Sociology 530

SOCIOLOGY OF CULTURE

The "sociology of culture" is too broad an area to be covered completely in one semester. Any given seminar on the subject will vary its topics, for example, covering literature, art, fashion, religion, or other things we thing of as "culture." Or one could study the "cultures" of substantive areas such as science, social movements, or gender. That "culture" can mean so many things is both its strength and its weakness. You can undoubtedly find something of interest under that heading, but precise definition and analysis -- just knowing what it is you are talking about sometimes -- can be difficult.

I think of culture as an "analytic" dimension of social life, rather than an "area" of its own -- one can think culturally about any area of social life. My own research interests focus on how religion affects politics and shapes social movements. I study the "cultural" dimensions of those relationships, examining ideology, symbols, and discourse. Accordingly, this seminar will spend more time on things such as political culture and public discourse, rather than art, literature, or science.

Sociologist Wendy Griswold has proposed a "cultural diamond" for the analysis of culture. Its four points are possible locations for study: the producers of culture; the consumers of culture; the cultural object itself; and the social world in which culture exists. I want to use Griswold's diamond as a framework, and we will read things relating to each point. Requirements will be a take-home mid-term exam and a final paper.

The core of the reading list will be the following books (subject to some revision):

Crane, Diane, ed. The Sociology of Culture (Blackwell, 1994).

Griswold, Wendy. Cultures and Societies in a Changing World (Pine Forge, 1994).

Halle, David. Inside Culture. (Chicago, 1993).

Martin, Joanne. Cultures in Organizations. (Oxford, 1992).

Peterson, Richard. The Creation of Country Music (California, 1997).

Schudson, Michael. The Good Citizen. (Free Press, 1998).

Smith, Phillip. The New American Cultural Sociology. (Cambridge, 1998).

Wuthnow, Robert, ed. Vocabularies of Public Life. (Routledge, 1992).