SOCIOL 245 (Cultural Sociology)

Instructor Information

Name Omar Lizardo
Position Professor of Sociology
Email olizardo@soc.ucla.edu
url https://olizardo.github.io/mysite/

Course Information

Name SOCIOL 245 (Cultural Sociology)
Time Fridays 9-11:50a
Place Bunche 2121
Office Hours Wednesdays and Thursdays 1-2p
Office Haines 290 or by Zoom appointment

Course Description

This course is designed with two main goals in mind:

  • To give a broad introduction to the major issues and thematic emphases in cultural sociology as it has mainly developed in the U.S. during the last forty years.

  • To prepare for the sociology of culture field exam.

Although the course is designed to prepare sociology graduate students for the culture field exam, taking the course in no way obligates students to take the exam. I am sure some of you are taking the course for your personal edification, or because you know culture is one of the major areas of contemporary sociology that everyone should be familiar with!

In any case, by the end of the term we will have covered the bulk of the “core” section of the sociology of culture field exam reading list. Students who are interested in taking the culture field exam should schedule an appointment to discuss optional readings, identify a second reader, and otherwise prepare to take the exam. This remaining preparation should take about a quarter of self-directed work during which you periodically check in with your readers.

Organization of the Course

The class is structured as a mixed lecture/discussion seminar. I will begin each class with a brief lecture contextualizing the main readings and the week’s topics. We will then move on to a discussion of the main readings which will be led by our discussion leaders for the week.

Course requirements

There are three primary requirements in the class:

  1. Do the readings before class
  2. Participate in class discussion (50% of the final grade)
  3. Produce a final written assignment (50% of the final grade)

Doing the Readings

Thankfully, you are literate, and part of the (increasingly select) reading class, so this should be no problem. Do the readings!

Participating in Class Discussion

There are two ways to participate in the discussion during the seminar.

  1. The formal side of participation will come in the form of you signing up as a co-discussion leader for three out of our nine meetings after week 1.

  2. The informal side will come from you contributing to seminar discussion in the form of questions, comments, and observations regarding the readings assigned for that week.

You can contribute to the seminar discussion in two ways:

  • By asking questions and providing comments during our IRL discussion in class.
  • By submitting questions and comments via the Bruinlearn discussion tool before class.

First Week Participation

For our first week meeting, each of you should submit at least one comment or question on that week’s reading via the general questions and comments discussion tool. These will be the basis of our seminar discussion for that week.

Discussion Leader Process (Weeks Two through Ten)

The week you are a discussion leader you will work with your co-discussion leaders to create an analytic memo covering the readings for that week. The memo should go beyond a summary of the readings. Instead you should aim to produce: - A synthetic document, bringing up points of commonality, tensions, contradictions, and prospects for future development. - In addition, the memo will close with a series of discussion questions for us to consider in class. The questions can focus on any aspect of the readings, whether conceptual, substantive, empirical applications, implications, and the like. - The memo will be submitted by noon the day before class (that is Thursday by 5p) in the so that your classmates have a chance to read it, comment on it, and add their own perspective and questions. You will submit it via the discussion leader tool on Bruinlearn, so that we all have a chance to take a look at it before we meet for class discussion.

Final Written Assingment

The basic goal here is for you to end up with something that could be useful to you at the end of the day. As such, I’ll give you a set of options here, but if you none of these work, we can talk about something that can be customized for your needs and goals.

The final written assignment will be due on Friday March 22nd at 11:59p.

By the end of the course you should be ready to submit one of the following:

Draft Research Paper

This will be a 15-20 page (double-spaced, Times New Roman Font, 12pt, 1in margins) draft of a research paper. This paper will contain some kind of data analysis, involving data on culture broadly defined to include qualitative or quantitative data. It will include an introduction reviewing literature and setting up a research problem or question. It will then move on to a methods section describing your data and analytic approach, and will close with a discussion section summarizing key findings, outlining implications for substantive research and theory, and describing potential future work and extensions. The goal here is to come up with a draft of a paper that could one day be submitted to the various social science and sociology-oriented journal focused on substantive research, whether “generalist” (e.g., American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology) or “specialist” (e.g., Poetics, American Journal of Cultural Sociology).

Draft Conceptual Paper

This will be a 15-20 page (double-spaced, Times New Roman Font, 12pt, 1in margins) draft of a theory paper. The paper will focus on a set of concepts, theoretical ideas, or overall perspectives for approaching the study of social life that are based, inspired, extend, or incorporate ideas, concepts, debates, or perspectives from cultural sociology (broadly defined). The goal here is to come up with a draft of a paper that could one day be submitted to the various social science and sociology-oriented journal focused on “culture” or “theory.”

