17270 - Sociology of Cultural and Communication Processes

Learning outcomes

The course offers a general inbtroduction to the study of culture, intendend as the study of the processes of creation, production, circulation, distribution and use of cultural objects - definied as complexes of social meanings organised in a form (be it a song, a romance, a dish or any other cultural form). At the end of the course students should be able to distinguish among many different uses of the concept of culture (humanistic, anthropological, semiotic etc.), to reknow cultural complexity (that is the many variuations in forms of production, organization, evaluation and consumption of cultural objects) and to practice different approaches to the analysis and interpretation of cultural symbols and products.

Course contents

The Concepts of Culture: humanistic and ethnographic

A Map of “Culture” (ideas, values, norms, beliefs, schema, rituals, artworks…)

Studying Culture Sociologically: the “Cultural Diamond” as Heuristic Device

The Links between Culture and Society

            - Marxist Tradition

            - Weberian Tradition

            - Functionalist Tradition

Culture and Meaning (the semiotic/symbolic concept)

Meaning Systems and Cultural Repertoires (System and Practice)

Culture and Cognition

Culture as Motivation and Culture as Justification

Strong and Weak Programs in Cultural Analysis

The Collective Production of Meanings

            - Durkheimian Cultural Studies

            - Symbolic Interactionism and Identity

Institutional Analysis of Culture

            - The Production-of-Culture Perspective

            - Art Worlds

            - Cultural Markets and Institutional Fields

            - Networks of Cultural Production

            - Cultural Industries

The Consumption of Culture

            - Audience Studies

            - Class, Taste and Cultural Capital

            - Mass Culture/Popular Culture

Cultural Technologies

Internet and Culture

Global Culture

 

Readings/Bibliography

 

Wendy Griswold, Cultures and Societies in a Changing World, Pine Forge Press 2004 (2nd edition),      chapters 1-4, 6-7.

A. Swidler, Culture in action, in “American Sociological Review”, 1986, vol.51, n. 2, pp. 273-286.

http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-224(198604)51%3A2%3C273%3ACIASAS%3E2.0.CO%3B2-B 

T. Dowd, Innovation and Diversity in Cultural Sociology, in “Sociologica”, I, 1.

http://www.sociologica.mulino.it/journal/article/index/Article/Journal:ARTICLE:150

O. Lizardo and S. Skiles (2008) Cultural Consumption in the Fine and Popular Arts Realms , in
“Sociology Compass” 2 (2) , pp.  485–502

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2008.00101.x

  

Victoria D. Alexander, Sociology of the Arts, Blackwell 2003, chapters 5-7, 10-12.

P. DiMaggio, Culture and Cognition, in “Annual Review of Sociology”, 1997, vol. 24.

P. Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production, Columbia UP 1993, Part I.

H. S. Becker, Art Worlds, University of California Press 1982, chapters 1-2.

David Hesmondhalgh, Cultural Industries, London, Sage 2002, Part I.

David Hesmondhalgh (ed.), Media Production, Open University Press 2006, chapters 1-3.

Roberta Sassatelli, Consumer Culture, London, Sage 2007, Part I.

Marco Santoro, Culture As (and After) Production, in “Cultural Sociology” (2008) II, 1.

 

Assessment methods

ORAL EXAM

Office hours

See the website of Marco Santoro