Spring 2011
Sociology 535
University of Southern California
seminar time: Weds. 9:30-12:20
Paul Lichterman
Office hours:
Mon. 1:30-3:00 and by
appointment
Sociology of Culture
Seminar Description
How and why do we study culture as social scientists? What counts as culture? How do we
conceive culture in relation to other orienting concepts, such as social structure, solidarity,
and action? These are the kinds of questions that will concern us in this seminar.
Put simply, cultural sociologists study the symbolic, meaningful, communicative dimension
of social life. We will treat “culture” as a dimension of all social life, rather than a distinct,
professionalized realm having to do with the arts, religion or popular entertainment. Our
readings show how and why social scientists use culture concepts to interpret and explain
otherwise puzzling features of everyday social action, social structure and social change.
Cultural sociology has grown tremendously in the past two decades. A single seminar on
such a wide field can treat only selected topics and analytic issues. Most of our readings deal
with culture in public spaces and organizations. The seminar’s overriding goal is to examine
how different culture concepts help us ask different kinds of research questions about the
place of symbols and meaningful practices in social life. Our specific goals in this seminar
are:
•to become acquainted with enduring debates that inform current research and theory related
to culture, and
•to learn the virtues and limits of different approaches to culture, rather than expecting to find
one exhaustive culture concept for all research. We will see how different concepts of
culture do different kinds of work in social science and make different assumptions about
social order, action, power, and sometimes, the nature of a good society. You will become
conversant with different ways of studying meanings and symbols that you might use in your
own research on a variety of topics—political speeches, social movements and voluntary
associations, mass media audiences, work organizations, religious congregations, informal
groups and others.
Our readings include selections from these books:
Jeffrey Alexander, The Meanings of Social Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).
Elizabeth Armstrong, Forging Gay Identities (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
Gabriel Kunda, Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a High-Tech Corporation
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992).
Most of our readings are photocopied articles and chapters; in seminar on the first day we
will discuss how to access them.
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Seminar Requirements
Discussion is central to our work together. Some of our seminar requirements relate directly
to discussion. Most weeks, I will offer commentaries that situate the readings in a broader
context, or highlight some important themes. Still, this is not a lecture course. With the help
of a discussant (see below) we will discuss our readings in depth each week. We will have
lively, worthwhile discussions and you will get much more out of the seminar if everyone
does the readings consistently and thoughtfully. Please do your part for our seminar by
attending regularly and keeping up with the readings throughout the semester.
Questions on the readings—for all members of our seminar
Each seminar participant needs to write at least one question about the readings, for eight of
our sessions. You may choose any eight sessions.
•Your question(s) might deal with "comprehension"--pondering the significance of some
passage or theme in a text. Scholars tend to find some of our readings dense and abstract. If
something in the reading is confusing to you and seems important, don’t hesitate to ask the
seminar about it! Or,
•Your question(s) might be evaluative or comparative. You might want to ask which of two
authors’ analyses of culture and class is the most convincing or useful, for instance. You
might want to ask whether or not two authors or research traditions share the same
assumptions about identity. You might want to ask about some study's implications for
broader theoretical, empirical, or substantive questions.
These are just examples. Please write questions that matter to you, to your own thinking
about the readings; no need to second-guess what counts as an “important” question. And
please do phrase these as questions that can stimulate discussion, rather than declarative
statements.
Format for questions: Sometimes a question takes simply a sentence; that's just fine. Other
times you need a short paragraph to explain what you mean, what the context is, why it
matters. You be the judge, but please: Do not make your question more than a short
paragraph! These really are not meant to be reading summaries.
How to forward your question: Please e-mail the question(s) to the discussant for that
session's readings, and to me. At our first meeting of the semester we will decide on a
weekly deadline for questions.
The discussant role
Each participant should serve as a "discussant" for one or more of our meetings, depending
on the size of the seminar. Discussants will:
•Receive all the questions for your week.
•Synthesize them or whittle them down to three or four questions or themes we should
discuss that week. If there are comprehension questions, please list them all separately, so
we’ll know what people didn’t understand well.
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Do the synthesizing and combining in whatever way you think will advance our discussion.
If you have a pressing question or theme that other participants didn't address, add it in.
