• List of Tables and Figures Preface Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Settling Accounts with 'Culture' Cultural Materialism Versus 'Received Marxism' From Criticism to Critique Social Formalism Towards a New Sociology of Culture Cultural Production and Means of Communication The Long Revolutions of Modernity Bibliography Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This study of Williams provides the most detailed account available of the sociological dimensions of his project. While including an overview of the central themes throughout his writings, it seeks especially to unlock his late sociology of culture. Previously overlooked aspects of Williams's 'mature' work are thus highlighted. These include: his critique of Birmingham cultural studies; his critique of conservative sociological orthodoxies; his debt to the work of the Frankfurt School; his use of an Adorno-like approach to 'cultural production'; his 'social formalist' alternative to formalism, structuralism, and post-structuralism; his later work on 'the media'. All these are related to his radical democratic vision. Comparisons are drawn between Williams's initiatives and contemporary sociologists such as Habermas and Bourdieu. The book is thus relevant to many contemporary theoretical debates and aims particularly to make Williams's sociological project available for concrete analysis within sociology, media studies and cultural studies.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Foreword
• 1. Culture
• 2. Language
• 3. How Did Languaculture Take Off So Fast?
• 4. Why Did It Stop Working?
• 5. The Hybrids
• 6. Social Perspective-Taking
• 7. SPT in Living Color References Index About the Author.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Culture: How to Make It Work in a World of Hybrids offers a compelling and original way to think about promoting connections across human differences in our global society. This book provides a fresh vision for the core anthropological concept of "culture, " one attuned to our contemporary global society where people receive hybrid cultural influences from many places in many ways. Providing a stimulating look at one of the most basic topics in social science, it is written without academic jargon, is rich in humor, and is replete with provocative examples, making it accessible to undergraduate students in anthropology and other social sciences as well as to scholars and non-academic readers in fields where the fostering of intercultural (or, as this book argues, inter-hybrid) communications is vital. Michael Agar explores two meanings of culture: culture as a label for the beliefs and practices of a specific group, and culture as marking the boundary between modern humans and our ancestors together with the rest of the animal kingdom (although this book acknowledges that that boundary has changed to a slippery slope). By looking back at the emergence of language and culture, through a broad range of the social and natural sciences, those human universals that make connections across human differences possible-as well as those that constrain that ability-are identified. This book concludes with a discussion of social perspective taking as a promising approach toward the development of a shared "languaculture" by any group of diverse-hybrid-humans who need to work together to accomplish whatever task is at hand.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• A note to the reader
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Landscape
• 3. A Whole Way of Life
• 4. Politics
• 5. Experience
• 6. Death
• 7. Two Cheers for Culture? Bibliography.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

What are the qualities and properties that make something cultural? What does claiming something as cultural allow us to do? Culture offers students a workable understanding of the category 'culture' and explores how the realm of the 'cultural' can be practically explored as a way of understanding the world. Ben Highmore provides a clear and robust defence of the productivity of cultural analysis in a media saturated world, while also instilling a sense of modesty in qualifying what can and can't be accomplished in the name of cultural analysis. With extensive examples and case studies throughout, the book demonstrates both the productivity and the limitations in orientating analysis to the cultural. A thought-provoking and engaging examination, Culture is an ideal introductory text for students of media and cultural studies.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Discours sur l'origine et les fondements du sociologisme
• Malaise dans la civilisation
• Traité sociologico-politique
• Le journalisme malade de la sociologie.

