Handbook of Cultural Sociology

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.

John R. Hall is Professor of Sociology at the University of California - Davis. His published works include Apocalypse: From Antiquity to the Empire of Modernity (Polity, 2009), Visual Worlds (Routledge, 2005, with co-editors), Sociology on Culture (Routledge, 2003, with co-authors), and Cultures of Inquiry (Cambridge University Press, 1999).

Laura Grindstaff is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California – Davis. She is the author of the award-winning Money Shot: Trash, Class, and the Making of TV Talk Shows (University of Chicago Press, 2002) and has published articles on various aspects of popular culture from reality programming to cheerleading.

Ming-Cheng Lo is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of California – Davis. She is the author of Doctors within Borders: Profession, Ethnicity and Modernity in Colonial Taiwan (University of California Press, 2002). She has published various articles on the cultural processes of political and medical institutions.

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 BaumanPart 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, Geneviève 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