•Make a handout (not more than one page) for us with these questions, and distribute it on email before seminar; we’ll work out a weekly deadline for this.
At seminar, you don’t need to summarize the readings or make a "presentation." Simply give
us a quick gloss on the questions you've prepared--tell us which you think we should address
first, or last, or tell us anything else you think we should know. But all of this shouldn't take
more than about 5 minutes.
Let’s all keep in mind: People will have varying interests in this seminar, which can’t be
predicted ahead of time, and our time together is limited. We may not be able to touch on
every question, every seminar, and that is fine: By developing questions, you confront the
readings, and see some broader, common themes that likely concern other readers too.
You’ll learn a lot by considering the questions, even if we can’t get to all of them in seminar.
Position papers
Each participant should write three position papers during the semester. Each of these essays
should be short, roughly 3 pages (4 is ok, please not longer). Each should make a short
argument that treats two authors on some analytic or substantive theme of your choice. The
point is to take a stand, argue that you prefer one concept over another, one viewpoint over
another, or maybe that you see a continuous thread linking two authors. Maybe you want to
argue that one deals with a substantive topic (public opinion, gender inequality, moral panics,
etc.) better than another. Draw directly on the readings to support your argument.
Of course a three-page statement won't be exhaustive. You may feel as if you have not
substantiated your position adequately. Don't worry--these do not need to be your final
thoughts on the topic. The goal is to do some writing during the semester that helps you
decide what you think about the theories and forms of analysis we are reading. You may
want to fold ideas from these papers into your seminar paper; that's fine.
The first position paper is due February 18, the second one is due April 1, and the third one is
due April 22. It is fine to e-mail them.
Seminar Paper
All seminar participants should write a paper of roughly 20-25 pages that makes a theoretical
argument, analyzes original empirical material, or makes an argument from secondary
sources, (or some combination of these). A longer paper is OK if you really need more space
to deal with your chosen topic. The seminar paper is due May 9. I will ask each of you to
present a short synopsis of your paper’s argument in seminar on the last day.
The seminar paper can deal with any topic for which cultural analysis is relevant. The paper
needs to use or address one (or more) of the theoretical perspectives or modes of analysis in
the readings--required or recommended. It is likely you will need to do outside reading, too.
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Please come talk to me in office hours about paper ideas. A 1-2 page paper proposal is due
March 11. I urge you to get it to me earlier, especially if you are at all unsure about the
projected paper's relevance to the seminar. The proposal should outline your project and
name a few bibliographic references.
Your seminar grade is based on the following break-down:
Seminar Paper=55%,
Participation, questions, and discussant role=15%
Three position papers, each 10%= 30%
Seminar Schedule
•=required reading
B=in book ordered at USC bookstore
recommended readings are listed without notation
PART 1: Enduring debates, classic statements and some contemporary applications
week 1, Jan. 12
Introduction to the seminar: why study “culture”?
week 2, Jan. 19
Traditions of cultural analysis and the case for a culture concept
an overview:
•Lyn Spillman, “Culture.” Pp. 922-28 in George Ritzer, ed. The
Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology, vol. 2 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing,
2007).
one point of view:
•B Jeffrey Alexander, “The Meanings of (Social) Life: On the Origins of a Cultural
Sociology,” and “The Strong Program in Cultural Sociology” (with Philip
Smith), pp. 3-26 in Alexander, Meanings of Social Life.
a somewhat different point of view:
•John R. Hall, Laura Grindstaff, and Ming-Cheng Lo, “Culture, lifeworlds, and
globalization,” pp. 1-7 only, in Handbook of Cultural Sociology (London:
Routledge, 2010).
Robert Wuthnow, 1989. Meaning and Moral Order (Berkeley: Univ. of California
Press).
Ann Swidler, "Culture in action: symbols and strategies," American Sociological
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Review 51(1986):273-286, 1986.
week 3, Jan. 26
Collective representations, collective emotion, and solidarity: Durkheim’s influence
•Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (trans. K Fields,
New York: The Free Press, 1995[1912]), 207-236, 418-448.
•Jeffrey Alexander, The Performance of Politics (New York: Oxford, 2010),
pp. 1-38.
