1:10-4:10 Tuesday
Spring 2007
209 Garland Hall
Jennifer C. Lena
Office hours: by appointment
Course Description and Objectives:
This is a survey course in the sociology of culture. The course will introduce you to the major themes of a field that has "fuzzy boundaries"--it is not an institution or social process that can empirically be treated as distinct from others (e.g., family, religion or the economy); it does not have a well-developed and/or relatively standard set of methods that can provide an initial focus for study; and, it is one of the fastest-growing areas of research, and so "canonical texts" are both created and put out-of-vogue rapidly.
The course begins with an overview of the field, as others see it. We then approach the field through several traditional theoretical paradigms: Durkheimian, Marxist, Semiotic and Historical Cultural Sociology. Our focus then shifts to units that some would consider theoretical traditions, while others might identify them as "units of analysis:" cultural fields, diffusion, boundaries, the production of culture (with a special focus on Vanderbilt’s own Richard A. Peterson), consumption/reception, taste in the U.S., and production and reputation.
I have tried to ensure that the readings overlap as little as possible with material from other courses offered by the department. I expect this course will help students prepare for area exams, or for further study in the Sociology of Culture. This course therefore strives to be both broad and deep. However, as with all exercises, the course will be what students make of it.
Requirements:
This course is a seminar, so it goes without saying that students are expected to attend each meeting, do the reading thoroughly and in advance, and participate actively in class. The emphasis is on mastering the material and responding to it constructively and creatively, with an eye toward your own research interests.
In addition to attendance, reading and participation, three other kinds of work are required:
a. Class participation: 25% of final grade. You are expected to make regular contributions to class discussions. Grading will account for both quality and quantity of participation. You are encouraged to do the readings carefully, make notes in preparation for class discussion, and give thought to how the readings from a particular week relate to one another, and to previous readings from the course.
b. Class discussion preparation: 25% of final grade. These assignments will vary from week to week and are designed for the progressive acquisition of critical thinking thinking skills. We begin with a basic reading comprehension assignment and end with a mini-literature review. I will give students as much advanced notice of the assignments as is possible and will try to explain each assignment's rationale and components clearly and completely. When these are written assignments, I will design them to be completed in fewer than 2 pages of text.
c. Final project: 50% of final grade. You will craft a final project that links the course to their own intellectual/research interests. You have latitude in designing the project, but must submit a 500 word description of their plans at the Februrary 20 class. Examples of acceptable formats for the final project include: research proposals; pilot studies; critical literature reviews focused on a subfield within the sociology of culture. I prefer that these projects be useful to students beyond the life of the seminar, so you are encouraged to devise projects that will further your own development as scholars and researchers. I invite you to meet with me to brainstorm ideas if you need help choosing a final project. Length will depend on the project, but a rough guide would be 15-20 double-spaced pages. Final projects are due in my mailbox (201 Garland) on date, time.
The course is open to any graduate student in Sociology or other social science departments. Students from other departments need prior approval before enrolling. I must approve all auditing students before the second week of class.
Readings
All required readings will be available for copying in the sociology department copy room, online from j-stor or another online source, and on BlackBoard.
I think the following books would be worthy additions to your sociological library, and many of our course readings draw from them:
Alexander, Jeffrey C. and Steven Seidman (eds.). Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates, (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1995.)
AS
Crane, Diana (ed.). The Sociology of Culture. (Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell, 1994.)
C
Mukerji, Chandra and Michael Schudson (eds.). Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural
Studies. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
MS
Smith, Philip (ed.). The New American Cultural Sociology. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.)
S
Plus, we will read substantial portions of the following texts:
Becker, Howard. Art Worlds. (Los Angeles: U of California Press, 1982).
Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984).
Course Schedule
Week 1: Preliminaries: Orientation
January 16
Swidler, Ann. 1986. “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies.” American Sociological Review. 51: 273-86.
Williams, Raymond, “Culture.” In Raymond Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Expanded edition.
