Showing papers on "Cultural analysis published in 1988"

Cultural Capital: Allusions, Gaps and Glissandos in Recent TheoreticalDevelopments

Abstract: The concept of cultural capital has been increasingly used in American sociology to study the impact of cultural reproduction on social reproduction. However, much confusion surrounds this concept. In this essay, we disentangle Bourdieu and Passeron's original work on cultural capital, specifying the theoretical roles cultural capital plays in their model, and the various types of high status signals they are concerned with. We expand on their work by proposing a new definition of cultural capital which focuses on cultural and social exclusion. We note a number of theoretical ambiguities and gaps in the original model, as well as specific methodological problems. In the second section, we shift our attention to the American literature on cultural capital. We discuss its assumptions and compare it with the original work. We also propose a research agenda which focuses on social and cultural selection and decouples cultural capital from the French context in which it was originally conceived to take into consideration the distinctive features of American culture. This agenda consists in 1) assessing the relevance of the concept of legitimate culture in the U.S.; 2) documenting the distinctive American repertoire of high status cultural signals; and 3) analyzing how cultural capital is turned into profits in America.

Feminism & Foucault : reflections on resistance

Abstract: Although Michel Foucault's ideas on sexuality, ideology, and power have established him as one of this century's most influential thinkers, the implications of his work for feminists continue to be the subject of heated debate. This book fosters an unprecedented dialogue between Foucault and the fertile ground of contemporary feminism and explores the many ways these disparate approaches to cultural analysis converge and interact.

AIDS : cultural analysis, cultural activism

Abstract: The literature on AIDS has attempted to teach us the "facts" about this new disease or to provide a narrative account of scientific discovery and developing public health policy. But AIDS has precipitated a crisis that is not primarily medical, or even social and political; AIDS has precipitated a crisis of signification the "meaning" of AIDS is hotly contested in all of the discourses that conceptualize it and seek to respond to it. AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism is the first book on the subject that takes this battle over meaning as its premise. Contributors Leo Bersani, author of The Freudian Body; Simon Watney, who serves on the board of the Health Education Committee of London's Terrence Higgens Trust; Jan Zita Grover, medical editor at San Francisco General Hospital; Suki Ports, former executive director of the New York City Minority Task Force on AIDS; and Sander Gilman, author of Difference and Pathology. Also included are essays by Paula A. Treichler, who teaches in the Medical School and in communications at the University of Illinois; Carol Leigh, a member of COYOTE and contributor to Sex Work; and Max Navarre, editor of the People With AIDS Coalition monthly Newsline. In addition to these essays, the book contains a portfolio of manifestos, articles, letters, and photographs from the publications of the PWA Coalition, an interview with three members of the AIDS discrimination unit of the New York City Commission on Human Rights; and presentations for the independent video documentaries on AIDS, Testing the Limits and Bright Eyes. An October Book.

Ritual healing in suburban America

Abstract: "One of the more provocative studies of why middle America is making increasing use of ritual healing and what that choice tells us of problems with biomedical care in technological institutions...A welcome addition to anthropological studies of ritual healing in other societies, and it illuminates a huge component of our health care system that is poorly understood."--Arthur Kleinman, M.D., Harvard University "An all too rare volume, namely a scholarly work on the practice of healing in suburban or what we might call middle-class America. McGuire, perhaps uniquely, has set out the religious or 'ritual' healing beliefs and practices that are usually strictly segregated and kept apart...Anyone who takes seriously the need to understand 'healing' ...should obtain this book."--Health and Healing "The power of the book is in the larger cultural analysis it offers ...a valuable contribution to medical sociology."--Sociological Analysis "This welcome study of nonmedical healing among upper-middle-class and middle-class persons in Essex County, New Jersey, clearly shows how individuals become attracted to and influenced by alternative healing techniques." --Choice "Develops an innovative sociological approach to the study of alternative healing practices through a methodologically sound qualitative study...The high quality of research and conceptualization and the meticulous documentation of the relevant literature make [this book] essential reading for those interested in the sociology and anthropology of religion and of medicine, and in the study of health and illness in contemporary America."--Contemporary Sociology "A major contribution."--The Christian Century "The remarkable strength of this book about the exotic in the commonplace is that it demonstrates both that ritual healing is widespread in the heartland of medical technology, and that the wide variety of ritual healing practices are based on similar structures."--Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry Meredith B. McGuire is professor of sociology at Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, and the author of Pentecostal Catholics and other books. Debra Kantor is acting director of education and training for the New Jersey Medical School National Tuberculosis Center.

