SOC 363: The Sociology of Culture

Week 1: Questions for discussion and thought

Drawing on Raymond Williams and the Monday conference, what is the history of "culture" as a word and as a concept? In what ways is the word understood today? What has caused the meaning of culture to change?
a. Explain how different disciplines tend to define culture as opposed to other terms, such as structure. Compare definitions of culture typical of the humanities with those of the social sciences; what points do they agree on, and in what ways are they irreconcilable?
b. What are some research implications of each type of definition, e.g., for analyzing topics you are interested in?
Define Weber's and Durkheim's key terms (collective representations, iron cage, spirit of capitalism, switchmen). Each has been viewed to have a theory of culture. What is it? Why did both authors attribute so much significance to religion? Are religious categories the basis for cultural values?
Apply Weber's and then Durkheim to your favorite cultural topic. Does each author suggest a different "puzzle" for analysis? What would this puzzle be? What steps does each author suggest you need to follow in order to understand the "meaning" of your cultural topic. Be explicit, and be prepared to discuss your results in class.

Week 2: Questions for discussion and thought

As always, define Marx's key terms and then do the same for Geertz and Swidler, as you read along.
Marx is often seen as rejecting idealism in favor of a "base and superstructure" model of culture, in which culture is treated as a superstructure (or epiphenomenon) determined by the economic base, the forces and relations of production. Is this how he treats ideas and culture in the excerpts? Is he concuring with popular or journalistic analyses of culture that see norms and values reflected in cultural objects? If not, what are the assumptions Marx makes about this reflection process? Whose norms and values are reflected in the norms and values he concentrates on?
After reading Geertz, explain what are some of the assumptions about what or who mediates between the social world and its cultural "reflection" he makes, and how are they different from Marx on this subject?
Geertz emphasizes that there is a dialectical relationship between social structurs and cultural objects, e.g. he calls culture "a model of and a model for" society, a "gloss and a template". Describe his analysis of the Balinese cockfight in terms of this dialectic. Can you think of a contemporary American analogue to the cockfight as a "as story the [Balinese] tell themselves about themselves? Would Marx understand this event differently, and if so, how?
Does Geertz's two-way reflection overcome some of the problems with the simple reflection model, or just add more problems?
Compare Geertz's understanding of the relationship between culture and social order with Durkheim's. Are there similarities in their understanding of what Geertz terms "deep play"?

Week 3: Questions for discussion and thought

1. Over the next week, we will be reading an ethnography that seeks to examine the process by which working class resistance against symbols of middle class culture blocks upward mobility and thus reproduces the structural position of the working class. Is this kind of class consciousness a reflection of what Marxists might call "false" as opposed to "true" consciousness?

2. A reflection theory might say that working class culture reflects the meanings embodied in the life of this class. A Geertzian approach adopts a two way reflection model, in which culture is both a "model of" working class life, and a "model for" working class life. How does this more sophisticated theoretical approach explain the selection of certain elements of working class experience over others as objects of conscious rebellion and admiration?

3. Recall Swidler's notion of strategies of action that human beings develop out of preexisting sets of cultural repertoires and toolkits. How are particular strategies of resistance adopted from the available cultural tool kit by working class youth? Would it be possible for working class youth to truly rebel against their position in the social order, if they would just stop engaging in "pointless" acts of subversion that detract from their ability to gain "real" control over their future? In other words, would working class kinds be better off "buying into the system"?

4. Relate resistance strategies to Weber's types of class struggle. Is this a contest over status, in his terms?

Week 5: Questions for discussion and thought

1. How useful is the concept of "mass" or "popular" culture as a sociological category, especially in terms of its ability to categorize production and reception of culture for particular strata of the population? What would be included in mass as opposed to popular culture? Can this type of cultural production and reception be analyzed using Albrecht's categories?

2. Last class, we considered how culture is produced in an undifferentiated small agrarian community (of the type nineteenth century discussions of folk culture often focused on). Identify some of the key aspects of this type of culture: how it is produced, how it is consumed, what role power relations play. After doing this, consider whether this is also the way that face-to-face communities produce and consume the symbols they need to sustain a sense of community (e.g., in the case of small scale rave groups). Examine a particular group's cultural symbols as a coercive force, and then as an expressive force.

3. Summarize Gans's account of how mass or popular culture is produced. What position does he most want to argue against (e.g., especially regarding "totalitarian" or "anti-democratic" movements)? Why? How does he use evidence to prove his point? Do you buy his argument? Would the author of Learning to Labor agree, or disagree, with Gans about the role mass/popular culture plays in creating or destroying movements that either uphold or destroy democratic institutions?