(New York: Oxford UP, 1976; London: Fontana, 1988).
Mukerji, Chandra and Michael Schudson, “Introduction: Rethinking Popular Culture,” pp. 1-61 in
MS.
Recommended, but not required
Alexander, Jeffrey C.. “Analytic Debates: Understanding the Relative Autonomy of Culture,” pp. 1-27 in AS.
Berger, Bennett. 1995. “Culture: Varieties of Usage.” Pp. 14-55 in The Sociology of Culture: Emerging Theoretical
Perspectives. London: Basil Blackwell.
Crane, Diana. “Introduction: The Challenge of the Sociology of Culture to Sociology as a Discipline.” Pp. 1-20 in C.
Jacobs, Mark D. and Lyn Spillman. 2005. “Cultural sociology at the crossroads of the discipline.” Poetics. 33: 1-14.
Peterson, Richard A.. “Revitalizing the Culture Concept,” Annual Review of Sociology 5 (1979): 137-166.
Smith, Philip. “The New American Cultural Sociology,” pp. 1-14 in S.
Week 2: Culture and Social Structure: Durkheim
January 23
Douglas, Mary, “Symbolic Pollution,” pp. 155-159 in AS.
Durkheim, Émile, The Elementary forms of Religious Life (Free Press, 1997). “Introduction” (pgs. 1-18), and “Conclusion”
(pgs. 418-448).
Martin, John Levi, “What do Animals do all day? The division of labor, class bodies and totemic thinking in the popular imagination,” Poetics, 27 (2000), pp. 195–231.
Sahlins, Marshall. “Food as Symbolic Code,” pp. 94-101 in AS.
Smith-Rosenberg, Carroll, “Sex as Symbol in Victorian purity,” pp. 160-170 in AS.
Recommended but not required
Douglas, Mary, “Jokes,” in Implicit Meanings (London: Routledge, 1975), pp. 90– 114. Also in MS.
Douglas, Mary. How Institutions Think. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986).
Durkheim, Emile and Marcel Mauss. Primitive Classification (University of Chicago Press, 1960). “The Problem” (3-10), “Conclusions” (81-88).
Geertz, Clifford, “Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,” Pp. 239-277 in MS.
Mauss, Marcel. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. (London: Routledge Classics, 2001.) Available as an E-Book.
Merton, Robert K.. “The Normative Structure of Science.” Pp. 67-74 in AS.
Week 3: Culture and Class: Marxism
January 30
Adorno, Theodor and Max Horkheimer, “
The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in Mass Communication and Society, Pp. 349-383 in J. Curran, M. Gurevitch and J. Wollacott (eds.). (Beverly Hills: CA: Sage, 1979 [1977]).
Benjamin, Walter, “The Work of Art in an Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” from Illuminations, Hannah Arendt (ed.). (New York, Schocken Books [1969, c1968]).
Berger, John. “
The Suit and the Photograph,” Pp. 424-431 in
MS.
Marx, Karl. From “The German Ideology” (146-186); “Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right” (53-65); “The Manifesto of the Communist Party” (473-483); “Capital, Volume 1” (319-329). In Robert C. Tucker, editor, The Marx-Engels Reader (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978). German Ideology Part 1.
German Ideology Part 2.
German Ideology Part 3.
Williams, Raymond, “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory,” Pp. 407-23 in
MS.
Willis, Paul, “
Masculinity and Factory Labor,” Pp. 183-95 in
AS.
Recommended, but not required
Bernstein, Basil, “Elaborated and Restricted Codes: Their social origins and some consequences,” American Anthropologist, 6 (1964), pp. 55–69.
Gramsci, Antonio, “Culture and Ideological Hegemony,” Pp. 47-54 in AS.
Benjamin, Walter. “The Storyteller.” Illuminations. Hannah Arendt (ed.). (New York, Schocken Books [1969, c1968]).
Marx, Karl. Introduction to a Critique of Political Economy.
Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire.
Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1977).
