyscology and political culture. If anything, that's one of the fastest growing sub-fields.
If you are having a hard time in polisci, you will have an even harder time in sociology.
https://www.poliscirumors.com/topic/best-departments-to-study-political-culture
I'd wager that this is OP's attempt to get an idea of where to apply within polisci. He/she didn't get any decent answers there, so he/she came here.
They referred this kid to anthropology, for god's sake.
^^^ are you confusing political behavior with political psychology? there certainly aren't scholars of note in the top 15 polisci departments who cite political culture as their area of focus.
- someone who does a lot of sociology that intersects with political psychology
Political scientist here, of course political behavior/psychology is an integral part of our discipline and you could do it well at any top program. The culture part is definitely trickier, but it would depend how you approach it and how relevant you can make it to central debates in the discipline. (Which is always the case for anything you study in any discipline)
I agree that job prospects for scholars of political culture are dim unless one can find a way to tie that interest into an area of central concern to the discipline. One area not yet mentioned where this could work well is economic sociology and especially financialization. The cultural meanings assigned to money and markets are, in fact, a central concern to many sociologists now, and there are a number of leading senior scholars who would be excellent mentors in this area. Greta Krippner at Michigan and Michele Lamont at Harvard would likely be the best, but there are others as well. Kieran Healy at Duke and Marion Fourcade at Berkeley, for example.
I'd recommend reading Krippner's 2017 AJS article to see if this area interests you.
I think you are discussing an issue of methods and perspective. Political science shows a growing interests in culture, cognition and behaviour. Maybe that's not the approach you like, but the substantive focus is there.
I am a political scientist who is interested in 'culture' and I wish more of my colleagues were on the same page.
In the top depts/journals there is definitely interest in cognition, but from the cognitive science/psychology perspective. And because it's political science, politics (esp voting, govt, policy) is going to be the DV, so that's another limitation on how you approach culture. But it's often that way with any discipline and its center of gravity.
For people applying, take a look at the top journals, recent award winning books, that should give you a sense of things.
OP here. To be honest, the substantive topics that most interest me are pretty much exclusively explored within the bounds of political theory (within polisci). Are there polisci departments open to the empirical exploration of debates previous relegated to theory? Sociology seems more open to this s sort of work.
^ there are. CUNY, new school, northwestern, perpahs, and a few others. You can also find some good schools in Europe. Cambridge comes to mind, for instance. But the real question is if you really want to do a PhD on that and in those places. Your market options will be dreadful, unless you can produce absolutely brilliant work.