Humanity: An Introduction to Cultural Anthropology

Abstract: Covers the character and nature of culture and social behavior as developed by anthropologists through the study of people. Research-based, this mainstream text emphasizes the materialistic approach to the study of cultural diversity in humanity and shows why an appreciation and tolerance of cultural differences is critical in the modern world. Major changes include: a greater emphasis on applied anthropology such as population growth and world hunger (Ch. 19); changes in the political status of various world regions such as new nations rising from the break-up of the USSR (Chs. 17 & 18) and recent conflicts in Eastern Europe (Ch. 18).

Schooling, popular culture, and a pedagogy of possibility

Abstract: In this paper, the authors analyze the importance of critical pedagogy by examining its potentially transformative relations with the sphere of popular culture. Popular culture is viewed not only a...

Cultural diversity and human development

Abstract: Students of human development in ethnic-minority cultures must ascertain the culture's repertoire of competencies and the indigenous formulas by which those culturally diverse competencies are socialized. Cultural attitudes toward schooling differ if the observed cultural diversity is based on primary or secondary cultural differences.

The Place of the Stage: License, Play, and Power in Renaissance England

Abstract: In this richly textured multidisciplinary work, Steven Mullaney examines the cultural situation of popular drama in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Relying upon a dynamic model of cultural production, Mullaney defines an original and historically grounded perspective on the emergence of popular theater and illustrates the critical, revisionary role it played in the symbolic economy of Renaissance England. Combining literary, historical, and broadly conceived cultural analysis, he investigates, among other topics, the period's exhaustive "rehearsal" of other cultures and its discomfiting apprehensions of the self; the politics of vanished forums for ideological production such as the wonder-cabinet and the leprosarium; the cultural poetics of royal entries; and the incontinent, uncanny language of treason. As Mullaney demonstrates, Shakespearean drama relied upon and embodied the marginal license of the popular stage and, as a result, provides us with powerful readings of the shifting bases of power, license, and theatricality in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. "A major study, not merely of selected Shakespearean plays but of the very conditions of the possibility of Renaissance drama." --Louis Montrose, University of California, San Diego "Mullaney's rich and engaged reading of the place of Shakespeare's stage represents the texture of early modern life and its cultural productions in the vivid tradition of annales history and brilliantly exemplifies his theoretical call for a poetics of culture." -- Shakespeare Quarterly "Mullaney marshals an impressive range of cultural representations which, taken together, will undoubtedly force a reconsideration of the semiotics of the Elizabethan stage." --Times Higher Education Supplement ." . . something of a dramatic feat in cultural studies: literary critic Mullaney calls in a cast ranging from Clifford Geertz and Pierre Bourdieu to Raymond Williams, Mary Douglas, and Michel Foucault." --Contemporary Sociology Steven Mullaney is Associate Professor of English at the University of Michigan.

New Directions in the Study of Culture

Abstract: Cultural analysis has recently emerged as a prominent subfield within sociology. The subfield comprises a variety of approaches and substantive concerns, which may for heuristic purposes be divided along several lines. One major division separates studies viewing culture as implicit in social life from studies in which culture is seen as an explicit social product. Alternatively, recent cultural studies can be divided on the basis of the theoretical methods they employ. Four such approaches predominate: subjective, structural, dramaturgic, and institutional. Finally, cultural studies may be classified with respect to their area of substantive interest. Reviews are given of recent work in four substantive fields: public moral discourse, science, organizational culture, and ideology.

Foreign Language Education and Cultural Studies.

Abstract: Some basic definitional and theoretical issues concerning the role of cultural studies in foreign language teaching are discussed. The paper is critical of the tourist‐consumer model of intercultural contact and of the agnostic or minimalist approaches to cultural studies often associated with allegedly culture‐free classifications of language functions. Assumptions of some existing approaches to cultural studies are examined. Four key areas for further work on cultural studies are identified, (1) definition, (2) didactics, (3) teaching methodology, and (4) assessment. Three needs of cultural studies are discussed, (1) an adequate conceptualisation of human culture in social and psychological terms, for which the paper proposes a social anthropological approach, (2) guidelines for research, and (3) a programme of teacher training. The paper concludes with a theoretical model of cultural studies.