Jeffrey Alexander, 1988. Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press).
week 4, Feb. 2
Articulation, domination, experience: Gramsci’s contributions
•Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. Q. Hoare and
G. Nowell-Smith, (New York: International, 1972), pp. 3-43, 242-246,
257-264, 321-343, 375-377.
•Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Cultural Writings , ed. D. Forgacs and
G. Nowell-Smith, (Cambridge: Harvard, 1985), pp. 117-123,
180-191.
•Marc W. Steinberg, 1999. “The Talk and Back Talk of Collective Action: A
DialogicAnalysis of Repertoires of Discourse among Nineteenth-Century
English Cotton Spinners,” American Journal of Sociology 105(3):736-780.
Roger Lancaster, Thanks to God and the Revolution (New York: Columbia Univ.
Press), pp. 1-54, skim pp. 100-121.
Perry Anderson, "The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci." In New Left Review,
No. 100. (Nov. 1976-Jan. 1977).
David Kertzer, Comrades and Christians, 1991.
Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy, 1985.
James Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, 1990.
T. J. Jackson Lears, No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation
of American Culture, 1880-1920, 1981.
Justin Lewis, “Reproducing Political Hegemony in the United States,” Critical
Studies in Mass Communication 16(1999): 251-267.
week 5, Feb. 9
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Making sense and ordering interaction in everyday life: Goffman’s contributions
•Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience,
(Northeastern University Press, 1986[1974]), pp. 1-20, 201-230, 301-344.
•Elijah Anderson, Streetwise: Race, Class and Change in an Urban Community
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 163-189.
Arlie Hochschild, 1983. The Managed Heart (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press).
Nina Eliasoph, 1998. Avoiding Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press).
week 6, Feb. 16
Bourdieu’s synthesis: symbolic struggles, symbolic classification and social inequality
•Omar Lizardo, “Culture and Stratification,” Pp. 305-315 in John Hall, Laura
Grindstaff, and Ming-Cheng Lo, Handbook of Cultural Sociology (London:
Routledge, 2010).
•Pierre Bourdieu, short vignettes from Distinction (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1984) : pp. 274-278 (the Grand Bourgeois); 324-325 (the
“very modest” nurse) and 355-357 (a nurse who “lives with passion”);
391-393 (A foreman who “has always worked for other people”).
•Pierre Bourdieu, 1985. “The Social Space and the Genesis of Groups.”
Theory and Society 14(6): 723-744.
•Pierre Bourdieu, selection from Distinction: part of chapter titled “Culture and
Politics,” pp. 397-432.
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1984), all.
John Hall, "The Capital(s) of Cultures: A Nonholistic Approach to Status Situations,
Class, Gender, and Ethnicity." In M. Lamont and M. Fournier,
Cultivating Differences, 1992.
William Sewell, Jr., "A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and
Transformation," American Journal of Sociology 98(1992):1-29.
FIRST POSITION PAPER DUE FEB. 18, 4:00pm
Part 2: Current lines of inquiry
week 7, Feb. 23
Symbolic boundaries and inequality
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•Michèle Lamont, Money, Morals and Manners: The Culture of the French and
American Upper-Middle Class (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1992),
pp. 1-61, 177-188
•Michele Lamont and Sada Aksartova, 2002, "Ordinary Cosmopolitanisms: Strategies
for Bridging Racial Boundaries among Working Class Men. Theory, Culture
and Society. 19 (4): 1-25.
Michele Lamont and Virag Molnar, “The Study of Boundaries in the Social
Sciences,”Annual Review of Sociology 28, 2002.
Michele Lamont and Laurent Thévenot, eds., Rethinking Comparative Cultural
Sociology: Polities and Repertoires of Evaluation in France and the
United States, 2000.
week 8, Mar. 2
Culture, motives and identity—or, how to deal with “discourse”: two approaches
•Robert Wuthnow, ed., Vocabularies of Public Life (New York: Routledge,
1992), pp. 1-12.
•Robert Wuthnow, Acts of Compassion (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1991), pp. 49-85.
•Francesca Polletta, It was like a fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2006), pp. 1-28; 32-52.
