Explores various contemporary sociological theories of culture that have collapsed the distinction between the realm of the idea/spiritual & material into a more expansive notion of culture. It is shown that traditions stretching back to the sociological models of Max Weber & Karl Marx, & forward through the critical theory of the Frankfurt school & British cultural studies, have broken disciplinary boundaries in their quest to map the relationships among the social, culture, economics, & politics in the constitution of contemporary societies. Although these traditions have established connections to one another, it is suggested that a recent bifurcation of the field into textual & empirical analyses threatens to transform the field into warring paradigms & competing models. Celebrations of the popular & a fetishization of the audience, both of which became more pronounced in the 1980s, are particularly identified as dangerously one-sided approaches to the study of culture. It is argued that a sociological study of culture must return to an investigation of the relationships among three dimensions of culture: the political economy of culture; the textual analysis of artifacts; & the study of audience reception. 54 References. D. M. Smith
In an introduction to this edited volume (see related abstracts in IRPS No. 87), the field of cultural studies & its relation to science & technology are discussed. It is suggested that the traditional belief in the primacy of cause/effect relationships fails to recognize the complexity & interdependence of variables in the modern world. Culture, science, & technology are not distinct entities, but overlapping fields, which transform & are transformed by each other. Although science & technology have permeated modern society, they do not independently determine the outcomes of social situations & evolution. It is argued that traditional deterministic social sciences must be replaced by a theory of complexity that erodes the boundaries between distinct forms of knowledge & perspectives, & seeks to consider cause in terms of multiple & merging influences. Further, region-oriented communities are becoming less important as technology allows easy communication with distant others, & thereby facilitates the bypass of local ties. It is concluded that the field of cultural studies is best equipped to deal with the rapidly changing circumstances of the modern world due to its appropriation of knowledge from diverse perspectives, & its lack of fundamental & fixed principles. T. Sevier
Reviews recent research in the cultural influences tradition of analyzing political communication. Traditionally, voter persuasion issues & neo-Marxist cultural studies have dominated the study of political communication from a cultural perspective. However detected in the literature is a new trend that focuses on cultural influences. Mark McPhail's (1994 [see abstract 9502528]) analysis of racial communication is deemed an excellent paradigm for a cultural influences model of political communication. According to McPhail, coherent argumentation requires the interaction of oppositional discourse, dialogue, & a discourse of coherence that integrates positions. On the basis of this model, scholars may assess oppositional discourse for its ability to foster integration or fragmentation. Moreover, these tools enable the cross-cultural comparison of various forms of political communication. D. M. Smith
Cultural capital is usually defined as set of social features that provide individuals with social mobility and the possibility of changing their hierarchical position in systems such as wealth, power, prestige, education, and health. Cultural capital thus affects the processes of social promotion or degradation. It also includes social characteristics that allow horizontal mobility, that is, changes in social group membership. An individual's cultural capital includes his or her social origin, education, taste, lifestyle, style of speech, and dress.
Reviews the basic theoretical approaches to the sociology of culture that stem from the original work of Max Weber & Emile Durkheim. It is suggested that recent trends in the sociology of culture have been influenced by Clifford Geertz's (1973) break with the Weberian problematic of defining culture as ideas that motivate individuals. The transformation of cultural studies set off by Geertz's work is summarized in three notions, ie, that: (1) culture is composed of shared public symbols in the form of ideas & texts that are given meaning in particular contexts; (2) culture is a form of social practice, exterior to the individual, located & embodied in institutional practices; & (3) within cultural analysis, attention should always be given to issues of power & inequality. It is argued that from these new perspectives culture is viewed as powerful in three ways: (A) its power does not depend on any particular person believing in it; (B) it does not have to shape the individual's own beliefs & aspirations so much as the individual's knowledge of how others will interpret their actions; & (C) it is structured by institutions that produce systematic patterns for social action. D. M. Smith
Dass Waren erst durch ihr kulturelles Umfeld Wert und Bedeutung erhalten, und beides umkämpft ist und immer wieder hergestellt werden muss, verdeutlichen die Autorinnen und Autoren in diesem Band. Mit dem Konzept der »kulturellen Aneignung« bieten sie eine theoretisch reflektierte wie auch empirisch angereicherte Begrifflichkeit für kulturwissenschaftliche Studien globaler Warenzirkulation. In the past years, Cultural Studies has begun to analyze the global world of economy, supplementing existing studies of economists. This edition highlights the concept of 'trans-cultural appropriation' as a tool for understanding cultural dimensions of modern consumption, especially when it comes to transnational economic processes. Presenting a rich variety of empirical studies, ranging from the introduction of Chinese food in the USA to Ford cars in Germany and American schoolbooks in the Philippines, the collection brings processes of cultural exchange to the fore that the post-war paradigm of 'Americanization' neglects.
