Showing papers on "Sociology of culture published in 1991"

Appropriating Bourdieu: Feminist Theory and Pierre Bourdieu's Sociology of Culture*

Abstract: EMINIST THEORY is critical theory; feminist critique is therefore necessarily political. In making this claim I draw on the Marxist concept of "critique," succinctly summarized by Kate Soper as a theoretical exercise which, by "explaining the source in reality of the cognitive shortcomings of the theory under attack, call[s] for changes in the reality itself" (93). In this sense, Soper writes, feminist critique comes to echo critical theory as developed by the Frankfurt School with its emphasis on "argued justification for concrete, emancipatory practice" (93).1 This is clearly an ambitious aim, which would require me to situate Pierre Bourdieu's social theory in relation to the specific French social formation which produced it. Such analysis would require substantial empirical research: there is no space for such an undertaking in this context. I have therefore called this paper "Appropriating Bourdieu." By "appropriation" I understand a critical assessment of a given theory formation with a view to taking it over and using it for feminist purposes.2 Appropriation, then, is theoretically somewhat more modest than a full-scale critique and has a relatively well-defined concrete purpose. Neither "appropriation" nor "critique" rely on the idea of a transcendental vantage point from which to scrutinize the theory formation in question. Unlike the Enlightenment concept of "criticism," the concept of "critique" as used here is immanent and dialectical. My proposal of "appropriation" and "critique" as key feminist activities is intended to contest the idea that feminists are

The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution

Abstract: Reknowned historian Roger Chartier, one of the most brilliant and productive of the younger generation of French writers and scholars now at work refashioning the Annales tradition, attempts in this book to analyze the causes of the French revolution not simply by investigating its “cultural origins” but by pinpointing the conditions that “made is possible because conceivable.” Chartier has set himself two important tasks. First, while acknowledging the seminal contribution of Daniel Mornet’s Les origens intellectuelles de la Revolution francaise (1935), he synthesizes the half-century of scholarship that has created a sociology of culture for Revolutionary France, from education reform through widely circulated printed literature to popular expectations of government and society. Chartier goes beyond Mornet’s work, not be revising that classic text but by raising questions that would not have occurred to its author. Chartier’s second contribution is to reexamine the conventional wisdom that there is a necessary link between the profound cultural transformation of the eighteenth century (generally characterized as the Enlightenment) and the abrupt Revolutionary rupture of 1789. The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution is a major work by one of the leading scholars in the field and is likely to set the intellectual agenda for future work on the subject.

Culture and society: A sociology of culture

Abstract: What is Culture? - Theoretical and Methodological Issues in the Study of Culture - 'High' Culture, Art and Aesthetics - Culture and Imperialism - Race, Ethnicity and Culture - Class and Culture - Gendered Cultures - Education - Media: Creating Popular Culture - Disintegrations and Reintegrations: Future Directions in the Sociology of Culture

Structure and choice in the sociology of culture

Abstract: In the methodological appendix to my counterculture book I referred to an incipient crisis in ethnography brought about by the doubts of ethnographers regarding whether they know what they claim to know, and whether those claims do any good or any harm to what people in what quantities; and who cared about the resolution of these doubts. I also talked briefly about efforts at solution represented at that time by grounded theory, ethnomethodology, leftist advocacy, and the kind of reflexive, interpretive ethnography represented (among other representations) by my book.1

The feeling intellect : selected writings

Abstract: Collected here for the first time, these writings demonstrate the range and precision of Philip Rieff's sociology of culture. Rieff addresses the rise of psychoanalytic and other spiritual disciplines that have reshaped contemporary culture.

Culture and materialism: raymond williams and the marxist debate

Abstract: This thesis represents a study of Raymond Wllliamsls work in the sociology of culture. It attempts to critically interrogate and assess Williams's theory of "cultural materiali~m'~. The argument put forth is that Williams's work, though not unproblematic, represents a significant reconstruction of Marxist theory. The focus of the study includes: tracing the genealogy of the Marxist problematic; an analysis of Williams's intervention into the Marxian materialist debate; an extended discussion of Marxist cultural theory and Williams's relationship to issues raised in the literature; the development, as an extension of insights gained from cultural materialism, of a critical theory of culture that attempts to theorize a specific cultural form --the urban crime-drama cinema of the 1970's --vithin the actual historical conditions of its

Critical Theory, Ideology and Modern Sociology

Abstract: Two major themes dominated nineteenth-century sociology and Marxism. Through the critique of positivism the problem of social action and the relation of agency to structure was raised, the degree to which moral and normative elements played a critical role in the social integration of developing capitalist societies. And secondly, with the rapid growth of industrialisation and urbanism, specific cultural issues moved to the forefront of sociological theory. Western Marxism resolved the question of agency by appealing to the power of bourgeois ideology over nascent proletarian revolutionary consciousness. In the aftermath of the First World War, the abortive revolutions in Germany and Hungary and the 1917 Russian Revolution, the question of a consciously guided social transformation structured in ideology became a major issue within Marxism and sociology. The debate between Marxists and sociologists, which had characterised French and German sociology during the period 1890 to 1914, took on new urgency. Weber’s concern with the sociology of culture, his theorisation of autonomous value spheres and eclipse of dominant world views, is echoed in the work of Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) and Max Scheler (1874–1928).

What is Culture

Abstract: There are at least two everyday, commonsense meanings of culture. The first is the ‘best’ achievements and products in art, literature and music. The second is the artificial growth or development of microscopic organisms or species of plants, a meaning deriving from a much older usage of the verb ‘to cultivate’: meaning to husband, and originally referring to agricultural techniques. Both these meanings are relevant to what is discussed in this book. More immediately we need to remember that although sociology is concerned with commonsense meanings, it must also look beyond them for theories, explanations and interpretations. Durkheim saw the study of ‘collective representations’ and their symbolic meaning as central to a sociological understanding of the social. In a very different tradition, Max Weber saw sociology as one of the ‘cultural sciences’, concerned with values and meaning, developing concepts and interpretations relevant to the society in which they take shape (Weber, 1949). A basic proposition of modern sociology is that concepts, ideas, words and other symbolic systems arise out of the society or group in which they operate. In this chapter we shall see that the development and use of the concept ‘culture’ relates to the beliefs and values people have about societies, social change and the ideal society they seek. We shall also see that much work on the concept has come from writers outside academic sociology, including literature, philosophy, politics, history and anthropology. Indeed, it is difficult to argue that there is a distinctive sociology of culture at all.

Some outlines for the sociological study of technology.

Abstract: Within sociology, technology is not a common subject for sociological analysis; technology is often treated as if it were no more than an asocial physical product. The argument of this thesis is that technology is as available for sociological analysis as any other social phenomenon. In popular representation, technology is treated as if it were special, and this treatment has had particular consequences for sociological analysis. This thesis attempts to put this special, deferential, attitude to technology aside, and to reveal technology as an unexceptional topic for sociological investigation. Stated baldly, two ideas are demonstrated in this thesis. The first of these is: The way that technology is constructed as a category in sociological literature makes the topic technology resistant to sociological analysis. The second idea follows from this: It is possible to develop a sociological account of technology by reference to a reconceptualised notion of work. The thesis considers those sociological approaches which appear to offer some potential for an elaborated sociology of technology. These move from conventionally academic discussions of a sociology of technology through marxian, culturalist and feminist accounts of work and of technology, to a consideration of the views of technology embodied in particular instances of policy and local action. A view of technology emerges which draws on the divergent traditions of marxian political economy and marxian cultural studies. The thesis concludes with an attempt to embrace both these perspectives in the development of a sociology of technology.