Anne Kane, "Cultural Analysis in Historical Sociology: the Analytic and Concrete
Forms of the Autonomy of Culture," Sociological Theory 9(1991):53-69.
Ann Swidler, Talk of Love (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).
week 9, Mar. 9
The sacred-like culture of national debates: a close look at the “strong program”
•B Jeffrey Alexander, The Meanings of Social Life, pp. 121-154 (“The Discourse of
American Civil Society,” and pp. 27-84 (“On the Construction of Moral
Universals).
•Lo, Ming-Cheng, and Yun Fan. 2010. “Hybrid Cultural Codes in Nonwestern Civil
Society: Images of Women in Taiwan and Hong Kong.” Sociological Theory
28(2): 167-192.
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Paper proposal due Mar. 11, 4:00pm
Spring break, no seminar Mar. 16
week 10, Mar. 23
The mundane culture of organizations: neoinstitutionalism
•B Armstrong, Forging Gay Identities, xix-153, 193-204.
P. DiMaggio and W. Powell, The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis,
1991.
W.R. Scott, J. Meyer, and J. Boli, Institutional Environments and Organizations,
1994.
week 11, Mar. 30
Culture in organizations: a case of fabricated culture
•B Gabriel Kunda, Engineering Culture, pp. TBA.
SECOND POSITION PAPER DUE APRIL 1, 4:00pm
week 12, Apr. 6
Patterns of interaction in everyday life: cultural interactionism
•Nina Eliasoph and Paul Lichterman, 2003. “Culture in Interaction,”
American Journal of Sociology 108(4): 735-794.
Paul Lichterman, 2005. Elusive Togetherness: Church Groups Trying to Bridge
America’s Divisions (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
Ann Mische, 2008. Partisan Publics (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
week 13, Apr. 13
Choosing a culture concept: How strategic is political communication?
•David Snow and Robert Benford, "Ideology, Frame Resonance, Participant
Mobilization," pp. 197-217 in B. Klandermans, H. Kriesi, and S. Tarrow,
International Social Movement Research, Vol. 1 (Greenwich: JAI, 1988).
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•Nina Eliasoph and Paul Lichterman, 2010. “Making Things Political.” Pp. 483-493
in John Hall, Laura Grindstaff and Ming-cheng Lo, eds., Handbook of
Cultural Sociology. New York: Routledge.
Marc Steinberg, "Tilting the Frame: Considerations on Collective Action Framing
from a Discursive Turn," Theory and Society 27(1998): 845-872.
Anne Kane, "Theorizing Meaning Construction in Social Movements: Symbolic
Structures and Interpretation during the Irish Land War, 1879-1882,"
Sociological Theory 15(1997): 249-276.
Paul Lichterman, “Talking Identity in the Public Sphere: Broad Visions and Small
Spaces in Sexual Identity Politics,” Theory and Society 28 (1999):101-141.
week 14, Apr. 20
Choosing a culture concept: how inventive is group life?
•Gary Alan Fine, “Small Groups and Culture Creation: The Idioculture of
Little League Baseball Teams,” American Sociological Review 44(5):
733-745 (1979).
•Penny Edgell Becker, Congregations in Conflict (Cambrige, Cambridge U
Press, 1999), pp. TBA.
Mitchell Stevens, Kingdom of Children, 2001.
THIRD POSITION PAPER DUE APRIL 22, 4:00pm
week 15, Apr. 27
How are cultural sociologies critical? Invitations
•Theordor Adorno, “Cultural Criticism and Society,” pp. 19-34 in Prisms
(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981).
•Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant, “Reason, Ethics and Politics,” pp. 47-59
in An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago
Press, 1992).
•Pierre Bourdieu, “Social Scientists, Economic Science and the Social
Movement,” pp. 52-59 in Acts of Resistance (trans. Richard Nice.
New York: The Free Press, 1998).
•Paul Lichterman, “Rethinking ‘critique’ in U.S. cultural sociology: a pragmatic
alternative to demystification.” [Originally published as “Repenser la
“critique” dans la sociologie culturelle états-unienne : remplacer la
démystification par une solution pragmatique.” Tracés no. 14 (2007).]
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SEMINAR PAPERS DUE MAY 9
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