SOC530-- The Sociology of Culture

Mark A. Schneider	Office Hours: Tue 3-5
3424 Faner Hall	Wed 8-10, Thurs 9-11
453-7627	www.siu.edu/~socio/
masch@siu.edu	Mark_A_Schneider.htm

Description: This course provides an introduction to the sociology of culture. While this subdiscipline is poorly bounded, its central focus is on the character and organization of expressive life. Expressive life changes in predictable ways with changes in social structure, while expressive preferences can mold the variable forms social structure takes. Yet though we can study culture as either an independent or a dependent variable, this course focuses on its latter guise. Our basic question is: What causes culture(s) to vary from one social setting to another?

Requirements: one half-hour in-class presentation of an assigned article/chapter, outlined in writing, and a 15-20 page articulation of a research project in the sociology of culture that grows out of and advances an existing literature. You are also required to write a one-page assessment of the course.

Texts: W. Griswold, Cultures and Societies in a Changing World (Pine Forge), M. Lamont & M. Fournier, Cultivating Differences (Chicago), and J. Radway, Reading the Romance (North Carolina).In addition, numerous articles and book chapters are assigned. Most are available to you electronically via JSTOR. The remainder will be provided in JPG files over WebCT.

WebCT: we will be using the WebCT facility for this class. I will place detailed outlines of my lectures, and supporting bibliographical references on WebCT. In addition, some readings will be posted there, as will your notes for your in-class presentations.

Course Schedule:

January 16: Introduction

January 23: General Orientation & Problems of Meaning

General Orientation:

Ann Swidler, "Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies" ASR 51 (1986) 273-286

Wendy Griswold, Cultures and Societies in a Changing World, ch. 1

Problems of meaning:

C. Geertz: 'Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight"*

W. Griswold, "American Character and the American Novel," AJS 86:4 (1981) 740-765

John Mohr, "Measuring Meaning Structures," AnnRevSociol 24 (1998) 345-370


January 30: Culture and Social Structure
Culture & Cognition

P. DiMaggio, "Culture and Cognition," AnnRevSociol 23 (1997) 263-287

Culture & Group Unity

W. Griswold, Cultures and Societies in a Changing World, Ch. 3

G. A. Fine, "Small Groups and Culture Creation," ASR 44 (1979) 733-745

J. Shively, "Cowboys and Indians: Perceptions of Western Films among American Indians and Anglos," ASR 57 (1992) 725-734

February 6: Structure, boundaries, and pollution
P. DiMaggio, "Classification in art," ASR 52 (1987) 440-455

P. DiMaggio, "Cultural Boundaries and Structural Change," from Cultivating Differences

T. Gieryn, "Boundary Work and the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science,"ASR 48 (1983) 781-795

M. Schneider, "The Social Bases of Enchantment," from Culture and Enchantment*

February 13: Culture and Stratification I: Cognitive/Moral Hierarchies
W. Griswold, Cultures and Societies in a Changing World, Ch. 4

N. Beisel, "Constructing a Shifting Moral Boundary" from Cultivating Differences

Kathryn Fox, "Real Punks and Pretenders: the Social Organization of a Counterculture," JCE 16 (1987) 344-370*

P. Converse, "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics" from David Apter, ed., Ideology and Its Discontents*

Dwight MacDonald, "A Theory of Mass Culture," from Rosenberg & White, Mass Culture*

February 13: Culture and Stratification II: Cultural dimensions of class conflict
W. Griswold, Cultures and Societies in a Changing World, Ch. 5

B. Bryson, "Anything But Heavy Metal: Symbolic Exclusion and Musical Dislikes," ASR 61 (1996) 884-899

Cultivating Differences, Part 2, High Culture and Exclusion

February 20: In-class presentations of research findings on the boundedness of status cultures

February 27: Culture and the reproduction of status differences
P. Bourdieu, "Social Space and Symbolic Power," Sociological Theory 7 (1989) 14-25

P. DiMaggio and J. Mohr, "Cultural Capital, educational attainment, and marital selection," AJS 90 (1985) 1231-1261

M. Lamont, preface and Ch. 1 from Money, Manners & Morals*

March 6: In-class presentations of research findings on social reproduction.

March 20: Canon Formation, Fads, and the Internal Differentiation of Fields
B. Aguirre, E. Quarantelli & J. Mendoza, "The Collective Behavior of Fads: The Characteristics, Effects and Career of Streaking," ASR 53 (1988) 569-584

S. Lieberson and E. Bell, "Children's First Names: An Empirical Study of Social Taste," AJS 98 (1992) 511-544

R. Ohmann, "The Shaping of a Canon: U. S. Fiction, 1960-1975," Critical Inquiry10 (1983) 199-223

G. Tuchman and N. Fortin, "Fame and Misfortune: Edging Women out of the Great Literary Tradition," AJS 90 (1984) 72-96

A. Abbott, "The Chaos of Disciplines," ch. 1 of Chaos of Disciplines (Chicago, 2001)*

March 27: Culture Production
W. Griswold, Cultures and Societies in a Changing World, Ch. 6 and 7

P. Hirsch, "Processing Fads and Fashions: An Organization-Set Analysis of Cultural Industry Systems," AJS 77 (1978) 639-659

R. Peterson and D. Berger, "Cycles in Symbol Production: The Case of Popular Music," ASR, 40 (1975) 158-173

J. Radway, Reading the Romance, ch. 1

April 3: Culture Production and Consumption
H. Trevor-Roper, "The Invention of Tradition: The Highland Tradition of Scotland" from Hobsbawn & Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge, 1992)*

Ian Watt, "The Reading Public and the Rise of the Novel," from The Rise of the Novel, pp 35-59*

J. Radway, Reading the Romance, chs. 2-4

critique of Chodorow

April 10: Media
T. Gitlin, "Prime Time Ideology: The Hegemonic Process in Television Entertainment," Social Problems 26 (1979) 251-266

W. Bielby and D. Bielby, "'All Hits are Flukes': Institutionalized Decision Making and the Rhetoric of Network Prime-Time Program Development," ASR 59 (1994) 1287-1313

J. Radway, Reading the Romance, chs. 5-Conclusion

April 17: The Culture and Production of Sciences

S. Fuchs and J. Turner, "What Makes a Science Mature?: Patterns of Organizational Control In Scientific Production," Sociological Theory 4 (1986) 143-150

L. Hargens, "Using the Literature: Reference Networks, Reference Contexts, and the Social Structure of Scholarship," ASR 65 (2000) 846-865

April 24: Open for Paper Presentations

May 1: Open for Paper Presentations