Williams, Raymond. Television: Technology and Cultural Form. (New York: Schocken Books, 1975).
Week 4: Culture as Signification: Semiotics
February 8
PLEASE NOTE THE CHANGE OF DAY TO THURSDAY
Barthes, Roland, “
The World of Wrestling,” pp. 87-93 in
AS.
de Saussure, Ferdinand, “
Signs and Language,” Pp. 55-63 in
AS.
de Saussure, Ferdinand, “The Linguistic Sign,” Pp. 28-46 in Semiotics: An Introductory Anthology. Indiana UP, 1985.
Seidman, Steven, “
AIDS and the Discursive Construction of Homosexuality.” Pp. 47-59 in
S.
Volosinov, V. “Verbal Interaction,” Chapter 3 from Marxism and the Philosophy of Language. Seminar Press: 1973 [1929].
Recommended, but not required
Bakhtin, Mikhail. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. (Austin, TX: U of Texas P, 1981).
Bakhtin, Mikhail. “Speech Genres.” From Speech Genres and other late essays. (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1986).
Brubaker, Rogers and Frederick Cooper. 2000. “Beyond Identity.” Theory and Society, 29:1-47.
Ricoeur, Paul. Time and Narrative. Trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer. (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1984).
Somers, Margaret. "The Narrative Constitution of Identity: A Relational and Network Approach." Theory and Sociology 23: 605-649 (1994).
Tilly, Chuck. Stories, Identity and Political Change. (Lanham, MA: Rowan & Littlefield, 2002).
Week 5: Visual Structures
February 13
Sontag, Susan. On Photography. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Pp. 1-24.
Hebdige, Dick. 2002 (reprint). “Object as Image: the Italian Scooter Cycle.” Hiding in the Light. NY: Routledge.
Additional readings TBA.
Week 6: Historical Cultural Sociology
Februrary 20
Project proposals due today.
Elias, Norbert. The Norbert Elias Reader: A Biographical Selection. Ed. By Johan Goudsblom and Stephen Mennell. New York: Blackwell. “Court Society as a Sociological Problem” (pg. 12-17); “The Kitch Style and the Age of Kitch (pg. 26-35).
Schwartz, Barry. “
Memory as a Cultural System: Abraham Lincoln in World War II.” American Sociological Review. Vol 61, No. 5 (Oct., 1996), 908-927.
Simmel, Georg. “The Metropolis and Mental Life,” pp. 174-185; “The Philosophy of Fashion,” 187-206; “Some Remarks on Prostitution in the Present and in the Future,” 262-270 in Simmel on Culture. David Frisby and M. Featherstone (eds.). (London: Sage, 1997).
Recommended but not required
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Second Edition. (New York: Verso, 1991).
Baker, Keith M. Inventing the French Revolution: Essays on French Political Culture in the Eighteenth Century. (New York: Cambridge UP, 1990).
Bederman, Gail. Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917. (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1995).
Biersack, Aletta. The New Cultural History: Essays. Hunt, Lynn ed. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989). Also available as an E-Book.
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Rules of Art. Trans. Susan Emanuel. Stanford UP. Pp. 3-173, 285-312, 322-348.
Brubaker, Rogers. Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard UP, 1992).
Calhoun, Craig. The Question of Class Struggle: Social Foundations of Popular Radicalism During the Industrial Revolution. (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1982).
Calhoun, Craig. “Culture, History and the Problem of Specificity in Social Theory.” Pp. 244-288 in S. Seidman and D. G. Wagner (eds), Postmodernism and Social Theory: the debate over general theory. (Cambridge MA: Blackwell).
Darnton, Robert, “Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Severin,” Pp. 97-120 in MS.
Davis, Natalie Zemon, “Printing and the People,” Pp. 65-96 in MS.
de Nora, Tia. "Historical Perspectives in Music Sociology." Poetics, Vol. 32, Iss. 3-4 (June-August 2004), pp. 211-221.
Davis, Natalie Zemon. The Return of Martin Guerre. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1983).
