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
