Sociology of Culture

David Brain Spring 2005

Monday & Thursday 12:30-1:50

Course Description Requirements and General Expectations Outline & Reading Assignments Discussion board On-Line Reserve Readings (requires user name and password) Download syllabus in PDF format. Research Paper Guidelines. If you need a copy of the guide to the final paper (handed out in class), you can download it as a PDF file (Acrobat Reader).

COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course will provide an introduction to current theoretical perspectives, methodological issues, and empirical work in the sociological study of culture. We will examine sociological accounts of the production of culture (including popular culture, mass media, art, and varieties of material culture), and also consider the use of different modes of analysis of culture and cultural products in the development of satisfying explanations (and, more generally, critical understanding) of important sociological phenomena such as power, inequality, the social construction of technology, and other durable patterns of social organization. Reading: Much of the required reading can be found in the following books, which have been ordered from the bookstore. Additional required reading will be on reserve in the library. Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in 15 th Century Italy. Oxford University Press, 1988. ISBN: 019282144X. Charles Bosk, Forgive and Remember: Managing Medical Failure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1981. ISBN: 0226066800. Michele Lamont and Marcel Fournier (ed.), Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. ISBN: 0226468143. Chandra Mukerji & Michael Schudson (editors), Rethinking Popular Culture. Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. ISBN: 0520068939.

Janice Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. ISBN: 0807843490 Will Wright, Sixguns and Society. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977. ISBN: 0520034910.

REQUIREMENTS: Participation. Regular class attendance, faithful completion of the reading assignments, and informed participation in class discussions and other activities. Class discussions will focus on the texts, so it will be important to complete the reading assignments prior to class, and to come prepared with questions. N.B.: More than four(4) absences from class will be grounds for an "unsatisfactory" evaluation for the term. Written work. Students will be required to complete three types of writing assignments. (a) Essays. There will be two take-home essays (6-8 pages, typed and double-spaced), written in response to assigned topics. Midterm due: Thursday, March 17. Final essay due: Monday, May 16. (b) In-class writing. In-class activities will include brief written exercises, usually focusing on issues raised in the texts. Students may also be asked to prepare a written response to questions raised in class discussionseither in class or before the next class.

(c) Research Paper. Students will be asked to identify and research a topic that is relevant to
one of the topic areas in the syllabus. The research paper is to be a detailed and theoretically-informed proposal for an empirical investigation, either of a cultural phenomenon from a sociological point of view, or of a sociological phenomenon from a cultural point of view. Further specifications for the research paper will be provided. Students will be asked to submit a one paragraph description of the proposed topic for their research paper by March 10 (Week 6). The paper will be due April 21 (Week 11). Some general expectations: The format of the course will be a mixture of lecture and discussions, with a heavy emphasis on discussion. Students will be expected to keep up with the reading assignments, and should come to class prepared. Preparation includes at least three things: understanding the argument developed in the text, identifying key points, and formulating questions. All papers should be typed, double-spaced, and, most importantly, proofread. New Policy on Late Papers. Each student is allowed one late assignment credit, good for an extension up to 48 hours on one assignment (on the condition that I dont have to listen to an excuse). Dont squander it. Except under the direst of circumstances, longer or additional extensions will not be granted otherwise.

COURSE OUTLINE AND READING ASSIGNMENTS (Readings marked with an asterisk* are available on line) Week 1 (January 31-February 3). Introduction: the idea of culture.

