Soc : Sociology of Culture
Fall , Tues/&urs :pm–:pm. Social Sciences . Kieran Healy.
Email: [email protected]. Homepage: http://www.u.arizona.edu/~kjhealy. Office: Social Sciences Building. Phone: -
Course Description and Objectives
&is is a survey course in the sociology of culture. It will introduce you to the major themes of a field that has grown rapidly in the U.S. over the past years. It overlaps significantly (though not entirely) with the Culture Reading List for Prelim Exams. &e sociology of culture is a difficult topic to organize into a manageable course for several reasons. Unlike the family, religion or politics, it is not a dis- tinct institution or social process that can be treated more or less separately from others. Unlike networks, stratification or micro-interaction, it does not have as well-developed a set of methods that can provide an initial focus for study. &e bias of this course is towards empirical studies of the production of culture, particularly in its more organizationally and institutionally durable forms. But this is still a very wide net, and we will read micro-level studies of small groups to comparative macro-sociologies of cultural change across na- tions. &e classical roots of the subject are explored in the first few weeks. We return to broad questions about where the field should be going in the last week or two. I have tried to ensure that the readings overlap as little as possible with mate- rial from other courses offered by the department — notably Social Movements & Collective Action, Religion, Gender, and Race & Ethnicity. culture-syllabus-jb.tex Rev: ., Exp, August , Requirements
&e course is a seminar. It should go without saying that students are expected to attend each meeting, do the reading thoroughly and in advance, and partici- pate actively in class and online discussions. &e 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, two other kinds of work are required:
a) For each week after the first, two students will prepare brief, informal presentations. One student will prepare a “lead memo” (of about , words), to be posted to the class weblog by lunchtime on Monday af- ternoon, responding to the week’s readings. Participants are expected to read the memo and contribute their own thoughts, questions and com- ments about it. A second student will prepare a “research memo” (of about , words), by lunchtime Wednesday. &is might be a brief ac- count of an outstanding problem from the readings and a preliminary design of a study to solve it; or a memo introducing and describing an ex- isting data set relevant to the week’s readings and suggesting some possi- ble uses. Participants should be prepared to discuss these memos as well, both online and in class.
b) Each student will prepare memoranda of , to , words on the readings prior to at least four of the weekly meetings. Hand them in to me in class or post them on the class weblog. &ese memos should be regarded as writing and thinking exercises, not as finished products. Use them to engage each week’s materials and respond with questions, criti- cisms and new ideas that they suggest. Memos should be used to develop ideas informally over time and to put into words impressions that seem worth developing. Because I will read them each week, they also provide an opportunity for you to receive individualized feedback.
No final paper is required. &e course is open to any graduate student in Sociology. Students from other departments should meet with me before enrolling.
Readings
All other required readings will either be available for copying in the graduate student sociology library, on electronic reserve at the main library, or available via -ʀ or other online source. &is syllabus is available online via the POLIS page for the course and by following the “Teaching” link on my homepage. &e links in the online version will take you to the -ʀ (or equivalent) copies of the readings, wherever available. Let me know if you’re not familiar with -ʀ or files, and we’ll set about welcoming you to the s.
Course Schedule
&e following two anthologies are available from the bookstore and will be use- ful to you, but are not required: Jeffrey Alexander and Steven Seidman, editors, Culture and Society: Contem- porary Debates (Cambridge University Press, ). Lynn Spillman, editor, Cultural Sociology (Malden: Blackwell, )
Preliminaries: Housekeeping and Orientation
Week : Aug /
Raymond Williams, “Culture.” In Raymond Williams, Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society Expanded edition. (London: Fontana, ). Horace Miner, “Body Ritual Amongst the Nacerima,” American Anthropologist, (), pp. –. ʀ link. Bruce McCall, “In the New Canada, Living is a Way of Life,” in Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from %e New Yorker Edited by David Remnick and Henry Finder. (New York: Random House, ).