Elias, Norbert, The Civilizing Process Volume 1: The History of Manners. (Cambridge: Blackwell, 1994).
Eliasoph, Nina. Avoiding Politics: How Americans Produce Apathy in Everyday Life. (New York: Cambridge UP, 1998).
Emirbayer, Mustafa and Jeff Goodwin. “Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency,” American Journal of Sociology, 99: 1411-1454.
Gambetta, Diego. The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1993).
Ginzburg, Carlo. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980).
Goldstone, Jack. Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World. (Berkeley, CA: U of California Press, 1991).
Gould, Roger V.. Insurgent Identities: Class, Community and Protest in Paris from 1848 to the Commune. (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995).
Griswold, Wendy. Renaissance Revivals: city comedy and revenge tragedy in the London theatre, 1576-1980. Chapter 1-3. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
Hunt, Lynn. Politics, Culture and Class in the French Revolution. (Berkeley, CA: U of California Press. 1984).
Ikegami, Eiko. 2005. “Bringing culture into macrostructural analysis in historical sociology: some epistemological considerations.” 33: 15-31.
Kern, Stephen. The Culture of Time and Space, 1880-1918. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1983).
Levine, Lawrence, “William Shakespeare and the American People: A Study in Cultural Transformation,” Pp. 157-197 in MS.
Mann, Michael. The Sources of Social Power. (New York: Cambridge UP, 1986).
Mitchell, Timothy. Colonizing Egypt. (Berkeley, CA: U of California Press, 1991).
Morawska, Ewa and Willfried Spohn. “’Cultural Pluralism’ in Historical Sociology: Recent Theoretical Directions.” Pp. 45-90 in C.
Mukerji, Chandra. Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versaille. (New York: Cambridge UP, 1997).
Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. (New York: Routledge, 1997).
Rosenzweig, Roy, “The Rise of the Saloon,” Pp. 121-156 in MS.
Schwartz, Barry. Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory. (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 2000).
Schwartz, Barry. George Washington: The Making of An American Symbol. (New York: Free Press, 1987).
Scott, James C.. Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. (New Haven, CT: Yale UP, 1985)
Sewell, William H. Jr. “Ideologies and Social Revolutions: Reflections on the French Case,” Journal of Modern History, 57 (1985), 57-85.
Sewell, William H. Jr. “Social Change and the Rise of Working Class Politics in 19th Century Marseille,” Past and present, 65 (1974), 57-85.
Sewell, William H. Jr. “Historical Events as Transformations of Structures: Inventing Revolution at the Bastille,” Theory and Society, 25 (1996), 841-881.
Simmel, Georg. Simmel on Culture. David Frisby and M. Featherstone (eds.). (London: Sage, 1997).
Thompson, E.P.. Customs in Common. (London: Merlin Press, 1991)
Thompson, E.P.. The Making of the English Working Class. (London: Merlin Press, [1967] (1991).
Tilly, Charles. From Mobilization to Revolution. (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Pub. Co., 1978).
Tilly, Charles. The Contentious French. (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press, 1986).
Willis, Paul E.. Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. (Farnborough, Eng.: Saxon House, 1977).
Wuthnow, Robert. Communities of Discourse: Ideology and Social Structure in the Reformation, the Englightenment and European Socialism. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1989).
Wuthnow, Robert. Meaning and Moral Order: Explorations in Cultural Analysis. U of California Press. 1987.
Wuthnow, Robert. Sharing the Journey: Support Groups and America’s New Quest for Community. (New York: Free Press, 1994).
Week 7: Cultural Fields
February 27
Bourdieu, Pierre. The Field of Cultural Production. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993). Pp.29-73.
Ferguson, Priscilla P. “A Cultural Field in the Making: Gastronomy in 19th-Century France.” American Journal of Sociology. Vol. 104, No. 3 (Nov., 1998), pp. 597-641.