""À quoi bon la culture puisque le monde tient désormais en deux catégories : like et unlike ? C'est ainsi qu'on subit jusqu'à la nausée les dénonciations d'Edwy Plenel, les indignations d'Edgar Morin, la nostalgie totalitaire d'Alain Badiou ou les leçons de morale de Cécile Duflot, qui ont au moins un point commun avec Marine Le Pen : ils sont "antisystèmes". Le "système", c'est le mal. Ça ne veut rien dire, mais ça défoule. Le prêt-à-s'indigner médiatique, c'est la trop mince couche de glace sur laquelle titubent nos démocraties modernes. Il alerte sur la disparition des escargots, mais reste indifférent à la résurgence de l'antisémitisme. Qu'il s'agisse de la réintroduction des ours, d'un licenciement à La Poste ou du meurtre de Juifs perpétrés par un djihadiste dans une école, c'est le sociologisme qui, immanquablement, dit le bien et le mal, repris par les rédactions, les chroniqueurs, les humoristes, les parlementaires, sous les yeux de plus en plus indifférents des citoyens désespérés. Les autres points de vue sont insultés, ridiculisés, marginalisés, refoulés aux confins de l'hérésie. On n'a jamais vu dans l'histoire qu'une telle censure morale des points de vue puisse durer bien longtemps. Face à ce mur derrière lequel agonise le débat démocratique, Malaise dans l'inculture propose la réhabilitation du marteau-piqueur.""--P. [4] of cover.

• Foreword: A new perspective. Terry Nichols Clark, University of Chicago Preface: An invitation to think about culture: An institutional approach
• Chapter 1: Sociologists and Culture
• Chapter 2: Culture's Publics
• Chapter 3: Explaining Social and Cultural Hierarchies
• Chapter 4: The Question of Democratization of Culture
• Chapter 5: Contemporary Reorientations
• Chapter 6: The Work of the Institution: The Democratization of Culture in the Light of the Legacy of the TNP
• Chapter 7: The Influence of Mediation Apparatuses on the Structuring of Cultural Practices: The Pompidou Center's "Correspondents"
• Chapter 8: The Discourse of the "Failure" of the Democratization of Culture: Sociological Observation or Ideological Assertion?
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Sociology of Culture and of Cultural Practices traces the development of the sociology of culture from its origins (Weber and Simmel) and examines the major trends that have emerged in this branch of sociology. It raises issues of cultural hierarchy, of distinction, and of legitimate culture and mass culture, and focuses on new areas of research, including the role of institutions, the reception of works of art, aesthetic experience, and emancipation through art and presents a synthesis of research and debate from France and the United States. In attempting to understand the work carried out by cultural institutions, Laurent Fleury highlights the power they are capable of exercising: cultural institutions define the spaces in which collective identities, cultural experiences, social practices and ways of relating to art are expressed and crystallized. The power of cultural institutions is often ignored, and the fact that they inform activities, govern practices and encourage individuals to develop a degree of familiarity with culture is unfamiliar to many. Highlighting this instituting process helps to counteract the determinism of certain ideas based on a rigid conception of the habitus and underlines the transformative power of cultural institutions. The book introduces the political variable into the sociology of culture. Case studies of Vilar's Theatre National Populaire ("National Popular Theater") and the Pompidou Center demonstrate that it is possible to realize the ideal of the democratization of culture, which leads to the conclusion that cultural practices can be politically instituted. In examining the ideal of the democratization of culture, and, especially, the possibility of realizing such an ideal, Fleury describes how cultural inequalities can be overcome and shows how culture can fulfil an emancipatory function.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Preface to the Second Edition-- Translator's Introduction: What Has Never Been Seen--
• 1. Culture and Barbarism--
• 2. Science Judged by the Criteria of Art--
• 3. Science Alone: Technology--
• 4. The Sickness of Life--
• 5. Ideologies of Barbarism--
• 6. Practices of Barbarism--