Part I: Lineages of Classical %eory
Week : Culture and Social Structure. Aug /Sep
Émile Durkheim, %e Elementary forms of Religious Life (Free Press, ). “In- troduction”; “Origins of these Beliefs”; “&e Negative Cult and its Functions”; “Conclusion.” Emile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss, Primitive Classification (University of Chicago Press, ). “&e Problem” (-), “China” (-), “Conclusions” (-). Mary Douglas, How Institutions %ink (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, ). Mary Douglas, “Jokes,” in Implicit Meanings (London: Routledge, ), pp. –.
Week : Culture and Class. Sep /
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. “&e German Ideology.” In Robert C. Tucker, editor, %e Marx-Engels Reader (New York: W.W. Norton, ). Preface and Part I. Online version. Raymond Williams, “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural &eory,” in Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies Edited by Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson. (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), pp. –. &eodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, “&e Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” in Mass Communication and Society Edited by J. Curran, M. Gurevitch and J. Wollacott. (London: Edward Arnold, ), pp. –. Antonio Gramsci, “Culture and Ideological Hegemony,” in: Alexander and Sei- dman, Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates, pp. –. Paul Willis, “Masculinity and Factory Labor,” in: Alexander and Seidman, Cul- ture and Society: Contemporary Debates, pp. –. Basil Bernstein, “Elaborated and Restricted Codes: &eir social origins and some consequences,” American Anthropologist, (), pp. –. ʀ link.
Week : Culture as Signification. Sep /
Ferdinand de Saussure, “Signs and Language,” in: Alexander and Seidman, Cul- ture and Society: Contemporary Debates, pp. –. Roland Barthes, “&e World of Wrestling,” in Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang, ), pp. –. John Levi Martin, “What do Animals do all day? &e division of labor, class bodies and totemic thinking in the popular imagination,” Poetics, (), pp. –. Journal link. Dick Hebdidge, “Object as Image: &e Italian Scooter Cycle,” in %e Consumer Society Reader Edited by Juliet B. Schor and Douglas B. Holt. (New York: &e New Press, ), pp. –.
Week : Culture Enacted. Sep /
Donald Levine, editor, Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, ). “Subjective Culture” (-), “Fash- ion” (-), “&e Metropolis and Mental Life” (-), and “&e Conflict in Modern Culture” (-). Norbert Elias, %e Civilizing Process Volume : %e History of Manners (Cam- bridge: Blackwell, ), pp.-, -. Howard Becker, “Becoming a Marihuana User,” American Journal of Sociology, (), pp. –. ʀ link. Arlie Hochschild, “Emotion Work, Feeling Rules and Social Structure,” Ameri- can Journal of Sociology, (), pp. –. ʀ link. Karin Martin, “Becoming a Gendered Body: Practices of Preschools,” American Sociological Review, (), pp. –. ʀ link
Part II: %e Production of Culture
Week : %eories of Practice. Sep /
Clifford Geertz, “&ick Description: Toward and Interpretive &eory of Cul- ture,” in %e Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, ), pp. –. Pierre Bourdieu, “Structures, Habitus, Practices,” in %e Logic of Practice (Stan- ford: Stanford University Press, ), pp. –. Richard Biernacki, “Labor as an Imagined Commodity,” Politics and Society, (), pp. –. Ronald L. Breiger, “A Tool-kit for Practice &eory,” Poetics, (), pp. –. Journal link. Ann Swidler, Talk of Love (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ). Pp.- , “Ties that do not bind.”
Week : Organizations. Oct /
Gideon Kunda, “Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a High- Tech Corporation,” in: Spillman, Cultural Sociology, pp. –. Viviana Zelizer, Pricing the Priceless Child: %e Changing Social Value of Chil- dren (New York: Basic Books, ), “From Mobs to Memorials,” pp-. John Mohr, “Soldiers, Mothers, Tramps and Others: Discourse roles in the New York Charity Directory,” Poetics, (), pp. –. Journal link. Frank Dobbin, “Cultural Models of Organization: &e social construction of ra- tional organizing principles,” in %e Sociology of Culture: Emerging %eoretical Perspectives Edited by Diana Crane. (Blackwell, ), pp. –.