Unpackaging Cultural Effects on Classroom Learning: Native Hawaiian Peer Assistance and Child‐Generated Activity

Abstract: Cultural analysis of differential minority achievement can create stereotypes and restrict expectations of child performance if group-level cultural generalizations are misapplied to individuals. Observational and interview studies of sibling caretaking and peer assistance in Native Hawaiian contexts illustrate the appropriate comparative analysis of natal and school activity settings. Results indicate Native Hawaiian sibling caretaking varies widely across households and individual child experience. Parents' beliefs about sibcare show a mix of shared acceptance and ambivalence. In natal settings, child-generated activities, carried on without adult intervention, produce most literacy-related behaviors (such as school-like tasks and increased language use). Among the classroom learning activities that are successful with Native Hawaiian children are child-generated interactions, in which children are able to use scripts similar to those observed in natal settings. Other features of natal activity settings (such as personnel, goals and motives, and everyday tasks) are discontinuous with those of the classroom centers. To reduce home/school discontinuities, these data suggest that classrooms need to be accommodated to selected features of natal culture activity settings, rather than be isomorphic in all aspects. Identification of which cultural features these are depends on "unpackaging" cultural effects on individuals by analysis of both natal and school activity settings. CULTURE AND EDUCATION, NATIVE HAWAIIAN, SIBLING CARETAKING, PEER INTERACTION, MINORITY SCHOOL PROBLEMS

Review Essay Cultural Exchange: New Developments in the Anthropology of Commodities

Abstract: The recent publication of Arjun Appadurai's edited collection The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective (1986) is a milestone in the development of a new, culturally informed economic anthropology. Here, I hope to use a general discussion of this book, especially the challenging and ambitious theoretical introduction by Appadurai, as an opportunity to reflect not only on this exciting collection, but at the same time on a number of important new developments in the anthropology of commodities. These developments, I believe, point the way toward a fruitful integration of cultural and economic analysis. In the conclusion, I add a few observations on the theoretical moment that makes such new developments possible. In the classical, holistic anthropology of the founding fathers and mothers, economy and culture were inevitably connected. Whether economic institutions or practices were seen as "total social facts" (Mauss), as parts of an interdependent, "functioning whole" (Malinowski), or as aspects of a total "culture pattern" (Benedict, Kroeber), their analysis was inseparable from the analysis of the larger cultural whole. The foundational works of "economic anthropology"from Mauss's The Gift (1976) and Malinowski's analysis of the kula (1922) to Bohannan's account of spheres of exchange among the Tiv (1959) and Douglas's ethnography of the Lele (1963)-were based on the premise that since economic life is culturally ordered, economic analysis is inseparable from cultural analysis. Indeed, it is arguable that the founding insight of "economic anthropology" was precisely the realization that the economic could not be separated from the cultural and the symbolic.

The Tabla of Lucknow: A Cultural Analysis of a Musical Tradition

Abstract: An examination of the tabla, a drum in North Indian classical music. This study aims to increase understanding of the Lucknow tabla-playing tradition by demonstrating its technical and musical distinction, and by analyzing the processes involved in composition and improvization.

Cultural theory and management of common property resources

Abstract: Cultural theory utilizes concepts drawn from social anthropology, sociology, and organization theory to explain the social and cultural biases of policy actors and interest groups. Certain ideas of nature are associated with each cultural bias; these ideas of nature are in turn associated with types of resource management institutions. By identifying an actor or group's culture bias, analysts can explain the success or failure of different management activities. This paper explains the evolution of cultural theory from its anthropological roots to its applications in ecological management. It then applies cultural theory to a typology of common property resources and illustrates its usefulness by examining grazing subsidies in the American southwest.

Reproducing Cultural Identity in Negotiating Nuclear Power: The Union of Concerned Scientists and Emergency Core Cooling

Abstract: This paper advances the concept of `cultural identity' to account for the nexus between structure and practice in technological negotiations. It describes how the formation of the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), and that group's subsequent discourse and nonverbal actions, both reproduced the established identities of group members and contributed to negotiations that reconstituted those identities. In particular, UCS claims about emergency core-cooling systems in nuclear plants were congruent with the combination of a shared ideology, the social interests of MIT faculty, and established principles of engineering design. The cultural analysis of identity reproduction shows the opposition between cognitive and social phenomena to be a significant distinction framing action in Western culture. The analysis also suggests that new attention be given to the relationship between the constitutive and reproductive functions of discourse and nonverbal action.

