Showing papers in "Cultural Sociology in 2012"
TL;DR: The authors assesses the implications of these difficulties and goes on to outline the concept of the omnivore thesis in respect of music, including commonly made assumptions about the sanctity of musical genre categories and hierarchies of cultural legitimacy, the reliability of decontextualized expressions of taste for disclosing realworld cultural practices, and questions about the deployment of cultural capital.
Abstract: In recent years the omnivore thesis has come to take centre stage in debates surrounding cultural taste and its social structural co-ordinates. On the assumption that tastes for music are reflective of people’s tastes in other cultural domains, the matter of musical preference has received substantial attention within omnivore-related empirical research. Yet while the ongoing omnivore debate has seen the concept’s original formulation undergo revision and refinement in light of new findings, a number of substantive and theoretical difficulties continue to receive inadequate attention, especially in respect of music. These difficulties include commonly made assumptions about the sanctity of musical genre categories and hierarchies of cultural legitimacy, the reliability of decontextualized expressions of taste for disclosing real-world cultural practices, and questions about the deployment of cultural capital. This article assesses the implications of these difficulties and goes on to outline the concept o...
72 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the underground hip-hop scene in Chicago and examine how outsiders negotiate participation within a subculture when they are deemed inauthentic by that subculture's insiders.
Abstract: How do outsiders negotiate participation within a subculture when they are deemed inauthentic by that subculture’s insiders? To explore this question, I examine the underground hip-hop scene in Chi...
70 citations
TL;DR: The cosmopolitan has re-emerged as a popular figure within the social sciences, primarily as a means of addressing (the potential for) new forms of experience and sociability in an increasingly mob...
Abstract: The cosmopolitan has re-emerged as a popular figure within the social sciences, primarily as a means of addressing (the potential for) new forms of experience and sociability in an increasingly mob...
50 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the limits of knowing and the persistence and intensification of ignorance are discussed in the context of knowledge society, and a discussion about the persistence of ignorance is presented.
Abstract: Recent debates about the knowledge society have furthered awareness of the limits of knowing and, in turn, have fuelled sociological debates about the persistence and intensification of ignorance. ...
41 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a theoretical and empirical exploration of public relations practice using a Bourdieuian framework is presented, and the importance of the public relations industry as an important mechanism through which society and culture are formed.
Abstract: This article sets out an argument for paying greater sociological attention to the public relations industry as an important mechanism through which society and culture are formed. It offers a theoretical and empirical exploration of public relations practice which begins to address this lacuna, using a Bourdieuian framework. After introducing the public relations industry and cultural intermediation, arguments are made for the centrality of discursive struggle in Bourdieu’s work, drawing on other theorists as necessary to make explicit the logic that puts language and discourse at the centre of the struggle for symbolic power. This clarifies the importance of public relations as an object of sociological analysis. Bourdieu’s conception of practice is then reflected on and applied to public relations, before the findings from an exploratory case study are considered. The article concludes by reviewing implications for future theoretical and empirical work in this area.
39 citations
TL;DR: The Spiral Jetty, an earthwork sculpture created by the American artist Robert Smithson, came into being as discussed by the authors, and the morphogenetic process through which the sculpture came to be.
Abstract: The objective of this article is to open the 'black box' of artistic production in order to describe, in minute detail, culture in the making, that is, the process through which cultural forms grow into being and are materially accomplished. I will do so through the study of the morphogenetic process through which the Spiral Jetty, an earthwork sculpture created by the American artist Robert Smithson, came into being. This study will show that artistic production constitutes an irreducible form of material practice which cannot be adequately understood as an individual activity or as an activity guided or constrained by 'external' social factors. As I shall argue, the attention to the material practice of artistic production reveals a much needed insight into the practices, materials and processes through which culture is actually produced and materially accomplished.
33 citations
TL;DR: The sociology of art tends to reduce the cultural product to an outcome of social causality as discussed by the authors, and the aim of this paper is to develop a cultural sociological approach which inc...
Abstract: The sociology of art tends to reduce the cultural product to an outcome of social causality. As an alternative, this article pursues the aim of developing a cultural sociological approach which inc...
32 citations
TL;DR: The authors describe culture as a suture for the material real of capitalism, but often that reality is itself signified in such a way as to supply a hegemonic power with its own justification.
Abstract: Culture is often described as a suture for the material real of capitalism, but often that reality is itself signified in such a way as to supply a hegemonic power with its own justification. Using...