Week : Institutional Fields. Oct /
Pierre Bourdieu, %e Field of Cultural Production (New York: Columbia Uni- versity Press, ). Pp.-.
Yves Dezalay and Bryant Garth, Dealing in Virtue: International Commercial Arbitration and the Construction of a Transnational Legal Order (Chicago: Uni- versity of Chicago Press, ). Excerpt TBA. Paul DiMaggio, “Constructing and Organizational Field as a Professional Project: U.S. Art Museums, –,” in %e New Institutionalism and Organiza- tional Analysis Edited by Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), pp. –. Richard Peterson and David Berger, “Cycles in Symbol Production: &e case of popular music,” American Sociological Review, (), pp. –. ʀ link. Bruno Latour, %e Pasteurization of France (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ). Excerpt TBA.
Part III: Current Topics and Debates
Week : Comparative Macro-Sociology. Oct /
John W. Meyer et al., “World Society and the Nation State,” American Journal of Sociology, (), pp. –. ʀ link. Robert Wuthnow, Communities of Discourse: Ideologies and Social Structure in the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European Socialism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ). Excerpt TBA. Marion Fourcade-Gourinchas, “Politics, Institutional Structures and the Rise of Economics: A Comparative Study,” %eory and Society, (), pp. –. Link. Frank Dobbin, Forging Industrial Policy: %e United States, Britain and France in the Railway Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, ). Chapter .
Week : Cultural Consumption and Reception. Oct /
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ). Chap- ters and . Bethany Bryson, “‘Anything But Heavy Metal’: Symbolic Exclusion and Musical Dislikes,” American Sociological Review, (), pp. –. ʀ link. Noah Mark, “Birds of a Feather Sing Together,” Social Forces, (), pp. –. Wendy Griswold, “&e Fabrication of Meaning: Literary interpretation in the United States, Great Britain and the West Indies,” American Journal of Sociol- ogy, (), pp. –. ʀ link. James L. Watson, “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, ), pp. –.
Week : Boundaries and Identities. Nov /
Michele Lamont, “Symbolic Boundaries and Status,” in: Spillman, Cultural So- ciology, pp. –. Steven Seidman, “From Identity to Queer Politics: Shifts in Normative Hetero- sexuality,” (London: Routledge, ), pp. –. Rogers Brubaker and Frederick Cooper, “Beyond Identity,” %eory and Society, (), pp. –. Journal link. N. Katherine Hayles, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernet- ics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ). Excerpt TBA.
Week : Markets and Culture Nov /
William T. Bielby and Denise D. Bielby, “All Hits are Flukes: Institutional- ized Decision Making and the Rhetoric of Prime-Time Program Development,” American Journal of Sociology, (), pp. –. ʀ link.
Tyler Cowen, Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World’s Cultures (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ). Excerpt TBA. Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Waquant, “&e Cunning of Imperialist Reason,” %e- ory, Culture and Society, (), pp. –. James Boyle, “Cruel, Mean or Lavish? Economic analysis, price discrimination and digital intellectual property,” Vanderbilt Law Review, (), pp. –. David &rosby, “&e Production and Consumption of the Arts: A View of Cul- tural Economics,” Journal of Economic Literature, ():, pp. –. ʀ link. %ursday th: Veterans’ Day. No class.
Part IV: Programmatic and Prescriptive Statements
Week : Nov /
Ann Swidler, “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,” American Sociologi- cal Review, (), pp. –. ʀ link. John Mohr, “Measuring Meaning Structures,” Annual Review of Sociology, (), pp. –. ʀ link. William H. Sewell, “&e Concept(s) of Culture,” in Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture Edited by Victoria Bonnell and Lynn E. Hunt. (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), pp. –. John Levi Martin, “What is Field &eory?,” American Journal of Sociology, (), pp. –. link.
