Sociology 363
The Sociology of Culture
Alexandra Hrycak
Office: CC 223 Telephone ex. 7483
Office Hours: W & F 2:00-3:00 and by appointment
e-mail: Alexandra.Hrycak@reed.edu
Spring 2007 revision
This course introduces you to the sociology of culture. From the time of Durkheim and Weber, sociologists viewed culture as a coherent, unified system of meanings, beliefs and values. It was assumed that culture was imparted to all individuals within a given class or community in the same form through socialization and was enacted and understood by all in an unproblematic fashion. In the 1970s, such views came under attack, mainly in response to concerns about consumerism and the increasing dominance of corporations and oligopolistic corporate systems. The result was a revitalization of the field of sociology of culture. Our class will engage with concerns among sociologists of culture regarding how the dominance of large corporations in contemporary society affects the production as well as consumption of music, art, literature and news. Substantively, the course reviews first, the institutional dynamics involved in the commercialization and rationalization of culture and meaning in the twentieth century, and second, examines changing institutional dynamics within several different settings, in particular the music and book publishing industries as well as newspaper publishing. It situates cultural production and consumption within multi-organizational fields and adapts tools borrowed from other fields of sociology (in particular, the sociology of organizations) to study the mechanisms through which producers and consumers of culture are connected; and it uses qualitative methods such as content analysis and ethnography to study the strategies consumers and also, producers, adopt to select and use culture.
Prerequisites: Sociology 211.
Course objectives:
This course seeks to teach you how sociologists answer questions about the relationships between culture and society: What is the relationship between social change (particularly, changes in the economy, but also new patterns of settlement and lifestyle) and the kinds of culture people produce and consume? How is contemporary popular culture produced? What sets of institutions and actors are involved in shaping the cultural objects we consume? What and who influences our judgments? What role do tastemakers play in how people in different racial and socioeconomic positions craft their identity? How different is elite and non-elite cultural consumption -- are consumers of "trashy novels" really more passive and less original in their reading habits than are elite cultural consumers of hip hop music or experimental novels? How do newsmakers and activists shape our view of reality? We will answer these questions through discussions and close readings of sociological studies that fall under three main topics: 1) Methods for studying cultural meanings, 2) Production of culture, and 3) Professionals gatekeepers and cultural mediation.
Part I asks the questions, how does culture work? How do sociologists study culture? It introduces several prominent methods for understanding culture and for conducting sociological research on its impact. We briefly cover the main methods for researching cultural meaning, including interpretive analysis, content analysis, and structural semiotics. Part II initially asks you to leave meaning aside and treat culture like any other commodity. We review sociological work that places cultural products in the institutional matrix within which they are formed and disseminated. The main method we investigate is the “production of culture” approach. This method makes causal claims that can be empirically tested and can be generalized to other cultural data. It stresses the primacy of the structure of markets and corporations over cultural production. We then draw on case studies of popular music and popular fiction to apply this productionist perspective to examine how well it accounts for the forms of culture that are created, produced, distributed and consumed in the music and book publishing industries in the United States and Nigeria. Part III examines returns to the question of meaning, asking how the mass media serve as an ideological vehicle. While Part II addresses the formative influence of relationships among creators, distribution networks, cultural products and consumers, Part III focuses mainly on critics and other gatekeepers who shape how we interpret our broader social world. The central cases we analyze are drawn mainly from studies of the press.
Your main objective is to use this class is to write a serious research paper that focuses on one of the core puzzles around which the Sociology of culture has developed and utilizes sociological methods on a case chosen in consultation with me.
The following books are considered required. They can be purchased from the Reed College Bookstore and are available on reserve at the College library:
Victoria Alexander, Sociology of the Arts: Exploring Fine and Popular Forms
Griswold, Wendy, Bearing Witness
Richard A. Peterson, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity
In addition, all of the books and articles we are reading have been made available at the library reserve desk. Required articles (see below) are available through on-line journal archives (typically, JSTOR, but also EBSCOHOST). For your research paper, you will be encouraged to also use the on-line journal archive “Project Muse.” If you are not familiar with these resources, I will be glad to demonstrate how to use them.