• 7. The Destruction of the University-- Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This is the first English-language translation of Michel Henry's compelling philosophical critique of capitalism, technology and education. "Barbarism" represents a critique, from the perspective of Michel Henry's unique philosophy of life, of the increasing potential of science and technology to destroy the roots of culture and the value of the individual human being. For Henry, barbarism is the result of a devaluation of human life and culture that can be traced back to the spread of quantification, the scientific method and technology over all aspects of modern life. The book develops a compelling critique of capitalism, technology and education and provides a powerful insight into the political implications of Henry's work. It also opens up a new dialogue with other influential cultural critics, such as Marx, Heidegger and Husserl. First published in French in 1987, "Barbarism" aroused great interest as well as virulent criticism. Today the book reveals what for Henry is a cruel reality: the tragic feeling of powerlessness experienced by the cultured person. Above all he argues for the importance of returning to philosophy in order to analyse the root causes of barbarism in our world. "The Continuum Impacts" are seminal works by the finest minds in contemporary thought, including Adorno, Badiou, Derrida, Heidegger and Deleuze. They are works of such power that they changed the philosophical and cultural landscape when they were first published and continue to resonate today. They represent landmark texts in the fields of philosophy, popular culture, politics and theology.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

Culture is an all-pervasive concept and phenomenon that exerts influence on our social lives in many different ways, not least in business and working life. Taking a discursive and practice-related - approach to culture and intercultural collaboration, this book offers insight into a number of situations and incidents from the world of business and public organisations in which ways of talking about culture play a salient role in the development of collaboration and the shaping of identities and social roles. Thus, through the highlighting and discussion of cases from various professional contexts, the book aims at providing an understanding of the mechanisms at play when we meet, talk and work with people from other cultures, while suggesting how opportunities may be seized and challenges met. The book is comprised of ten case studies, which provide theoretical, methodological, and practical perspectives on the interplay between discourse, culture and collaboration, and the effect of this on identity formation and the construction of social roles. This involves the presentation and discussion of these concepts in various organisational settings such as large cross-border and multinational businesses, the public health sector, education and the European Union. The authors are scholars from Danish universities and business schools who have contributed substantially to the development of the field through the publication and dissemination of research in international journals and with international publishers. The book is for readers(scholars, students and professionals alike) who take an interest in cultural issues and the way they are constructed in professional settings.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Chapter One: Alienation and Anomia as a Basis for Theorizing Culture Chapter Two: Knowledge-Based Affect and the Pleasures of Order Chapter Three: Putting Our Selves in Order: An Epistemological Identity Theory Chapter Four: The Social Pursuit of Meaningfulness: An Epistemological Theory of Culture Chapter Five: The Pursuit of Meaningfulness Through: Epistemological Conversation Chapter Six: Conditions for Community and Culture Chapter Seven: Network Position, Knowledge-Based Affect, and Cultural Manipulation Chapter Eight: Conclusion.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This book is about our appreciation for order and meaningfulness. It offers a new theory of that feeling inspired by Durkheim and Marx, then derives other theories to answer a range of questions: why we like to make ourselves orderly (in Chapter Three's theory of identity and commitment), why create shared orders of meaning (in Chapter Four's theory of culture); how we create those orders collaboratively through conversation (Chapter Five), and also through narrative, symbolic, and ritualistic formats (Chapter Six), and how orders of meaning are created in response to social structural position (Chapter Seven). In the end, this book shows how our sense of order both integrates and segregates us into productive associations with one another. And so, Explaining Culture is able to explain two patterns common to all growth: expansion and centralization. We see how our desire for novelty disperses us for resources, and that for familiarity draws us together to create meaningful order from them. Indeed, this book may offer a new approach to answering one of the most basic questions in both social and natural science: the question of how organic systems like society are created and maintained. Explaining Culture is an important new step in answering our most basic questions about culture, social interaction, and the emergence of order. The unique contribution of this work is in identifying the determinants of meaningfulness, and the ways we make the world meaningful by ordering it. Our valuing of order is rarely mentioned in sociology, but this book shows how it is the key influence in how we order ourselves and each other.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Introduction Culture, lifeworlds and globalization, John R. Hall, Laura Grindstaff, and Ming-Cheng Lo Part I: Sociological Programs of cultural analysis