Week :Nov /
%anksgiving. No class.
Week : Nov /Dec
References
Adorno, &eodor and Horkheimer, Max, “&e Culture Industry: Enlighten- ment as Mass Deception,” in Mass Communication and Society Edited by Curran, J., Gurevitch, M. and Wollacott, J.. (London: Edward Arnold, ), pp. –. Alexander, Jeffrey and Seidman, Steven, editors, Culture and Society: Contem- porary Debates (Cambridge University Press, ). Barthes, Roland, “&e World of Wrestling,” in Mythologies (New York: Hill and Wang, ), pp. –. Becker, Howard, “Becoming a Marihuana User,” American Journal of Sociology, (), pp. –. Bernstein, Basil, “Elaborated and Restricted Codes: &eir social origins and some consequences,” American Anthropologist, (), pp. –. Bielby, William T. and Bielby, Denise D., “All Hits are Flukes: Institutional- ized Decision Making and the Rhetoric of Prime-Time Program Devel- opment,” American Journal of Sociology, (), pp. –. Biernacki, Richard, “Labor as an Imagined Commodity,” Politics and Society, (), pp. –. Bourdieu, Pierre, Distinction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ). “Structures, Habitus, Practices,” in %e Logic of Practice (Stanford: Stan- ford University Press, ), pp. –. %e Field of Cultural Production (New York: Columbia University Press, ). and Waquant, Loïc, “&e Cunning of Imperialist Reason,” %eory, Culture and Society, (), pp. –. Boyle, James, “Cruel, Mean or Lavish? Economic analysis, price discrimina- tion and digital intellectual property,” Vanderbilt Law Review, (), pp. –.
Breiger, Ronald L., “A Tool-kit for Practice &eory,” Poetics, (), pp. –. Brubaker, Rogers and Cooper, Frederick, “Beyond Identity,” %eory and Society, (), pp. –. Bryson, Bethany, “‘Anything But Heavy Metal’: Symbolic Exclusion and Musical Dislikes,” American Sociological Review, (), pp. –. Cowen, Tyler, Creative Destruction: How Globalization is Changing the World’s Cultures (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, ). Dezalay, Yves and Garth, Bryant, Dealing in Virtue: International Commer- cial Arbitration and the Construction of a Transnational Legal Order (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ). DiMaggio, Paul, “Constructing and Organizational Field as a Professional Project: U.S. Art Museums, –,” in %e New Institutionalism and Organizational Analysis Edited by Powell, Walter W. and DiMaggio, Paul J.. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), pp. –. Dobbin, Frank, “Cultural Models of Organization: &e social construction of rational organizing principles,” in %e Sociology of Culture: Emerg- ing %eoretical Perspectives Edited by Crane, Diana. (Blackwell, ), pp. –. Forging Industrial Policy: %e United States, Britain and France in the Railway Age (New York: Cambridge University Press, ). Douglas, Mary, “Jokes,” in Implicit Meanings (London: Routledge, ), pp. –. How Institutions %ink (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, ). Durkheim, Émile, %e Elementary forms of Religious Life (Free Press, ), Karen Fields, Translator. Durkheim, Emile and Mauss, Marcel, Primitive Classification (University of Chicago Press, ). Elias, Norbert, %e Civilizing Process Volume : %e History of Manners (Cam- bridge: Blackwell, ).