4. a. Some of our recent readings (e.g., Albrecht's writings) criticize approaches that view culture as an implicit feature of social life that provides normative integration to a community or society. Instead, the "strategic action" approach sees culture as an explicit product of cultural producers and cultural gatekeepers (such as critics). Explain how different these two approaches would analyze the introduction of some new variant of a particular cultural object such as the Barbie doll, or a new genre of film, novel or magazine. Draw a diagram of the particular producers, gatekeepers, and consumers, and bring a copy of this diagram to class in sufficient quantities to share with others (10 may be enough, there are 19 people in class, including the instructor). Compare definitions of culture typical of the humanities with those of the social sciences; what points do they agree on, and in what ways are they irreconcilable where conflicts of interest might occur in how a cultural object should be used or consumed?
b. What are some research implications of each type of definition, e.g., for analyzing topics you are interested in writing about in your paper?

5. Identify the main institutions and agents Williams argues are involved in cultural production. Draw a second diagram of the process of production and reception you analyzed above. Define what he means by "market professional." Identify the market professionals relevant to the production and consumption of the cultural object you focused on in your diagram, and do the same for the cultural objects relevant to your term paper.

Week 6, Part I Questions for discussion and thought (production of culture conference)

1. What role does audience demand play in the creation of new musical genres or styles in the record industry, according to Peterson and Berger?
How do they provide evidence supporting this position?
Can you develop a similar data source for your project?

2. Does Crane find support for their claims, or does she challenge them in her discussion of recent decades in music and other major cultural industries?

3. When does cultural innovation tend to take place, according to Swidler? According to Peterson and Berger, is this view accurate?

4. Define "gatekeepers" as a sociological concept. Do the same for cultural "industry system". What role do these two entities play in the production and mass distribution of culture, according to Hirsch? Do they play the same function in "fine art" or "high culture" as they do in pop culture, according to Hirsch?

5. How are mass media gatekeepers coopted? What other coping strategies do industry systems develop?

6. Redraw your diagram, utilizing these concepts, and come prepared to talk through whether (and how) non-esthetic interests come into play in cultural innovation, in particular, in your class project; also come ready to share advice with the class on how to find evidence on production and consumption trends in your case.

We are moving further along in the chain of events and decision from the

production of culture to its reception.

Week 6, Part II Questions for discussion and thought (RadwayReading the Romance conference)

1. How do the readers Radway studies become consumers of this form of mass culture?

2. Is their reception structured in the ways that Horkheimer & Adorno, Hirsch or Peterson & Berger might expect it to be? Try to be as specific as possible, recontructing how individuals, as opposed to market sectors, use a cultural object. Do cultural gatekeepers play any role in why these women read romance novels?

3. Mass culture, as you know, has been the focus of many debates. The critical theory approach (represented by Horkheimer & Adorno and criticized by Gans) uses the tools of literary criticism to compare standardized, escapist, passively consumed mass cultural objects with unique, challenging instructive works of art. Describe the typical narrative structure of the romances. Do you agree or disagree with that romance novels serve a primarily escapist role in their readers' lives? Or would you argue that, like the lads in Learning to Labor, these women are using mass culture to rebel against their domination, but their rebellion ultimately reinforces or reproduces their subordinate position?

4. Arguably, Radway believes her readers fall somewhere in between escape and rebellion, and she seems to want to challenge the terms of the debate b/w critical theorists and their opponents (such as Gans). How do these women use novels, according to Radway?

5. How do we know that Radway isn't projecting her own feminist standpoint onto the subjects of her study?

6. Does this work challenge the notion of the "mass audience" or the "mass market audience" as a homogenized, atomized "mass"? Or do you think that this kind of collective use of mass culture to build and reinforce social relationships with similar people is a fairly common way popular culture is used?

7. What are the implications for your research project? Does the meaning and use (and any other aspect of reception) of the cultural object you are study vary in any systematic way, and if so, are the distinct groups potential niches for new product lines? If not, how do they resist the relentless commodification that Hirsch, Peterson and others in the production of culture approach analyze?

Week 9 The media

1. How is the reality of the social world created by the media? What happens when there is significant disagreement about "agency" and "motivations" (who did what to whom and why)? The media often tell dramatic plots in which they represent individual agents as doing things to others. These agents are often represented in ways that highly simplify their motivations. What are the consequences for readers/consumers of the media who disagree?

2. What are some techniques of objectivity ("reality building representations") thate are used by the media (you might find it useful to refer to the charts in the Oil Spill article for a taxonomy of highly simplified plots). Ask yourself how these and other reality building techniques differ by technology and market (tv versus newspapers of different kinds/budgets; commmercial versus public), by type of story (hard/soft/breaking; status of "victim"/status of "perpetrator") and by type of narratives used (plot, main protagonists).

3. According to the analysis of the rise and decline of ethnic newspapers article, under what conditions can ethnic groups sustain their own alternative constructions of reality when and if their viewpoints are ignored by the dominant media?

Week 10

1. What are two possible alternative theories to explaining the preconditions for women's collective action (this term refers to women's participation in the groups that make contentious challenges to existing powerholders)? What role do these alternative theories assume about the relationship between women's collective action and cultural resources, such as notions of femaleness, women's culture or dominant cultural values about women as nurturers?