Points out the irony in claims of poststructuralist theories of identity construction that omit a comparable genealogy of construction theories specifically conceptualized as white identity. This leads to a cultural studies proposition that, while gender & race of the Other are discursive constructions, whiteness is not. A similar void surrounding construction of white identity is noted in the work of critical feminists & postcolonial poststructuralists. Mutually reinforcing categories of Otherness & whiteness are drawn from the works of Franz Fanon (1967) & Toni Morrison (1989) to develop a different theoretical framework for studying whiteness, arguing that both white & Other are able to author the construction of whiteness. This framework is applied to three popular culture films that reflect whiteness in relation to Others in different cultural political contexts: David Lean's Passage to India; Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing; & Kevin Costner's Dances with Wolves. How these films construct whiteness in the modalities of dialectics, synchronous, & syncretic identities is examined. 29 References. J. Lindroth
The literature of the last decade in the field of critical white studies has expanded from challenges to white supremacy by male social scientists of color to expositions of institutionalized racism in literature, philosophy, communications, & the media. White studies has also entered formerly uncharted arenas such as racial ideology, relations between race & social control, whiteness as identity, & the legal construction of whiteness in the US. Women's studies has injected white patriarchy into analyses of white privilege, while the multicultural education movement that emerged in the 1980s introduced a focus on the complexity of relationships among African Americans, Latino/as, Asian Americans, & whites. The intersections between intellectual movements of cultural studies, critical communication studies, & semiotics are examined. It is contended here that most public/popular discourse is still framed in white-nonwhite terms, making it essential to understand how communication about whiteness is embedded in the social fabric to begin the process of destabilizing whiteness as an identity & ideology. Bibliog, 34 References. J. Lindroth
"What is known in scholarly and political circles as 'globalization' is widely recognized as the wave carrying the world into the next epoch. The sociological weight of academic and political opinion lies with the conviction that globalization is either the solution to endemic problems of economic, political and cultural underdevelopment or at least inevitable. Those holding the latter opinion, the less optimistic, are less sanguine about the prospects for globalization as a panacea for a multitude of social ills, but nonetheless see no realistic alternative in the face of economic, political and cultural processes of such overwhelming force. The latter perception only heightens the tendency to accept globalization as a given and proceed to examine how a given nation can best take advantage of the opportunities it provides. The proponents of globalization have the upper hand in political, economic and cultural spheres, despite the fact that globalization clearly threatens national sovereignty, undermines traditional methods of economic regulation on behalf of the common good, and renders political authority weaker in the face of unprecedented accumulations of private power." (author's abstract)
Pierre Bourdieu hat 1977 auf der Basis der Konzepte "Sozialer Raum" und "Habitus" klassenspezifische Effekte bei der Entstehung und Aufrechterhaltung von ungleichen Bildungschancen bzw. der Verteilung von kulturellem Kapital und damit auch Lebenschancen für die französischen Verhältnisse festgestellt. Der Autor schließt an diese Studien an, um dann kritisch das Konzept "kulturelles Kapital" zu diskutieren. Kritisiert wird zunächst der "ökonomistische" Ansatz von Bourdieus Theorie der "sozialen Reproduktion"; statt von "kulturellem Kapital" ist es für den Autor besser, hier von "kulturellen Ressourcen" zu sprechen. Weiterhin stehen Bourdieus Befunde in einen "überwältigenden" Widerspruch zur empirischen Plausibilität bzw. zu den Ergebnissen neuerer empirischer Studien. Bereinigt man die Theorie Bourdieus von ihren "ökonomistischen Verkürzungen", kann dem Ansatz von Bourdieu Fruchtbarkeit bei der Analyse sozialer Ungleichheiten bei den Bildungschancen nicht abgesprochen werden. (ICA).