Fourcade-Gourinchas, Marion, “Politics, Institutional Structures and the Rise of Economics: A Comparative Study,” %eory and Society, (), pp. –. Geertz, Clifford, “&ick Description: Toward and Interpretive &eory of Cul- ture,” in %e Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, ), pp. –. Gramsci, Antonio, “Culture and Ideological Hegemony,” in: Alexander and Sei- dman, Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates, pp. –. Griswold, Wendy, “&e Fabrication of Meaning: Literary interpretation in the United States, Great Britain and the West Indies,” American Journal of Sociology, (), pp. –. Hayles, N. Katherine, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cyber- netics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ). Hebdidge, Dick, “Object as Image: &e Italian Scooter Cycle,” in %e Consumer Society Reader Edited by Schor, Juliet B. and Holt, Douglas B.. (New York: &e New Press, ), pp. –. Hochschild, Arlie, “Emotion Work, Feeling Rules and Social Structure,” Ameri- can Journal of Sociology, (), pp. –. Kunda, Gideon, “Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a High- Tech Corporation,” in: Spillman, Cultural Sociology, pp. –. Lamont, Michele, “Symbolic Boundaries and Status,” in: Spillman, Cultural So- ciology, pp. –. Latour, Bruno, %e Pasteurization of France (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ). Levine, Donald, editor, Georg Simmel on Individuality and Social Forms (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, ). Mark, Noah, “Birds of a Feather Sing Together,” Social Forces, (), pp. –.
Martin, John Levi, “What do Animals do all day? &e division of labor, class bodies and totemic thinking in the popular imagination,” Poetics, (), pp. –. “What is Field &eory?,” American Journal of Sociology, (), pp. –. Martin, Karin, “Becoming a Gendered Body: Practices of Preschools,” Ameri- can Sociological Review, (), pp. –. McCall, Bruce, “In the New Canada, Living is a Way of Life,” in Fierce Pajamas: An Anthology of Humor Writing from %e New Yorker Edited by Remnick, David and Finder, Henry. (New York: Random House, ). Meyer, John W. et al., “World Society and the Nation State,” American Journal of Sociology, (), pp. –. Miner, Horace, “Body Ritual Amongst the Nacerima,” American Anthropologist, (), pp. –. Mohr, John, “Soldiers, Mothers, Tramps and Others: Discourse roles in the New York Charity Directory,” Poetics, (), pp. –. “Measuring Meaning Structures,” Annual Review of Sociology, (), pp. –. Peterson, Richard and Berger, David, “Cycles in Symbol Production: &e case of popular music,” American Sociological Review, (), pp. –. Saussure, Ferdinand de, “Signs and Language,” in: Alexander and Seidman, Cul- ture and Society: Contemporary Debates, pp. –. Seidman, Steven, “From Identity to Queer Politics: Shifts in Normative Hetero- sexuality,” (London: Routledge, ), pp. –. Sewell, William H., “&e Concept(s) of Culture,” in Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture Edited by Bonnell, Vic- toria and Hunt, Lynn E.. (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), pp. –. Spillman, Lynn, editor, Cultural Sociology (Malden: Blackwell, ).
Swidler, Ann, “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,” American Sociologi- cal Review, (), pp. –. Talk of Love (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ). &rosby, David, “&e Production and Consumption of the Arts: A View of Cul- tural Economics,” Journal of Economic Literature, ():, pp. –. Tucker, Robert C., editor, %e Marx-Engels Reader (New York: W.W. Norton, ). Watson, James L., “Transnationalism, Localization, and Fast Foods in East Asia,” in Golden Arches East: McDonald’s In East Asia Edited by Watson, James. (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, ), pp. –. Williams, Raymond, Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society Ex- panded edition. (London: Fontana, ). “Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural &eory,” in Rethinking Pop- ular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies Edited by Mukerji, Chandra and Schudson, Michael. (Berkeley: University of Cali- fornia Press, ), pp. –. Willis, Paul, “Masculinity and Factory Labor,” in: Alexander and Seidman, Cul- ture and Society: Contemporary Debates, pp. –. Wuthnow, Robert, Communities of Discourse: Ideologies and Social Structure in the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and European Socialism (Cam- bridge: Harvard University Press, ). Zelizer, Viviana, Pricing the Priceless Child: %e Changing Social Value of Chil- dren (New York: Basic Books, ).