View source for American Society and Popular Culture



'''Pavel Shlossberg'''

Popular culture is self-contradictory, paradoxical, and complex: it is, by turns, deep and consequential, shallow and trivial. Basic coordinates of social identity—including gender, race, nationality, and class—are imagined, organized, reproduced, and contested in consumer culture
(for example, in popular ideas about fashion and money). Mass media—in the form of talk shows, news programs, sitcoms, and telethons—melds people into communities; simultaneously, mass media marks and deepens, celebrates and repudiates, smothers and conceals social
distinctions and differences. Power and social control, action and altruism are expressed and organized, confirmed and challenged in popular claims about individuality and freedom, responsibility and community. In seemingly trivial cultural gestures, interactions, and inflections,
deep-seeded inequalities are reproduced and made to seem routine. Sociology takes popular culture very seriously: it has developed useful concepts, frames, and models for understanding pop culture and its social significance. In this class, you will gain insights about popular
culture—and about power, community, democracy, and inequality—by learning to approach culture like a sociologist.

'''Required Books'''

1. Joshua Gamson, Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talkshows and Sexual Nonconformity
2. Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left
3. Elihu Katz and Daniel Dayan, Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History
4. Michele Lamont, Money, Morals, and Manners: The Culture of the French and American Upper Middle Class
5. Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson, Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives and Cultural Studies
6. Philip Smith, Cultural Theory: An Introduction

'''Schedule'''

Topic 1: Introduction: Approaches, Themes, and Histories

''Required''

Rosalind Williams, "The Dream Worlds of Mass Consumption," in Schudson and
Mukerji, Rethinking Popular Culture

From Horace Miner, "Body Ritual among the Nacirema." The American Anthropologist,
vol. 58 (1956), pp. 503-507.

''Recommended''
Jeffrey C. Alexander, "Analytic Debates: Understanding the Relative Autonomy of
Culture," in Alexander and Seidman, eds., Culture & Society: Contemporary Debates

Roy Rosenzsweig, "The Rise of the Saloon," in Schudson and Mukerji, Rethinking
Popular Culture

John B. Thompson, pp. 44-69, 75-80, Media and Modernity

Unit 1: Conceptualizing Culture and Society in the US

Topic 2: Functions, Values, Norms: Individualism, Freedom, Commitment, and the Liberal
Society

''Required''
Robert Bellah, eta al., Preface, chapter 1-2, 6 Habits of the Heart: Individualism and
Commitment in American Life

Philip Smith, chapter 2, Cultural Theory: an Introduction

Talcott Parsons and Edward Shils, "Values and Social Systems," in Alexander and
Seidman, eds., Culture & Society: Contemporary Debates Culture & Society: Contemporary
Debates

''Recommended''
Robert K. Merton, "The Social and Cultural Context," in Mass Persuasion: A Social Psychology of the War Bond Drive

Elihu Katz and Jay G. Blumler, selections, The Uses of Mass Communications: Current Perspectives on Gratifications Research

Paul Lazarsfeld and Robert Merton, "Mass Communication, Popular Taste, and Organized Social Action," in Rosenberg and White, Mass Culture: The Popular Arts in America

Topic 3: Meaning, Materiality, and Thick Description

''Required''
Vivianna Zelizer, chapters 2 and 3, The Social Meaning of Money

Michael Schudson and Chandra Mukerji, chapter 1, pp. 18, 20-22 (On interpretive anthropology and Geertz), Rethinking Popular Culture

Philip Smith, chapter 11, pp. 188-194, Cultural Theory: An Introduction

Clifford Geertz, "Thick Description: Toward and Interpretive Description of Culture," The Interpretation of Cultures

Topic 4: Collective Representations: Symbols, Codes, Rituals, and Civil Religion

''Required''
Elihu Katz and Daniel Dayan, chapters 1, 2, and 7, Media Events: The Live Broadcasting of History

Philip Smith, chapter 1, pp. 9-16; chapter 5, pp. 69, 76-91, Cultural Theory: An Introduction

Victor Turner, "Liminality and Community," in Alexander and Seidman, eds., Culture & Society: Contemporary Debates Culture & Society: Contemporary Debates

''Recommended''
James W. Carey, "Political Ritual on Television: Episodes in the History of Shame, Degradation and Excommunication," in Liebes, Media, Ritual, and Identity

Robert Alun Jones, "Reason, Religion, Society: the Elementary Forms of Religious Life," Emile Durkheim: An Introduction to Four Major Works

Topic 5: Interaction, Practice, and Mediation

''Required''
Joshua Meyerowitz, chapters 1, 7-10, 14, The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behavior

Philip Smith, chapter 4, pp. 54-61, Cultural Theory: An Introduction

Erving Goffman, "On Face Work," Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior

''Recommended''
Ann Swidler, "Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies," American Sociological Review, Vol. 51, No. 2.

