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This lively and accessible new book reconsiders the different views as to what 'culture' is, how it operates, and how it relates to other aspects of the human (and non-human) world.
What can Sociology add to our understanding of art? This volume brings together a range of respected scholars in the field who demonstrate the many ways in which sociology can add to our understanding of artistic issues. Covering all the major schools of thought, and dealing with many different art forms, the book offers the reader a comprehensive and accessible guide to an often complex area. It will be an invaluable resource for students seeking to understand sociology's contributions to the study of artistic and aesthetic issues.
Social theory is a crucial resource for the social sciences. It provides rich insights into how human beings think and act and how contemporary social life is constructed. But often the key ideas of social theorists are expressed in highly technical and difficult language that can hide more than it reveals. The new edition of this popular book continues to cut to the core of what social theory is about. Covering key themes from the classical thinkers onwards, including Marxism, post-structuralism, phenomenology, feminism and more, the second edition features a new chapter on Actor-Network Theory and enhanced discussion of postcolonial theory. Wide ranging in scope and coverage, the book is concise in presentation and free from jargon. Showing why social theory matters, and why it is of far-reaching social and political importance, the book is ideal for readers seeking a clear, crisp mapping of a complex but very rewarding area.
The Uses of Sport provides an essential resource for the study of sport within culture and popular culture.
What light can sociology shed on art and culture in contemporary society? What is distinctive about the sociological understanding of art? In what ways is the sociology of art today developing new insights into the nature of artistic life? This volume contains essays by a wide range of authors, each of whom is concerned with showing the multiple ways in which artistic processes are profoundly shaped by their social settings. Encompassing a wide range of artistic fields, including painting, film, ballet and architecture, the book demonstrates how sociological appreciations of art and artists provide rich and stimulating alternative perspectives to conventional art criticism.
Inglis (sociology, U. of Aberdeen, UK) explores our present feelings of shame, secrecy, disgust, and guilt surrounding the process of excreta and excretion in this fascinating study on one of our society's most unmentionable topics. The sociological approach is cast in a framework suggested by the work of Pierre Bourdieu, described in an initial chapter. Inglis then turns to excretory history, considering at length the faecal mores of classical antiquity; the creation of the bourgeois faecal habitus, or private spaces, in the Middle Ages (drawing on the work of Norbert Elias); the creation of large-scale water- based sewer systems in the 19th century and their relation to various crises people suffered that provoked them to keep the excretory mores of earlier times; and the resultant creation of the small private spaces used today.
Cultural sociology - or the sociology of culture - has grown from a minority interest in the 1970s to become one of the largest and most vibrant areas within sociology globally. In The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Sociology, a global range of experts explore the theory, methodology and innovations that make up this ever-expanding field. The Handbook′s 40 original chapters have been organised into five thematic sections: Theoretical Paradigms Major Methodological Perspectives Domains of Inquiry Cultural Sociology in Contexts Cultural Sociology and Other Analytical Approaches Both comprehensive and current, The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Sociology will be an essential reference tool for both advanced students and scholars across sociology, cultural studies and media studies.
The Globalization of Food provides a comprehensive guide to all of the key issues involving globalization and the production, distribution and consumption of food in the present day. From domestic kitchens to factory farms, from corporate board-rooms to the fields of the Developing World, the book examines the most important sites and processes involved in changing the ways people all across the planet eat today. Rich in detail, expansive in scope and ambitious in coverage, The Globalization of Food forcefully demonstrates the central role of food in many of the crucial and most controversial social and political issues of the 21st century.The Globalization of Food:- Investigates the multiple ways in which globalization and food are interrelated- Spans established and emerging schools of thought in the field- Covers a broad range of examples and case studies from around the globe- Analyses the key controversies and dilemmas created by food globalization- Features contributions from leading experts in a range of disciplinesContributors include Pat Caplan, Carole Counihan, Marianne Elisabeth Lien, Alan Warde and Rick Wilk.
Confronting Culture offers a clear and accessible discussion and analysis of the complex field of the sociology of culture, and how it compares with approaches developed within cultural studies. An accessible guide to the complex field of the sociological study of culture. Unique in showing how sociological understandings of culture often differ from rival approaches in the discipline of cultural studies. Introduces the various ways of thinking sociologically about culture that have been developed over the last century. Examines the legacy of classical sociology for the sociology of culture, and situates thinking about culture within the historical, cultural and social contexts of the rival schools of thought in the US, UK, France and Germany. Examples of topics under discussion include the rise of postmodernism, the American production of culture approach, and the cultural sociology of Pierre Bourdieu.
2007 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title Song dynasty historian Hong Mai (1123–1202) spent a lifetime on a collection of supernatural accounts, contemporary incidents, poems, and riddles, among other genres, which he entitled Record of the Listener (Yijian zhi). His informants included a wide range of his contemporaries, from scholar-officials to concubines, Buddhist monks, and soldiers, who helped Hong Mai leave one of the most vivid portraits of life and the different classes in China during this period. Originally comprising a massive 420 chapters, only a fraction survived the Mongol ravaging of China in the thirteenth century. The present volume is the first book-length consideration of ...