304 Pages 21 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    304 Pages 21 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Culture has become a touchstone of interdisciplinary conversation. For readers interested in sociology, the social sciences and the humanities, this book maps major classical and contemporary analyses and cultural controversies in relation to social processes, everyday life, and axes of ordering and difference - such as race, class and gender. Hall, Neitz, and Battani discuss:

    • self and identity
    • stratification
    • the Other
    • the cultural histories of modernity and postmodernity
    • production of culture
    • the problem of the audience
    • action, social movements, and change. 

    The authors advocate cultivating the sociological imagination by engaging myriad languages and perspectives of the social sciences and humanities, while cultivating cultural studies by developing the sociological imagination.  Paying little respect to boundaries, and incorporating fascinating examples, this book draws on diverse intellectual perspectives and a variety of topics from various historical periods and regions of the world.

    1. Introduction Part 1: Culture and Society 2. Culture, Self and Society 3. Preindustrial Sources of Contemporary Culture 4. Social Stratification and Culture Part 2: Toward a Sociology of Cultural Power, Production and Social Life 5. Power, Culture and Cultural Power 6. The Production of Culture 7. Cultural Objects, Audiences and Users and Meaning Part 3: Culture in a Changing World 8. Industrialism and Mass Culture 9. Deconstructing Folk Culture 10. Deconstructing Postmodernity 11. Culture, Action and Change

    Biography

    John R. Hall is Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Davis.

    Mary Jo Neitz is Professor of Sociology at the University of Missouri-Columbia.

    Marshall Battani is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Grand Valley State University, Michigan.

    "Sociology on Culture negotiates an enormously scholarly terrain, with brevity, in ways that will prove consistently interesting to sociologists--so much so that it merits wide reading quite independent of use in teaching....Few books meant as texts have been written as finely and with as much scope and imagination as this one....Sociology on Culture is as stimulating a text as you could wish with to engage students. The books sets a very high standard, and will prove absorbing and instructive to anyone interested in culture." - Contemporary Sociology