27 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors presented data pertaining to cross-national comparisons between France and the United States, as well as relevant global market figures for US films by genre and showed that most US comedies that are successful in the States, like most other genres of US films, do and are exported.
Abstract: While the dominance of the Hollywood major studios in the global film market is a well-known fact, less is known about the patterns of exportability by film genre and by nation. Here I present data pertaining to cross-national comparisons between France and the United States, as well as relevant global market figures for US films by genre. The findings challenge the assumption that specific genres, notably comedy, do not export. Rather, it appears that most US comedies that are successful in the States, like most other genres of US films, do and are exported. The case for France, however, appears quite different, insofar as the top films, which were overwhelmingly also comedies, did not export. Exports in the French case were more characteristic of niche marketing: namely quality nature films that could be easily translated, and films that fit specific cultural expectations (Barnier and Moine, 2002; Frodon, 1998). This research also suggests that the traditional confrontation of theoretical approaches (cu...
26 citations
TL;DR: While cultural capital is broadly documented as an important mechanism of class reproduction, there is less understanding of cultural capital within black middle-class families as mentioned in this paper, which may explain the lack of cultural understanding.
Abstract: While cultural capital is broadly documented as an important mechanism of class reproduction, there is less understanding of cultural capital within black middle-class families. This paper addresse...
26 citations
TL;DR: An Art/Ethnography binary informs a range of discursive engagements with Australian Aboriginal art as discussed by the authors and is usually associated with colonialism, primitivism and regarded as circumscribing th...
Abstract: An Art/Ethnography binary informs a range of discursive engagements with Australian Aboriginal art. Ethnography is usually associated with colonialism, primitivism and regarded as circumscribing th...
TL;DR: This article examined how the comparison of 9/11 to the attacks on Pearl Harbor has led to varying meanings of the events and the nation, based on the employment of various genre-based narratives and metanarratives.
Abstract: Narrative analyses in the neo-Durkheimian tradition have tended to focus mostly on event-specific narratives in civil society in order to study meanings, strategies, and codes surrounding those events. Analysis of comparisons between the 9/11 attacks and those at Pearl Harbor can build on this tradition by expanding the discursive locations from which to understand the construction of meanings in civil society. Through examining specific analogies, narratives, and metanarratives, I show how the comparison of 9/11 to the attacks on Pearl Harbor has led to varying meanings of 9/11 based on the employment of various genre based narratives and metanarratives of the events and the nation.
TL;DR: This paper reviewed Howard S Becker's work on cultural production and found that the art world offers a powerful way to study the collective action of cultural production in art worlds and explained why language use, or art words, offers us a power to study collective action.
Abstract: This article reviews Howard S Becker’s work on cultural production It suggests that Becker’s influential framework for analysing cultural production, the art world, leaves us with one important but unanswered question: the question of methodology Exploring this question by a close reading of Becker’s writings and noting recent uses of the art world framework in combination with social psychological methods, the article explains why language use, or art words, offers us a powerful way to study the collective action of cultural production in art worlds
TL;DR: The authors examines the "intercultural dialogue" paradigm to ask whether its conceptualization is flexible enough to encompass the challenges of an increasingly globalised and increasingly diverse world, as conveyed through EU discourses.
Abstract: This paper examines the ‘intercultural dialogue’ paradigm to ask whether, as conveyed through EU discourses, its conceptualization is flexible enough to encompass the challenges of an increasingly ...
TL;DR: The authors investigate which kind of educational ethos would be most appropriate for a cosmopolitan Europe and uncover the necessary ambivalences in a educative practice that is fearful of silencing the Other and cancelling complex pedagogic relationships, while at the same time wishing to uphold democratic versions of citizenship.
Abstract: This article seeks to investigate which kind of educational ethos would be most appropriate for a cosmopolitan Europe. It rejects the idea of the world citizen and narrow forms of nationalism for a genuinely European cosmopolitanism that seeks to learn the lessons of Europe’s often violent past while seeking to develop an education that is implicitly concerned with questions of democracy and human rights in its contents as well as its practice. Drawing on critical debates that inform the work of Adorno, Giroux, Levinas, Nussbaum and others, the article seeks to uncover the necessary ambivalences in a educative practice that is fearful of silencing the Other and cancelling complex pedagogic relationships, while at the same time wishing to uphold democratic versions of citizenship.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors raise the importance of Bourdieu's cultural intermediary and the practice of spatial narratives as concerns for the study of culture, and refit Wendy Griswold's (1987a) 1987 framework for a sociology of culture in order to better suit social actors located within a circuit of culture.