• 1. The Strong Program: origins, achievements, and prospects, Jeffrey C. Alexander and Philip Smith
• 2. 'Culture Studies' and the culture complex, Tony Bennett
• 3. The subaltern, the postcolonial, and cultural sociology, Raka Ray and Smitha Radhakrishnan
• 4. The cultural turn: language, globalization, and media, Mark Poster
• 5. Media evolution and cultural change, Joshua Meyrowitz
• 6. Re-imagining critique in cultural sociology, Nancy Weiss Hanrahan and Sarah S. Amsler Part II: Theories and methodologies in cultural analysis
• 7. Sociology and cultural studies: an interrupted dialogue, Nick Couldry
• 8. Lost in translation: feminist media studies in the new millennium, Suzanna Danuta Walters
• 9. What is 'the relative autonomy of culture'?, Jeffrey K. Olick
• 10. The cultural sociological experience of cultural objects, Robin Wagner-Pacifici
• 11. Formal modes of culture, John W. Mohr and Craig M. Rawlings
• 12. Discourse and narrative, Tammy Smith
• 13. The mechanisms of cultural reproduction: explaining the puzzle of persistence, Orlando Patterson Part III: Aesthetics, ethics, and cultural legitimacy
• 14. Social aesthetics, Ben Highmore
• 15. History, sublime, terror: notes on culture's failure and the social catastrophe, Gene Ray
• 16. Modern and postmodern, Peter Beilharz
• 17. New sociological narratives of morality under modernity: from subtraction to multiplicity, Mary Jo Neitz, Kevin McElmurry, and Daniel Winchester
• 18. Demystifying authenticity in the sociology of culture, David Grazian
• 19. Carnival culture, Karen Bettez Halnon Part IV: Individuals/groups/identities/and performances
• 20. Group cultures and subcultures, Gary Fine
• 21. Culture and self, Gary Gregg
• 22. From public multiculturalism to private multiculturality?, Rebecca Chiyoko King-O'Riain
• 23. Bodies, beauty, and fashion, Maxine Leeds Craig
• 24. Gender performance: cheerleaders, drag kings, and the rest of us, Joshua Gamson and Laura Grindstaff
• 25. Rituals, repertoires, and performances in post-modernity: a cultural sociological account, Ronald N. Jacobs Part V: Culture and stratification
• 26. Cultural capital and tastes: the persistence of Distinction, David Wright
• 27. Access to pleasure: aesthetics, social inequality, and the structure of culture production, Ann Swindler
• 28. Status distinctions and boundaries, Murray Milner, Jr.
• 29. Culture and stratification, Omar Lizardo
• 30. The conundrum of race in sociological analyses of culture, Alford A. Young, Jr.
• 31. Culture: liquid-modern adventures of an idea, Zygmunt Bauman Part VI: Making/using culture
• 32. Environment and culture, Trevor Hogan, Divya Anand, and Kirsten Henderson
• 33. Culture and the build environment: between meaning and money, David Gartman
• 34. The rise and fall of cyberspace, or, how cyberspace turned inside out, Martin Hand
• 35. Public institutions of 'high' culture, Victoria D. Alexander
• 36. Contemporary art and cultural complexity: the case of Chelsea, David Halle and Kim Robinson
• 37. Pop culture institutions: from production to aesthetics, Marshall Battani
• 38. The rise of new amateurs: popular music, digital technology, and the fate of cultural production, Nick Prior
• 39. Consumption and critique, Alan Warde Part VII: Cultures of work and professions
• 40. Work cultures, Robin Leidner
• 41. Cultures of service, Eileen M. Otis
• 42. Cultures of carework, carework across cultures, Pei-Chia Lan
• 43. Science cultures, Alex Preda
• 44. Medical cultures, Mary-Jo DelVecchio Good and Seth Hannah
• 45. Legal culture and cultures of legality, Susan S. Silbey Part VIII: Political cultures
• 46. Making things political, Nina Eliasoph and Paul Lichterman
• 47. The cultural constitution of publics, Yifat Gutman and Jeffrey C. Goldfarb
• 48. Cultures of democracy: a civil-society approach, Ming-Cheng Lo
• 49. National culture, national identity, and the culture(s) of the nation, Genevieve Zubrzycki
• 50. Nationalism as the cultural foundation of modern experience, Liah Greenfeld and Eric Malczewski
• 51. The cultural of the political: towards a cultural sociology of state formation, Xiaohong Xu and Philip Gorski
• 52. The 'soul of the citizen, ' the invention of the social: governing mentalities, Jackie Orr Part IX: Global cultures, global processes
• 53. Consumerism and self-representation in an era of global capitalism, Gary G. Hamilton and Donald Fels
• 54. The political economy of cultural production, Vincent Mosco
• 55. Analyzing culture through globalization, Carla Freeman
• 56. Globalization and cultural production, Denise D. Bielby
• 57. Media technologies, cultural mobility, and the nation-state, Scott McQuire