Structure and practice in the cultural identities of scientists: negotiating nuclear wastes in new mexico

Abstract: The cultural status ofscientists in contemporary American society is both elite and insecure. Although science commands authority as the cultural source of knowledge about "nature," individual scientists must struggle to achieve and maintain "credibility." This ethnographic study examines the strategies ofparticipants in a public dispute over nuclear waste disposal as they negotiated the credibility ofcompeting scientists. I advance the theoretical concept of cultural identity to show how the credibility of scientists in the public domain is at once a culturally-structured and a contextually-variable phenomenon. It may prove fruitful to view cultural identity more generally as a mediating concept between cultural structures and actors' practices. [cultural analysis, American culture, anthropolbgy of science, ideology, nuclear waste]

School mathematics in culture-conflict situations

Abstract: In times of cultural change, education plays an especially important role. The writer suggests that even mathematics curricula, which have traditionally been considered culture-free, have a role to play in fostering mutual understanding amongst members of different cultures, after a period of cultural upheaval. Anthropological and educational sources are used to suggest points of relevance when a mathematical curriculum is designed for multi-cultural classrooms.

Cultural Analysis and International Security

Abstract: Maintaining international security and avoiding nuclear war requires both technological and social understanding.’ Accurate information about the social and cultural dynamics of groups involved in the conduct of international affairs is a necessary complement to the formal and technolo ical analyses now routinely conducted in the field of international security! This is because wise strategic decision-making requires, at a minimum, taking account of a wide variety of information and using it in flexible ways.3 In general, however, social and cultuial information is not regarded by the strategic studies community as particularly useful, except, perhaps, for post hoc regional a n a l y ~ e s . ~ Some anthropologists are concerned that a preoccupation with technical models of and technological factors in world affairs is dangerou~ .~ They argue that policies based on a view that sees all international security problems from a perspective of inter-state conflicts leads to the mistaken belief that these problems can be solved by reference to material power and models of technical rationality.6 This belief in the existence of “technical fixes’” for all international security problems inevitably leads to recommendations that are out of touch with social and cultural realities. The potential value of social and cultural information for international security studies is now often noted. Yet, the international security literature remains heavily dominated by technical analyses and technological concerns.’ International security professionals have found that it is very difficult to integrate substantive social science knowledge into their models and policy recommendations. There are many different accounts of why social science knowledge has not been more fully integrated into international security analysis. Some focus on the economics of the military industrial c ~ r n p l e x . ~ They argue that the economic and political self-interests of those in positions of power make impossible the fuller use of social and cultural information which threatens

Cultural Dynamics: a Vision and a Perspective

Abstract: Cultural Dynamics is a new scientific journal whose aim is to highlight the dynamic aspects of socio-cultural phenomena by treating them as processes. It is also a forum for discussing theories which model the processes of change and transformation in socio-cultural complexes. As the subtitle indicates, the journal will encourage a plurality of approaches in the study of the temporality of cultures.

Impact of Organisational Culture on Use of Scientific Knowledge in Nursing Practice

Abstract: The aim of this study was to answer the question: How does organisational culture influence nurses' use of scientific knowledge in practice? The culture of the health care organisation was analysed mainly in terms of professionals (nurses, physicians and managers). All three professional subcultures, medical, nursing and managerial, seem to be very important from the patients' point of view. Nursing subculture has, for example, different philosophy, knowledge and values about the purpose and practices of the work. Despite this, many nurses hold medical norms, values and expectations to be more important than those of their own subculture. Consequently, when caring for patients such nurses act and behave according to medical knowledge and cultural assumptions. The influence of cultural factors on use of scientific knowledge in nursing practice can be classified as follows: (1) the nursing subculture is strong but old-fashioned and conservative, (2) the nursing subculture is weak and nurses are expected to act according to some of the competitive subcultures, (3) the content and construction of the process of work socialisation prevent the application of new scientific knowledge. These results must be confirmed in further empirical studies to determine their general validity for the primary health care system in Finland. The cultural analysis of health care system provides new information about why systematic scientific knowledge has not changed nursing practice as much as expected.

Raymond Williams, 1921‐1988: A Cultural Analyst, A Distinctive Tradition

Abstract: Working “outside the institutional bases of communication studies, outside and in a critical relation to the normal defining paradigms of the discipline, be built, virtually single-banded, the foundations for the distinctive tradition of British media and cultural studies and remained until his death by far its most distinguished and influential exponent.”