Reading Assignments
PART I METHODS FOR STUDYING CULTURAL MEANINGS
Week 1 Introduction
Thursday
Tool kits? Cultural repertoire? Strategic action? How does culture work?
Swidler, Ann. 1986. “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies.” American Sociological Review 51:273-86. JSTOR
Crane, Diana, Fashion and its social agendas: Class, gender and identity in clothing, chapter 6 plus pp. 202-7
Homework exercise: choose a photo of a person wearing clothing (your own photo is OK, or select one from a book, magazine or newspaper) and make 4-5 copies for class. Be prepared 1) to distribute in class, 2) to use it to explain the gendering strategy adopted by the person in the photo 3) to use it to explain how the contrasting approaches Swidler and Crane identify would approach interpreting the clothing’s meanings.
Week 2 Interpretation, reflection and shaping approaches
Tuesday
Listen to the following: “Rappers Delight” Morning Edition audio Dec. 29, 2000
<http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1116242>Read the following:
Smitherman, Geneva. 1997. “"The Chain Remain the Same": Communicative Practices in the Hip Hop Nation.” Journal of Black Studies 28: 3-25. (JSTOR)Pescosolido, Bernice A., Elizabeth Grauerholz, and Melissa A. Milkie. 1997. “Culture and Conflict: The Portrayal of Blacks in U.S. Children's Picture Books through the Mid- and Late-Twentieth Century.” American Sociological Review 62: 443-464. (JSTOR)
Victoria Alexander. The Sociology of the Arts, chapter 2
Define and explain the relevance of the following terms and reply to the reading questions distributed in class.
Key words: reflection, content analysis; resistance
Thursday
Schudson, Michael. 1989. “How Culture Works: Perspectives from Media Studies on the Efficacy of Symbols.” Theory and Society 18: 153-180. (JSTOR)
Victoria Alexander. The Sociology of the Arts, chapters 3-4
Prepare for working on “in class” assignment: Content analysis of selected articles discussing hip-hop.Key words: dimensions of cultural power (retrievability, rhetorical force, resonance, institutional retention, resolution), “aura”, hegemony, cultural dope, cultural diamond, distribution and production systems
PART II THE PRODUCTION OF CULTURE:
CORPORATIONS AND MARKETS FOR POPULAR MUSIC & PULP FICTION
Week 3 MARKET CONCENTRATION: Homogenization? Innovation? Diversity?
Read:
Becker, Howard S. 1974. "Art as Collective Action," American Sociological Review 39 (JSTOR)Hirsch, Paul. 1972. “Processing Fads and Fashions: An Organization Set Analysis of Culture Industry Systems,” American Journal of Sociology 77: 639-659 (JSTOR)
Peterson, Richard and David Berger. 1975. “Cycles in Symbol Production: The Case of Popular Music” American Sociological Review 40: 158-173.
Lopes, Paul D. 1992. “Innovation and Diversity in the Popular Music Industry, 1969 to 1990.” American Sociological Review 57:56-71.
Victoria Alexander. The Sociology of the Arts, chapters 5-6
Paper one, Analysis of the main causal claims of the Production of Culture perspective, 5 pages, due in class Tuesday
Key words: art worlds, the production perspective, distribution system channels and constraints, production system channels and constraints, conventions, gatekeepers
Weeks 4-6 Revisiting classic debates on production, reception and agency
Week 4 Country Music Production: Innovation? Cultural appropriation?
Listen to:
“NPR: Scott Simon Essay: Hank Williams” <http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=902058>
“NPR: Hank Williams’ Last Ride” <http://www.npr.org/features/feature.php?wfId=1116315>
Hank Williams “Cold, Cold Heart,” <http://www.npr.org/programs/asc/archives/asc12/index.html#hank>Richard Peterson, Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity, Chapters 1, 2, 11, 12
Week 5 Production and Reception of Novels: Globalization? Cultural imperialism?
Victoria Alexander. The Sociology of the Arts, chapter 9
Wendy Griswold, Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers and the Novel in Nigeria, Chapters 1-4
Recommended: Griswold, Wendy. 1987. “A Methodological Framework for the Sociology of Culture.” Sociological Methodology 17:1-35. (JSTOR)Key words: globalization, the media imperialism thesis
Week 6 Consumption of Pulp Fiction: Patriarchal domination through pulp fiction?