Recommended but not required
DiMaggio, Paul. “Classification in Art.” American Sociological Review, 52 (August 1987): 440-455.
de Nora, Tia. Beethoven and the Construction of Genius: Musical Politics in Vienna, 1792-1803. University of California Press, 1996.
Frith, Simon. Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music. Oxford University Press, 1998.
Lopes, Paul. The Rise of a Jazz Art World. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Roy, William G. "'Race Records' and 'Hillbilly Music': Institutional Origins of Racial Categories in the American Commercial Recording Industry." Poetics, Vol. 32, Iss. 3-4 (June-August 2004), pp. 265-279.
White, Harrison and Cynthia White. Canvasses and Careers. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965).
Week 8: Production of Culture
March 13
Becker, Howard. “Art Worlds and Collective Activity,” pp. 1-39, “Mobilizing Resources,” pp. 68-92. In Art Worlds. (Los Angeles: U of California Press, 1982).
Bielby, William T. and Denise D. Bielby, “All Hits are Flukes: Institutionalized Decision Making and the Rhetoric of Prime-Time Program Development,” American Journal of Sociology, 99 (1994), pp. 1287–1313.
Hirsch, Paul M.. “Processing Fads and Fashions: An Organization-Set Analysis of Cultural Industry Systems,” American Journal of Sociology. 77 (1972): 639-659.
Recommended but not required
Corse, Sarah. 1997. Nationalism and Literature: The Politics of Culture in Canada and the United States. Cambridge University Press. Pp. 1-17; 129-170.
Danto, Arthur. Narration and Knowledge. (New York: Columbia UP, 1985)
Davis, Natalie Zemon. Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and Their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century France. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1987).
Dowd, Timothy J. "Production Perspectives in the Sociology of Music," Poetics, Vol. 32, Iss. 3-4 (June-August 2004), pp. 235-246.
Hebdidge, Dick, “Object as Image: The Italian Scooter Cycle,” Pp. 77-115 in Hiding in the Light:On Images and Things. (New York: Routledge, 2002).
Lopes, Paul D., “Innovation and Diversity in the Popular Music Industry,” American Sociological Review. 57 (February 1992): 56-71.
Meyer, John W. and Brian Rowan. “Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony.” American Journal of Sociology, 83 (1977): 340-363
Trouillot, Michel-Rolph. Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History. (Beacon Press, 1995).
Week 9: Richard A. Peterson
March 20
Peterson, Richard A. and N. Anand. “The Production of Culture Perspective.” Annual Review of Sociology, 30 (1): 311-334.
Peterson, Richard A. and David G. Berger. 1975. “Cycles in Symbol Production.” American Sociological Review. 40: 158-173.
Peterson, Richard A. and Roger M. Kern. “Changing Highbrow Taste: From Snob to Omnivore.” American Sociological Review, 61 (October 1996): 900-907.
Peterson, Richard A. 1996. Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Selections TBA.
Recommended, but not required:
Peterson, Richard A. and Albert Simkus. “How Musical Taste Groups Mark Occupational Status Groups.” Pp. 152-168 Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Equality. Michele Lamont and Marcel Fournier (eds.). (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
Peterson, Richard A. and Paul DiMaggio, “From Region to Class, the Changing Locus of Country Music: A Test of the Massification Hypothesis.” Social Forces, 53 (March 1975): 497-505.
Peterson, Richard A.. “Culture Studies Through the Production Perspective: Progress and Prospects.” Pp. 163-190 in C.
Peterson, Richard A. “Why 1955? Explaining the advent of rock music.” Popular Music. 9/1:97-108.
Anand, N. and Richard A. Peterson. 2000. “When Market Information Constitutes Fields: Sensemaking of Markets in the Commercial Music Industry.” Organization Science. 11 (3): 270-284.
Peterson, Richard A. 1973. “The Unnatural History of Rock Festivals: An Instance of Media Facilitation.” Popular Music and Society. II (2): 97-123.
Week 10: Consumption/Reception
March 27
Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984). Chapter 1 (pp. 11-96), Chapter 5 (pp. 257-317).