Abstract: Through their work, walking tour guides make the abstract histories and cultural flows of cities present and tangible for their followers – merging physical spaces, mental maps of information, and experiences through a kind of spatial storytelling. This social actor’s position in regard to consumption and production thus lends itself to conceptualization as a pivotal cultural worker. To better understand this condition, this article has two interrelated goals: first, to raise the importance of Bourdieu’s ‘cultural intermediary’ and the practice of spatial narratives as concerns for the study of culture, and, second, to refit Wendy Griswold’s (1987a) 1987 framework for a sociology of culture in order to better suit social actors located within a ‘circuit of culture’. Through the study of walking guides, this article places Bourdieu’s provocative concept in dialogue with a clear epistemological framework.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explain why after the 1978 assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk, it is the latter who has achieved world recognition, rather than the former.
Abstract: This article sets out to explain why after the 1978 assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and city supervisor Harvey Milk, it is the latter who has achieved world recognition. At the ...
TL;DR: In the past three decades, human remains in museum collections have become the focus of contestation as discussed by the authors, and the literature on contestation in the UK has been surveyed extensively in the past few decades.
Abstract: In the past three decades, human remains in museum collections have become the focus of contestation. This paper analyses the construction of the issue in Britain. The literature on contestation in...
TL;DR: In this paper, an interview with the eminent British sociologist, theorist of leisure and stardom, publisher and critic of cultural studies, Chris Rojek is presented, with a focus on the relationship between his academic and publishing work.
Abstract: This article is an interview with the eminent British sociologist, theorist of leisure and stardom, publisher and critic of cultural studies Chris Rojek. It begins with an introduction that outlines his career trajectory and key publications, and puts some flesh on his particular way of doing sociology. The interview itself falls into three broad parts. First, Rojek answers some questions about the source of his sociological imagination, his formative work on the sociology of leisure, and the relationship between his academic and publishing work. The second and third parts intersect one another. The second concentrates on Rojek’s key ideas and how these relate to some important themes and issues in cultural sociology and the study of leisure. The third part of the interview explores some shifts in Rojek’s work and how these are connected to major currents in cultural sociology and the demise of leisure studies. The interview concludes with reflections on the function and responsibilities of sociology today.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the work of these artists constituted a critical response to historical events, and they invoke Adorno's argument concerning the critical dimension of aesthetic experience for understanding this response.
Abstract: This article presents fieldwork that I conducted on the response of several New York artists to the events of 9/11 and the representation of these events in the mainstream media. Through interviews, analysis of works of art, and the development of a theoretical framework derived from both Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin, I argue that the work of these artists constituted a critical response to historical events. I explain how Adorno’s argument concerning the critical dimension of aesthetic experience is useful for understanding this response. In addition, I invoke Adorno’s dialectical understanding of art’s ‘dual-character’ in order to explain how critical art is possible within an art world dominated by market concerns. I also explore Walter Benjamin’s contentions concerning the democratizing capacities of new media and the withering of the aura as an important corrective to Adorno’s narrow focus on modernist formal development.
TL;DR: In this article, a hierarchy of particular Irish step dance practices emerged through controlled disruptions within and among dance academies and regulatory organizations in the social field of Irish step dancing, sanctioning modified forms of Irishness believed to be most competitive in Ireland.
Abstract: While connecting individual ethnic practices with global identity projects remains challenging, ethnic organizations provide a possible place where the negotiation and enactment of both occur. This article investigates how organized performances and competitions of symbolic white ethnic identity become structurally similar at a global level while also at the same time integrating disruptions at the local level. Specifically, the author argues that a hierarchy of particular Irish step dance practices emerged through controlled disruptions within and among dance academies and regulatory organizations in the social field of Irish step dance, sanctioning modified forms of Irishness believed to be most competitive in Ireland. This article examines the role that organizations play in sanctioning world models and controlling disruptions in the everyday symbolic enactment of Irish identity.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors look at the justifications embedded in two seemingly disparate critiques, one from Clement Greenberg dating from the 1950s and another by Michael Kimmelman from the 2000s, and reveal how boundaries between art and its public have been generated and maintained over the years.
Abstract: Art critics straddle the boundaries between art worlds and the public. To legitimate and maintain this role, critics must be able to justify their standing as judges of the creation and display of art. This article draws on Boltanski’s and Thevenot’s work on the sorts of justifications which arise when joint action is interrupted. Specifically, we look at the justifications embedded in two seemingly disparate critiques – one from Clement Greenberg dating from the 1950s and another by Michael Kimmelman from the 2000s. An investigation of the justifications used within these critiques – separated by over five decades – reveals how boundaries between art and its public have been generated and maintained over the years.