Read the following:
Victoria Alexander. The Sociology of the Arts, chapter 10
READ Interactive Harlequin romance novel online
Douglas, Ann. “Soft-Porn Culture,” New Republic 8/30/80, Vol. 183 Issue 9, p25-30. [handout to be distributed Week 6, in class]
Janice Radway. Reading the Romance, chapters 1-2, 4Key words: reception approaches, popular culture, the dominant-hegemonic position, the oppositional position, horizon of expectations, “dominance games”
PART III
PROFESSIONAL GATEKEEPERS AND CULTURAL MEDIATION
Week 7 Nonprofits and the “business model”
Victoria Alexander, Sociology of the Arts, chapter 7
Alexander, Victoria D. “A delicate balance: museums and the market-place” Museum International; Apr99, Vol. 51 Issue 2, p29-34, 6p [EBSCOHOST]
Alexander, Victoria D. “Pictures at an Exhibition: Conflicting Pressures in Museums and the Display of Art.” American Journal of Sociology, Jan1996, Vol. 101 Issue 4, p797- [EBSCOHOST/JSTOR]
Robin Wagner-Pacifici and Barry Schwartz. "The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a Difficult Past," American Journal of Sociology Vol. 97, pp. 376-420"Maya Lin [videorecording] “A Strong Clear Vision" (excerpts about the conflict over the Vietnam War Memorial)
Key words: resource dependency, strategy approaches, and institutional theory
Week 8 SPRING BREAK
Week 9 The production of news
Tuchman, Gaye. 1972. "Objectivity as Strategic Ritual: An Examination of Newsmen's Notions of Objectivity." American Journal of Sociology 77 (4) (JSTOR)
Tuchman, Gaye. 1973. “Making News by Doing Work: Routinizing the Unexpected.” American Journal of Sociology 79: 110-131 (JSTOR)
Sigelman, Lee. 1973. “Reporting the News: An Organizational Analysis.” The American Journal of Sociology 79:132-151 (JSTOR)
Dan Berkowitz, Social Meaning of News (reserve), Chapter 11
http://www.ojr.org/ojr/future/1019174689.php [an essay on why online journalism is no longer that different from mainstream news]After or before doing the above readings, please watch, or listen to, an entire mainstream news broadcast and take notes on the roles played by the following: anchorman, reporters, interviewees – how are they depicted relative to the story lines you might draw from novels or film characters in a television drama or sitcom?
Week 10 Linkages between the community and national media
Dan Berkowitz, Social Meaning of News (reserve), Chapter 16
Einwohner, Rachel, “That’s How We Do Things Here: Local Culture and the Construction of Sweatshops and Anti-Sweatshop Activism in Two Campus Communities” Sociological Inquiry (JSTOR)
Please watch, or listen to, any alternative new broadcast you can think of, such as 90.7 FM KBOO. What types of “sources” are cited in mainstream versus “alternative” news?
Paper two (5-7 pages), due Friday in my Eliot Hall mailbox
Week 11 Research paper presentations
First class: Author presentations in small groups
Second class: Peer-editing presentations in small groups
Note: You must complete Author and Reader reports before each class.
Week 12 Social constructionism and the media
Hilgartner, Stephen and Charles L. Bosk. 1988 “The Rise and Fall of Social Problems: A Public Arenas Model.” The American Journal of Sociology 94 (1): 53-78.
Victoria Alexander, The Sociology of the Arts, chapters 12
Binder, Amy. 1993. "Constructing Racial Rhetoric." American Sociological Review 58:753-767.In-class frame analysis exercise: Bring in relevant examples of texts written by gatekeeper and be prepared to present them to the class and talk about progress on your final research paper. This session will try to help you prepare your data analysis, to be handed in next week.
Thursday class rescheduled
Week 13 Discussion of final papers
Griswold, Wendy. 1987. "The Fabrication of Meaning: Literary Interpretation in the United States, Great Britain, and the West Indies." American Journal of Sociology 92:1077-1117.
Shrum, Wesley. 1991. "Critics and Publics: Cultural Mediation in Highbrow and Popular Performing Arts." American Journal of Sociology 97:347-375.
FINAL PAPER DUE MONDAY, MAY 7