William Sewell, "A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation," American Journal of Sociology 98

Mikhail Bakhtin, selections, Speech Genres and Other Late Essays

Unit 2: Culture, Society, Power, and Inequality in the US

Topic 6: Western Marxism: Resistance, Ideology, and Hegemony

''Required''
Todd Gitlin, chapters 1, 4-7, 10, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left
Philip Smith, chapter 1, pp. 6-8; chapter 3, 34, 35-38, Cultural Theory: An Introduction”
Raymond Williams, "Base & Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory," in Schudson and Mukerji, Rethinking Popular Culture

Topic 7: Cultural Capital, Social Boundaries, and Stratification

''Required''
Michele Lamont, chapters 1, 2, 4, 6, Money, Morals, and Manners: the Culture of the French and the American Upper Middle Class
Philip Smith, chapter 8, pp. 128-136, 142-143, Cultural Theory: An Introduction”
Dalton Conley, selections, Honky

''Recommended''
B. Bryson, "Anything But Heavy-Metal: Symbolic Exclusion and Musical Dislikes," American Sociological Review 61(5)
Paul DiMaggio, "The Role of Cultural Capital in School Success," in Smith, ed., The New American Cultural Sociology
Topic 8: “Deviance,” Postructuralism, and Gender Studies

''Required''
Joshua Gamson, selections, Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talkshows and Sexual Nonconformity
C.J. Pascoe, selections, Dude, You’re a Fag
Philip Smith, chapter 7, 111-123, Cultural Theory: An Introduction
Michel Foucault, "Sexuality and Truth," The Foucault Reader

''Recommended''
Steve Seidman, selections, Queer Theory, Postructuralism, and a Sociological Approach to Sexuality

Topic 9: Culture, Space, and Race

''Required''
Eric Avila, selections, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight
Michael Omi and Howard Winant, chapters 4, 6, 7, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s
Philip Smith, 241-152, Cultural Theory: An Introduction

Unit 3: Debating the Production and Reception of Popular Culture in the US

Topic 10: The Mass Culture Debate and the Production of Cultural Hierarchies in the US

''Required''
Dwight MacDonald, "A Theory of Mass Culture," in Rosenberg and White, Mass Culture: the Popular Arts in America
Lawrence Levine, "William Shakespeare and the American People: A Study in Cultural Transformation," in Schudson and Mukerji, Rethinking Popular Culture
Paul DiMaggio, "Cultural Entrepreneurship in Nineteenth Century Boston," in Schudson and Mukerji, Rethinking Popular Culture
Michael Schudson and Chandra Mukerji, chapter 1, pp. 12 (bottom) - 18, 29-37, Rethinking Popular Culture

Philip Smith, chapter 3, pp. 38-43; chapter 10, 159-172, Cultural Theory: An Introduction

''Recommended''
Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer, "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception," The Dialectics of Enlightenment

Herbert Gans, selections, Popular Culture & High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation
of Taste

Paul M. Hirsch, "Processing Fads and Fashions: An Organizational Set Analysis of Cultural Industry Systems," in Schudson and Mukerji, Rethinking Popular Culture

Week 11: The Production of Culture: Institutions, Occupations, Roles, Routines, Frames, Genres, and Ideologies

''Required''
Joshua Gamson, selections, Freaks Talk Back: Tabloid Talkshows and Sexual Nonconformity
Philip Smith, chapters 9, 14, Cultural Theory: An Introduction

''Recommended''
Todd Gitlin, "Inside Primetime," in Schudson and Mukerji, Rethinking Popular Culture
Gaye Tuchman, chapters 6-7, Making News: the Social Construction of Reality
Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, selections, The Social Construction of Reality:
A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge

Topic 12: Content, Audiences, and Reception

''Required''
Andrea Press, ―Introduction,‖ chapters 3-4, ―Conclusion,‖ Women Watching Television: Gender, Class, and Generation in the American Television Experience
Philip Smith, chapter 9, pp. 147-157, chapter 10, 158-165, Cultural Theory: An Introduction
Michael Schudson and Chandra Mukerji, chapter 1, pp. 37-41, 50-53 (On Radway), Rethinking Popular Culture
Stuart Hall, "Encoding/Decoding," Culture, Media, and Language

''Recommended''
Janice Radway, "Interpretive Communities and Variable Literacies: The Functions of Romance Reading," In Schudson and Mukerji, Rethinking Popular Culture
Richard Peterson, "Why 1955: Explaining the Advent of Rock Music," Popular Music 9