TL;DR: This article investigated how Irishness is discursively constructed by advertising practitioners working in Ireland, focusing particularly on their tendentiousness and their tendency to define themselves as "foreigners" and "outsiders".
Abstract: Drawing on interviews with advertising practitioners working in Ireland, this article investigates how Irishness is discursively constructed by these workers and focuses particularly on their tende...
TL;DR: This paper used the empirical lens of biography and the artistic performances of moral self-incrimination in order to understand the collective moral dilemmas posited by the West German students' proclamation of innocence, their position to maintain a moral high ground in their struggle.
Abstract: The West German student movements, the student generation of Anselm Kiefer, were a part of the West German awakening as to their collective guilt for the atrocities committed in the Second World War – the Germans-as-perpetrators debate. They entered this debate with a proclamation of innocence, which Anselm Kiefer did not share. In this article I use the empirical lens of biography and the artistic performances of moral self-incrimination in order to understand the collective moral dilemmas posited by the West German students’ proclamation of innocence, their position to maintain a moral high ground in their struggle. Kiefer provoked the German Left by recovering the horror of the Holocaust that the Germans in the post-war period (the 1968 students included) mostly wanted just to go away. Movement artist scholars not only challenge the wider society with their truth-claims, they challenge the movement itself, extending the cognitive boundaries for what can be acknowledged at a given moment in the movement...
TL;DR: This article analyzed the social conditions that lead up to modes of entry into the field of art, as experienced by two of the most representative artists of the first and second avant-garde: Marcel Duchamp and Jackson Pollock.
Abstract: This article analyses the social conditions that lead up to modes of entry into the field of art, as experienced by two of the most representative artists of the first and second avant-garde: Marcel Duchamp and Jackson Pollock. Differences in the degree to which the two artists possessed social and cultural capital, born of their respective trajectories, influenced the mediating structure each employed. In contrast to Pollock, Duchamp did not have a profuse or organized network of intermediaries. He was able to convert capital he inherited into a distancing of himself from opportunities made easily available to him. Duchamp achieved a high degree of formal experimentation, opting not to expose his work to the demands of the field of modern art. Both artists embody ideal types, between which many avant-garde artists of the first half of the 20th century would fluctuate. While Duchamp was to be considered the great precursor of contemporary art, Pollock would occupy the place of prototypical avant-garde artist.
TL;DR: McStay as mentioned in this paper describes key trends in the area of digital advertising and explores arguments surrounding conceptualizations of digital media, and provides more consistent answers to the reflective and demanding questions that hang over each chapter.
Abstract: The book seeks a creative blend; a precarious balance of critique and admiring exposition of recent developments in the industry. The introduction states two main aims: first, to describe key trends in the area of digital advertising; second, to reflect upon and explore arguments surrounding conceptualizations of digital media. These aims are broadly achieved. Indeed a narrower focus might have offered a less useful survey of the phenomena under discussion – while delivering more consistent answers to the reflective and demanding questions that hang over each chapter. Information, relationships and commerce are transformed as analogue media give way to digital variants – as new media are born. How to think about these emergent environments and new relations? These media inter-connect, and connect us, re-connect and disconnect; friends reunited, loneliness redistributed and amplified across networks (old, new and renewed). It all appears to amount to a (virtual and global) ‘society’ and new ‘cultures’ – but without a sociology to help us understand and reflect. The relatively stabilized typologies upon which social analysis of advertising has been based (media, audience, research, creativity, critique) confront the dynamic morphologies of the digital media environment. We have a version of what one ad industry commentator has called ‘Chaos 2.0’. On the other hand, we hear little about what has not changed. A single book cannot readily make sense of ‘it all’. Indeed the book struggles to contain the rich wealth of interesting examples that pile up, chapter by chapter. The questions for discussion are at times enormous in scope – and hard to answer. Perhaps these questions are the best alternative to the assertion of a too confident analytic point of view. The book is primarily a textbook but would certainly have a place in providing reading material for seminar discussions opening up connections between cultural theory and media practices, and as recommended reading, alongside, for instance, Spurgeon (2008) and some chapters in more recent general discussion of advertising (such as in Powell et al., 2009). As such, it does well to open up examples and stimulate reflective considerations. The immediacy of the book is its major strength. Appropriately the book’s tone is, at times, a bit ‘bloggy’ (if that’s a word). But given the size, implications and dynamism of the phenomena McStay seeks to capture, the at times semifinalized, rich and provisional feel of the book is no bad thing.