• 58. Tourism and Culture, Kevin Fox Gotham Part X: Cultural processes and change
• 59. Culture and collective memory: comparative perspectives, Barry Schwartz
• 60. From collective memory to commemoration, Hiro Saito
• 61. Movement cultures, Francesca Polletta
• 62. Cultural movements and the sociology of culture: the case of political consumerism, Sam Binkley
• 63. Migration and cultures, Yen Le Espiritu
• 64. Cultural diffusion, Elihu Katz
• 65. Cosmopolitanism and the clash of civilizations, Bryan S. Turner.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

The Handbook of Cultural Sociology provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary scholarship in sociology and related disciplines focused on the complex relations of culture to social structures and everyday life. With sixty-five essays written by scholars from around the world, the book draws diverse approaches to cultural sociology into a dialogue that charts new pathways for research on culture in a global era. Contributing scholars address vital concerns that relate to classic questions as well as emergent issues in the study of culture. Topics include cultural and social theory, politics and the state, social stratification, community, aesthetics, lifestyle, and identity. In addition, the authors explore developments central to the constitution and reproduction of culture, such as power, technology, and the organization of work. This book is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in diverse subfields within Sociology, as well as Cultural Studies, Media and Communication, and Postcolonial Theory.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Chapter 1. Serious Play
• Chapter 2. "Too Many Discos and Too Many Lovers"
• Chapter 3. The Rebirth of Tragedy
• Chapter 4. Scandal and Impurity in Sports Heroism
• Chapter 5. God Games
• Chapter 6. "A New Kind of Fear"
• Chapter 7. On Cultural Sociology as a Way of Life.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

Impure Play is a cultural sociology of some controversial aspects of contemporary popular culture. Alexander Riley harnesses a range of cultural theories on transgression, the sacred, and tragedy in order to make sense of the emergence of realms of popular culture where violence and death have a prominent role. The range of popular cultural spheres explored is wide. Topics described in various chapters include gangsta rap and death metal music, popular fiction called racist and pornographic by some critics, violent video games, sports scandals involving sex and violence, and online sites specializing in images of violence and death. Instead of moralizing about these cultural products as much media commentary and even the work of many scholars does, Riley frames this cultural transgression as a structural response to shifts in the broader American culture and especially in American religious culture. An effort is made to read these cultural practices as texts that tie in to broader cultural narratives of tragedy and impurity and that therefore have an essential meaning-making function to play in contemporary American society.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)

• Preface to the First Edition: About this Book.Preface to the Second Edition.Acknowledgments.Introduction: What is Culture? What is Cultural Theory?.1 Culture in Classical Social Theory.2 Culture and Social Integration in the Work of Talcott Parsons.3 Culture as Ideology in Western Marxism.4 Culture as Action in Symbolic Interactionism, Phenomenology, and Ethnomethodology.5 The Durkheimians: Ritual, Classification, and the Sacred.6 Structuralism and the Semiotic Analysis of Culture.7 The Poststructural Turn.8 Culture, Structure, and Agency: Three Attempts at Synthesis.9 British Cultural Studies.10 The Production and Reception of Culture.11 Culture as Text: Narrative and Hermeneutics.12 Psychoanalytic Approaches to Culture and the Self.13 The Cultural Analysis of Postmodernism and Postmodernity.14 Postmodern and Poststructural Critical Theory.15 Cultural Theories of Race and Gender.16 The Body in Cultural Theory.References.Index.
• (source: Nielsen Book Data)

This second edition of "Cultural Theory" provides a concise introduction to cultural theory, placing major figures, traditional concepts, and contemporary themes within a sharp conceptual framework. This title provides a student-friendly introduction to what can often be a complex field of study. It updates the first edition in response to reader feedback and to the changing nature of the field. It includes additional coverage of theorists from the classical period to include Nietzsche and DuBois. It introduces entirely new chapters on race and gender theory, and the body. It considers themes that have become more important in theoretical activity in recent years such as computers and virtual reality, cosmopolitanism, and performance theory. It draws on theories and theorists from continental Europe as well as the English-speaking world.
(source: Nielsen Book Data)