Chandra Mukerji & Michael Schudson, Introduction to Rethinking Popular Culture . Clifford Geertz, "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight." Pp. 239-277 in Mukerji & Schudson, Rethinking Popular Culture . *Fredrik Barth, "Models of social organization I." Pp. 32-47 Fredrik Barth, Process and Form in Social Life. Selected Essays of Fredrik Barth: Volume I. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1981. Week 2 (February 7-10). Popular culture. In Mukerji & Schudson, Rethinking Popular Culture : Robert Darnton, "Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Sverin." Pp. 97-120 in Mukerji & Schudson, Rethinking Popular Culture . Roy Rosenzweig, "The Rise of the Saloon," pp. 121-156. Lawrence W. Levine, "William Shakespeare and the American People: A Study in Cultural Transformation," pp. 157-197. Paul DiMaggio, "Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth-Century Boston: The Creation of an Organizational Base for High Culture in America," pp. 374-397. Week 3 (February 14-17). Mass Culture. Raymond Williams, "Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory." Pp. 407-423 in Mukerji and Schudson, Rethinking Popular Culture. *Todd Gitlin, "Television's screens: hegemony in transition," in Michael W. Apple (ed.), Cultural and Economic Reproduction in Education. Essays on Class, Ideology and the State (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982) pp. 202-246. *Max Horkheimer & Theodor Adorno, "The culture industry: enlightenment as mass deception," in Dialectic of Enlightenment (New York: Seabury Press, 1969) pp. 120-167. *Leo Lowenthal, "The Triumph of Mass Idols," pp. 109-140 from Literature, Popular Culture, and Society (Palo Alto: Pacific Books, 1961). Week 4 (February 21-24): Culture, action, and explanation. *Ann Swidler. 1986. Culture in action: symbols and strategies, American Sociological Review (51(3); pp. 273-286. *William Sewell. 1992. A theory of structure: duality, agency and transformation, American Journal of Sociology 98(1): 1-29. *William Gamson, Political discourse and collective action, International Social Movement Research 1(2): 219-244. *Calvin Morrill, Conflict management, honor and organizational change, American Journal of Sociology 97(3): 585-621. [Reprinted in Philip Smith, ed., The New American Cultural Sociology (Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 171-259.] *Michael Schudson, Cultural Studies and the Social Construction of Social Construction: Notes on Teddy Bear Patriarchy. Pp. 379-397 in Elizabeth Long, ed., From Sociology to Cultural Studies. New Perspectives. (Blackwell, 1997). Week 5 (February 28-March 3). Cultivating differences: from Weber to Bourdieu. *Pierre Bourdieu, Sport and social class. Pp. 357-373 in Mukerji & Schudson. *Pierre Bourdieu, Artistic taste and cultural capital. Pp. 205-215 in Jeffrey Alexander and Steven Seidman, editors, Culture and Society. Contemporary Debates (Cambridge University Press, 1990). Michle Lamont and Marcel Fournier (eds.), Cultivating Differences. Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

Chapters 1-8. Week 6 (March 7-10). Empirical studies of cultural production. Paul M. Hirsch, "Processing Fads and Fashions: An Organization-Set Analysis of Cultural Industry Systems." Pp. 313-334 in Mukerji and Schudson, Rethinking Popular Culture. *Paul Dimaggio, "Market Structure, the Creative Process, and Popular Culture: Toward an Organizational Reinterpretation of Mass-Culture Theory," Journal of Popular Culture 3 (1977), pp. 436-452. *Robert Faulkner, "Big Hollywood, Little Hollywood." Pp. 240-267 in Music on Demand. Composers and Careers in the Hollywood Film Industry (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1983). Todd Gitlin, Movies of the Week, in Mukerji & Schudson, Rethinking Popular Culture , pp. 335-355. Proposal for research paper due: March 10. Week 7 (March 14-17). Cultural work. Janice Radway, Reading the Romance (intro, chapters 1-4). Midterm due: March 17. End of Mod I [Spring Break] Week 8 (March 28-31). Art as a social institution I. Michael Baxandall, Painting and Experience in 15 th Century Italy. Arthur Danto, Works of Art and Mere Real Things, Chapter 1 in The Transfiguration of the Commonplace ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981). Recommended: Howard Becker, Art Worlds . Week 9 (April 4-7). Art as a social institution II. *Harrison & Cynthia White, Canvases and Careers . Pp. 76-151. Week 10 (April 11-14). Semiotic perspectives: signs, myths, narratives. Will Wright, Sixguns and Society . Week 11 (April 18-21). The critique of representation. *Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (excerpt). *Michel Foucault, Madness & Civilization (excerpt). *David Brain "Structure & strategy in the production of culture: implications of poststructuralist perspectives for the sociology of culture." Comparative Social Research 11 (1989), pp. 31-74. Week 12 (April 25-28). Work cultures and reproduction.

Charles Bosk, Forgive & Remember . Week 13 (May 2-5). Social construction of technology.

*Jim Johnson [Bruno Latour], Mixing humans and nonhumans: the sociology of a door closer. Social Problems vol. 35, no. 3, June 1988. Pp. 298-310. *Michel Callon, Society in the Making: The Study of Technology as a Tool for Sociological Analysis. Pp. 83-103 in Bijker & Pinch, editors, The Social Construction of Technological Systems (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987). *Chandra Mukerji, The culture of land and the territorial state, pp. 1-48 in Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles (Cambridge University Press, 1997). Week 14 (May 9-12). Wrap up. Readings to be announced. Final exam due, May 16.

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