TL;DR: Chapman as discussed by the authors pointed out that American comics posed significant problems for British publishers to the extent that they tried to contain that threat by incorporating it into their fare and catching readers as they made the transition from children's comics to adolescent comics.
Abstract: the separate divisions were rationalized. In the mid 1960s the Olhams division published a line of comic books with titles like Wham, Pow, and Smash. These comics combined British content, by former Beano artist Leo Baxendale, with reprints of American material. These comics suggest that American comics posed significant problems for British publishers to the extent that they tried to contain that threat by incorporating it into their fare and catching readers as they made the transition from children’s comics to adolescent comics. When that effort failed, it seems that British publishers had to look for other models to address the American threat. These industry machinations better explain the context of something Chapman pointed to: ‘the American influence on 2000 AD can be seen as a strategy to attract readers of American comic books’ (p. 149). Entitling the book British Comics in the absence of a sustained discussion of Beano and Dandy, two of the four British comics in continuous publication along with 2000 AD and Judge Dredd, is at the very least a poor title choice. In the introduction he does at least acknowledge a bias towards boys’ adventure comics over funnies and girls’ comics (p. 14). Chapman makes some stunning errors. He for instance thinks that most American comic books like Detective Comics were published quarterly in the 1930s and 1940s (p. 10), when in fact both the latter and Action Comics were published monthly. G.I. Joe was not a 1950s war comic but a toy introduced in 1964 (p. 82). He confuses two different Captain Marvels, the Fawcett character in the 1940s and the Marvel Comics character in the 1960s (p. 104). Wonder Woman did not fight Nazis as Chapman thinks (p. 172). Stan Lee was not an artist but a writer (p. 174). Riot Grrrls were not a band but a social movement associated with the band Bikini Kill who did not, as he thinks, dress akin to the title character of the Tank Girl strip (p. 236). This discomfort with things American may explain his blind spot in understanding a contributing cause of transformation in British comics.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a survey of anthropologists' work on cross-cultural sexuality, focusing on the ways in which they have contributed to explaining localized expressions of sex and sexuality alongside sexual politics and strategies.
Abstract: well. The book is a survey of a field rather than a critical evaluation of it. And while it is a vast improvement over the catalogues on cross-cultural sexuality that it deservedly will supplant, the extensive referencing of scores of anthropologists’ work quickly becomes exhausting. The more one reads, the more one wishes that the authors had used their familiarity with all the studies they cite to intervene in the field, and not just summarize it. As field surveys go, this is an excellent one. The prose is crisp, there is little jargon in the book, and the examples are well chosen and illustrative. The topics are wide ranging – from the sexual significance of hair, to the erotics of tango, to female genital cutting, state family planning, wartime rape, and sex across racial and national boundaries. A topic to which the authors return many times in several chapters is sex work and prostitution. And indeed, if the book can be said to have an argument (beyond the authors’ stated goal to‘put anthropologists back in the center of sex debates and to show how they have contributed to explaining localized expressions of sex and sexuality alongside sexual politics and strategies’ [p. 21]), then it is that sex work and prostitution illustrate fundamental features of how sexuality is thought about and practiced in the world today. In the opening pages, the authors declare that the book ‘is not about theorizing’ (p. 3). I felt relieved when I read that. As the authors make bountifully clear, the great contribution of anthropology to an understanding of sex is not theory; it is ethnography and the problems of understanding and explanation that arise from that. Also, much of what is now being published in sexuality studies – especially in the subject’s various ‘queer’ avatars – has become so clotted with in-group jargon that one does not have to be an anthropologist to suspect the existence of secret initiation rituals (largely performed in postgraduate programs in literary theory or American studies departments, one surmises) that induct dazed novices into a kind of esoteric cult. Against that wearying background, to focus on ethnography in a book like this was unquestionably the right thing to do. At the same time, however, the authors’ decision to avoid critical engagement with the ethnography they present deprives the text of a certain bite that could have been useful in nudging the anthropology of sex forward in some direction that they think might be innovative. The audience who will get most out of this book is advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students, who can use it as a resource for both ideas and references to research that has been done in areas that interest them. Established scholars who would like a quick fix on the kinds of work on sexuality that anthropologists have been producing in recent years will also greatly appreciate the book.