This reflection on the place of W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) in US intellectual history argues that the 1992 conference from which the essays in this book (see related abstracts) are taken begins to fill a void that is left by the dearth of scholarly treatments of Du Bois & his ideas. Du Bois virtually inaugurated some aspects of African studies, & was a pioneer in the field of cultural studies, with its troika of critical tools -- race, class, & gender. Several incidents from Du Bois's life are recounted to indicate his personal experience of racism & his personal, intellectual, & political response to it. His commitments to liberalism, Marxism, & race make him a particularly interesting example of the practicing intellectual. H. von Rautenfeld
Does the result of the discussion that there is more than one rationality at stake in environmental policy-making imply a relativistic methodological conclusion? There are three reasons that could pull us toward a relativistic notion of rationality: (1) The existence of competing cultural models of nature forces us to abandon the idea of nature as something outside society. Nature exists for us only through culture. To the extent that we have to accept that nature is a cultural construction, the notion of 'hard facts' vanishes. Nature is - like all social facts - a soft fact. This will open our way of 'regulating nature' through environmental politics and policies to moral claims and moral discourse. (2) Environmental policy cannot be based on the authoritative nature of 'hard facts'. Nature as a collective good is a soft fact that will increase communication and argumentation about what should be done because of the possibility of competing claims of these facts. A political culture of communicating 'as-if-facts' develops. Groups begin to argue as if there were 'hard facts'. To free political communication from 'hard facts' will accelerate communication - and the remaining problem is to guarantee communicability and solve the problem of emerging communicative power. (3) Cultural analysis leads us to question the very basis of modern rationality: the idea of bare facts. Policy analysis as the most advanced form of rationalizing the reproduction of modern societies has given us the possibility to explore the cultural basis of this advanced form of formal rationality. When environmental policy analysis can no longer be based upon this type of rationality we are forced to base the rationality of policy decisions on soft facts. Thus policy-making will be drawn into the communication of 'as-if-facts' (which are soft facts) using institutional power to validate them. That there are no hard facts, that we can talk about everything, that everything is a social construction: all these claims come close to a relativistic position. We do not, however, have to draw such a relativistic conclusion from these arguments. There are again at least three reasons that limit this potential relativism: (1) As long as there is a struggle over 'as-if-facts', rationality lies in the process of communicating such soft facts. The institutionalization of procedures of negotiating and communicating interpretations of facts contains the possibility of procedural rationality. This does not imply a return to absolutism, but rather an 'anti-antirelativism' (Geertz 1984). The purity model is not only a second type of rationality developed within the European tradition that competes with others but also creates the conditions of arguing about the relative weight of each. (2) The observation of two traditions in one culture is an argument against the hegemonic role of one culture and also an argument against relativism. Therefore the purity model becomes the key to an understanding of new and so far suppressed elements of rationality in environmental policy-making. Since this model is the dominated one its thematization not only lays bare the suppressed model but also lays the bare fact of suppression as such which has repercussions on the legitimacy of the dominant model. (3) To conceive nature - in line with what we have called the Jewish model - as an indivisible, holistic entity justifies the construction of nature as a collective good to be shared equally by all. Thus a new ground for fairness and justice can be laid in the modern discourse of a just and fair society. The reconstruction of cultural traditions regulating the relationship of man to nature allows us to identify the forms of symbolically mediated relationships between the two. We do not only use nature for instrumental purposes, we also use it to 'think' the world (to use an expression of Tambiah (1969)). We use natural differences to make sense of social differences, which in turn gives meaning to natural differences (Douglas 1975). Nature, in a sense, gives lessons on how to conceive differences. Moving our focus from justice to purity gives us a better understanding of the differences underlying the emerging modern European culture of environmentalism. The analysis of cultural movements carrying counter cultural traditions thus forces us not only to broaden our theoretical notion of the cultural 'code' underlying European culture, it also forces us to see the carriers of counter cultural traditions as more than movements of protest against modernity and modernization. I claim that the two competing models relating man to nature have become the field of a new emerging type of social struggle over two types of modernity in advanced modern societies. It is my contention that the culture of environmentalism contains the elements for an alternative way of organizing social relations in modern society.