Press, Andrea L. 1994. “The Sociology of Cultural Reception: Notes Toward an Emerging Paradigm.” Pages 221-245 in C.
DeCerteau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. (Berkeley: U of California Press, 1984).
DeNora, Tia. “Music as a Device of Social Ordering.” Music and Everyday Life. Cambridge UP. 2000.
Recommended but not required
Becker, Howard, “Becoming a Marijuana User,” American Journal of Sociology, 59 (1953), pp. 235–242.
Espeland, Wendy N. and Mitchell Stevens. “Commensuration as a Social Process.” Annual Review of Sociology, 24 (1998): 313-43.
Griswold, Wendy. 2000. Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers, and the Novel in Nigeria. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Chapters 1, 2, and 4.
Griswold, Wendy, “The Fabrication of Meaning: Literary interpretation in the United States, Great Britain and the West Indies,” American Journal of Sociology, 92 (1987), pp. 1077–1117.
Mark, Noah, “Birds of a Feather Sing Together,” Social Forces, 77 (1998), pp. 453– 85.
Radway, Janice A. Reading the Romance. U of N. Carolina Press. 1984.
Radway, Janice. “Interpretive Communities and Variable Literacies: The Functions of Romance Reading.” Pages 465-486 in MS.
Star, Susan Leigh and James Griesemer, "Institutional Ecology, 'Translations,' and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley's Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907-1939," Social Studies of Science, 19: 387-420 (1989). Reprinted in Mario Biagioli, ed. The Science Studies Reader. Pp.. 505-524. London: Routledge.
Watson, James L., “Transnationalism, Localization, and Fast Foods in East Asia,” in Golden Arches East: McDonald’s In East Asia Edited by James Watson. (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 1–38.
Week 11: Taste in the U.S.
April 3
Lizardo, Omar. 2006. “Cultural Tastes and Personal Networks.” American Sociological Review. 71 (5): 778-807.
Shivley, Jo Ellen. 1992. “Perceptions of Western Films Among American Indians and Anglos.” American Sociological Review. 57: 725-734.
Bryson, Bethany, “‘Anything But Heavy Metal’: Symbolic Exclusion and Musical Dislikes,” American Sociological Review, 61 (1996), pp. 884–899.
Holt, Douglas B. 1997. “Distinction in America? Recovering Bourdieu’s Theory of Tastes from Its Critics.” Poetics. 25: 93-120.
Recommended, but not required
Brooks, David. Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000). Introduction and Chapter 1 (pp. 9-53).
Levine, Lawrence. Highbrow, Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1988).
Lizardo, Omar. 2006. “The puzzle of women’s ‘highbrow’ culture consumption: Integrating gender and work into Bourdieu’s class theory of taste.” Poetics. 34: 1-23.
Lopez-Sintas, Jordi and Tally Katz-Gerro. 2005. “From exclusive to inclusive elitists and further: Twenty years of omnivorousness and cultural diversity in arts participation in the USA.” Poetics. 33: 299-319.
Week 12: Production & Reputation
April 12
PLEASE NOTE THE CHANGE OF DAY TO THURSDAY
Becker, Howard. Art Worlds (Los Angeles: U of California Press, 1982). Chapter 8 (pp. 226-271), Chapter 10 (pp. 300-350) and Chapter 11 (351-371).
Foucault, Michel. “What is an Author.” Pp. 446-464 in MS.
Lamont, Michele. 1987. “How to Become a Dominant French Philosopher: The Case of Jacques Derrida.” American Journal of Sociology. 93 (3): 584-622.
Lang, Gladys and Kurt Lang. “Recognition and Renown: The Survival of Artistic Reputation,” American Journal of Sociology, 94 (1988), 79-109.
Recommended but not required
Adler, Judith. Artists in Offices: An Ethnography of an Academic Art Scene. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1979).
Alpers, Svetlana. Rembrandt’s Enterprise: The Studio and the Market. (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1987).