Note: if you find it difficult to develop two contrasting theories, you might try to adopt an approach that is sociological and is based on the course readings we have done, against an approach that is drawn from some other discipline, e.g. psychology, english, anthro)

2. Every sociologist think that groups need something called "collective action resources" to mobilize support among potential recruits to its cause. What might these be? List cultural resources that might inhibit women's mobilization.

3. Do the same for those resources that might encourage it, or make it possible.

4. Identify the organizations in society (e.g., the family, schools, the media),and the type of gatekeepers that stand between them and women, that a "production of culture approach" a la Peterson and Hirsch (focusing on organizations and gatekeepers) might adopt toward understanding women's collective action. Who are the gatekeepers that come to mind who inhibit collective action? Which gatekeepers might encourage it? Do they compete for the attention of the same group of women?

5. Analyze your particular cultural object and its role in the process of either inhibiting or encouraging women's collective action. Come prepared to talk about your project and its role in women's collective action.

Week 11 How do women's movements create a culture of commitment?

1. As you learned from the social movements reading for Monday, early theories assumed that social movements were a reflection of psychological strain caused by status insecurity and or deprivation. One familiar version of this is represented by Marx, who argued that working class revolutions result from the immiseration of the working class. Another version that some of you may have heard of was formulated by Adorno, Arendt and other scholars of Nazism who viewed it as a response to "status insecurity" that resulted when insecure individuals experienced rapid modernization in Germany. There was a consensus among these earlier theorists that right wing movements, or conservative movements, whose stated goals are to maintain structures of order, status, honor or traditional social differences or values, resulted when declining groups sought to maintain their eroding status by strengthening or creating identifications with groups prestigious in the past. Might women in the Klatch study of the new right be characterized as doing so? Is this also what Verta Taylor assumes led to the reemergence of feminism in the sixties and seventies after its long period of what she calls "abeyance"?

2. Some people argue that the right embraces an anti-modernist culture that opposes the consumer culture that has grown as a consequence of economic growth, social complexity and differentiation, and commercialization: a culture that stresses self-gratification, equality and a loosening of traditional restraints. Others, by contrast, say this is an oversimplification of the way the right frames its goals, and that assuming that the right embraces one culture leads to a loss of the detail and nuance that is important for a corrct analysis of the cultural frames that this type of social movement uses to creat commitment. Which of the two potential sides of this argument would Klatch agree with, and why?

3. Where did the 1960s feminist movement emerge from? Some people argue the feminist movement of the sixties and seventies split off from the New Left (including the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement) because women members were alienated and marginalized by the macho individualism that these other movements thrived on. I don't think that Verta Taylor agress with this view. Why? Why would it bother her to see women activists as motivated by their alienation and marginalization?

4. Early theories of social movements stressed status insecurity and status preservation as the mechanisms by which individuals joined movements. They also tended to claim that social movements were irrational, and looked for scapegoats that explain why members of the movement have failed to achieve a high status. Later theories you read for Wednesday's class (11/1) cast doubt on this approach and argued for a resource mobilization perspective that stressed organized networks of challengers and their efforts to establish movement organizations.

Would Klatch agree of disagree that her women of the new right were "status insecure" and looked for scapegoats? Does she need to be move aware of the role of "gatekeepers" and intermediary institutions that channel her women into activism and use cultural symbols to shape their perceptions of politics? What would the relevant gatekeepers and institutions be, in her movement?

5. Many theorists assume that social movements develop solidarity by defining themselves in opposition to some external enemy or scapegoat. Until recently, the right often adopted communism as its external enemy. Identify the current right wing ideology as it is now expressed, since the collapse of communism. What has happened to the new right as a social movement lsinc it lost its external enemy/scapegoat? Is there evidence that these consequences can be seen in the 2000 presidential election? Or have right wingers found a useful new enemy/scapegoat?

6. Recruitment In the past, social conservatives were typically drawn from among populations with little education, low socioeconomic status, rural residence, and strong religious commitment. In contrast, political economic conservatives tended to be highly educated, upper income Republicans. Is Klatch's movement easily characterized in these terms?

7. Recruitment Not all lower middle class women join right wing movements. What determines which ones do? Chance encounters with other members? Exposure to a similar conservative culture in their small town churches? On Wednesday, we asked what kinds of solidarity produce movements. Perhaps membership in overlapping networks rather than ideological affinities might be the factor that contributed to the political action that we read about in the Barcelon case.

Might such "networking" effects help explain why some lower middle class women end up joining the New Right? Which sorts of overlapping networks are relevant for future research, e.g., all the members of their church also belong to the movement? How would you decide whether a woman joined a movement because of her prior ideological values, or because of "networks" she belonged to? In answering this question, you may want to refer to your notes on the Knoke/Wisely Social Movements reading we did on 11/2.

8. Not all upper middle class women embraced feminism in the 1970s, some became "right wing" women like those Klatch studied. What might Verta Taylor say to explain why upper class women might have joined one movement as opposed to the other? Would she tell a story about contact with movement organizations, since she obviously thinks these are important "gatekeepers"? Where would this contact between a potential recruit and her recruiter have taken place, in the case of feminism, as opposed to the more elite members of the New Right?