Clark, Priscilla and Terry Nichols Clark. “Patrons, Publishers, and Prizes: The Writer’s Estate in France.” Pp. 197-225 in Joseph Ben-David and Terry Nichols Clark (eds.), Culture and Its Creators: Essays in Honor of Edward Shils. (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1977).
Clark, Priscilla Parkhurst. Literary France: The Making of a Culture. (Berkeley: U of California Press, 1987).
Faulkner, Robert. Music on Demand: Composers and Careers in Hollywood Film. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1983).
Netzer, Dick. The Subsidized Muse: Public Support for the Arts in the United States. (New York: Cambridge UP, 1978).
White, Harrison and Cynthia White. Canvasses and Careers: Institutional Change in the French Painting World. ([Wiley, 1965] Chicago UP, 1993).
White, Harrison. Careers and Creativity: Social Forces in the Arts. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1993).
Zolberg, Vera and J.M. Cherbo, eds. Outsider Art: Contesting Boundaries in Contemporary Culture. (New York: Cambridge UP, 1997).
Week 13: Diffusion
April 17
Kaufman, Jason and Orlando Patterson. 2005. “Cross-National Cultural Diffusion: The Global Spread of Cricket.” American Sociological Review. 70: 82-110.
Additional readings TBA
Week 14: Boundaries
April 24
DiMaggio, Paul. 1982. “Cultural Entrepreneurship in 19th Century Boston.” I & II, Media Culture and Society. 4: 33-50, 303-322.
Gans, Herbert J. Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste. (New York: Basic Books, 1999). Pp. 3-15, 67-94, and 114-118.
Great Stuff We Don’t Have Time to Read
Bourdieu, Pierre. On Television. (New York: The New Press, 1998).
Castells, Manuel. The Informational City: Information Technology, Economic Restructuring and the Urban-Regional Process. (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1989). Introduction and Chapter 1.
Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 2000).
Coser, Lewis A., Charles Kadushin, and Walter W. Powell. Books: The Culture and Commerce of Publishing. (New York: Basic Books, 1982).
Crane, Diana. The Transformation of the Avant-Garde (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 1987).
De Sola Pool, Ithiel. Technologies of Freedom. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1983).
DeNora, Tia. Beethoven and the Construction of Genius: Musical Politics in Vienna, 1792-1803. (Berkeley: U of California Press, 1997). Available as an E-Book.
Fine, Gary Allen. Everyday Genius: Self-Taught Art and the Culture of Authenticity. (Chicago: U of Chicago Press, 2004).
Fischer, Claude. America Calling: A Social History of the Telephone to 1940. (Berkeley: U of California Press, 1992). Chapter 7.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. (New York: Vintage Books, 1995).
Foucault, Michel. Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977. (New York: Panetheon Books, 1980).
Foucault, Michel. The Birth of the Clinic: An Archeology of Medical Perception. (New York: Routledge, 1989). Available as an E-Book.
Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. (New York: Vintage Books, 1990).
Gamson, Joshua. Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talk Shows and Sexual Nonconformity. (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1999). Chapters 1, 2, 7.
Grindstaff, Laura. The Money Shot: Trash, Class and the Making of TV Talk Shows. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). Chapters 1 (17-42), 4 (115-147) & 8 (243-273).
Griswold, Wendy. Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers and the Novel in Nigeria. (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000). Chapter 1 (3-25) and Chapter 4 (269-273).
Herman, Edward S. and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of Mass Media. (Pantheon, 1988).
Kaufman, Jason. “Endogeneous Explanation in the Sociology of Culture.” Annual Review of Sociology. 30 (2004): 335-57.
Latour, Bruno. The Pasteurization of France (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993).
Lieberson, Stanley. A Matter of Taste: How Names, Fashions, and Culture Change. (New Haven: Yale UP, 2000).
Martin, John Levi, “What is Field Theory?,” American Journal of Sociology, 109 (2003), pp. 1–49.
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