Draft Literature Review

This will be a 10 page (double-spaced, Times New Roman Font, 12pt, 1in margins) draft of a literature review of work done from a cultural sociology perspective on a topic of your interest. The paper will cover what has been done in the field so far, what the strengths and limitations of previous is, and will note gaps or opportunities for future work addressing those limitations or extending the literature to new substantive domains, perhaps linking previous work to the some of the stuff we will be reading in class.

Draft Research Proposal

This will be a 10 page (single-spaced, Times New Roman Font, 12pt, 1in margins) draft of a research proposal for a project incorporating core ideas and concepts from cultural sociology that you plan to start in the near future. The proposal will include a background section reviewing previous work, noting their strengths and limitations, and pointing to gaps in the literature. It will also include an “approach” section describing your research project, your main research questions, the data gathering procedures you will use, and the data-analytic techniques you plan to implement once your data is collected. It will close with an implication sections describing what the contributions of your project will be and why it is relevant and important.

Whatever you decide, you will submit an extended abstract of your final project, due on week 5 (Sunday 11:59p). This will be a one-page, single-spaced document with 12pt Times New Roman Font and 1in margins. I will provide you with brief feedback and a “green light” on the abstract.

Schedule of Topics and Readings

THIS IS A LIVE DOCUMENT CHECK REGULARLY FOR CHANGES

Week 1 (1/12): The Production of Culture

  • Marx, Karl and F. Engels. 1970. Pp. 39-95 from The German Ideology, edited by C.J. Arthur. New York: International Publishers.

  • Adorno, T, and M. Horkheimer. 2002. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception.” Pp. 94-136 in G. S. Noerr (Ed.) Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments (trans. by E. Jephcott). Stanford: Stanford University Press.

  • Benjamin, Walter. 2008. “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility” Pp. 19-55 in M. W. Jennings, B. Doherty and T. Y. Levin (Eds.) The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media (trans. by E. Jephcott and H. Zohn). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

  • Peterson, Richard A. and N. Anand. 2004. “The Production of Culture Perspective.” Annual Review of Sociology 30:311–34. link

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1983. “The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed.” Poetics 12(4-5): 311-356. link

Week 2 (1/19): Artworlds and Cultural Industry Systems

  • Becker, Howard S. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press. (Chap. 2 and Chap. 5)

  • Hirsch, Paul M. 1972. “Processing Fads and Fashions: An Organization-Set Analysis of Cultural Industry Systems.” American Journal of Sociology 77(4): 639-659. link

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1980. “The Production of Belief: Contribution to an Economy of Symbolic Goods.” Media, Culture & Society 2(3): 261-293. link

  • Childress, Clayton. 2017. Under the Cover: The Creation, Production, and Reception of a Novel. Princeton University Press. (Introduction and Chap. 6)

  • Lena, Jennifer C. and Mark C. Pachucki. 2013. “The sincerest form of flattery: Innovation, repetition, and status in an art movement.” Poetics 41(3): 236-264. link

Week 3 (1/26): The Dissemination and Reception of Culture

  • Griswold, Wendy. 1987. “A Methodological Framework for the Sociology of Culture.” Sociological Methodology 17: 1-36. link

  • Schudson, Michael. 1989. “How Culture Works: Perspectives from Media Studies on the Efficacy of Symbols.” Theory & Society 18:153-180. link

  • McDonnell, Terence E., Christopher A. Bail and Iddo Tavory. 2017. “A Theory of Resonance.” Sociological Theory 35(1): 1-14. link

  • Santana-Acuña, Alvaro.2014. “How a Literary Work Becomes a Classic: The Case of One Hundred Years of Solitude.” American Journal of Cultural Sociology 2: 97-149. link

Week 4 (2/2): Culture, Classification, and Boundaries

  • Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and Danger. London: Routledge and Kegan, Paul. (Introduction, Chap. 1, and Chap. 6).

  • Anand, N., & Jones, B. C. (2008). Tournament rituals, category dynamics, and field configuration: The case of the Booker Prize. Journal of Management Studies, 45(6), 1036-1060. link

  • Lamont, Michele, and Virag Molnár. 2002. “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences.” Annual Review of Sociology 28:167–195. link

  • DiMaggio, Paul J. 1987. “Classification in Art.” American Sociological Review 52(4):440–455. link

  • Lena, Jennifer C. and Richard A. Peterson. 2008. “Classification as Culture: Types and Trajectories of Music Genres.” American Sociological Review 73:697–718. link

Week 5 (2/9): Culture and Inequality

  • Willis, Paul. 1977. Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. Farnborough, England: Saxon House. (Introduction and Chap. 2)

  • Lareau, Annette. 2011. Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. University of California Press (Chap. 1).

  • Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press. (Chap. 3)

  • Tran, M. T. (2022). The Racial Barriers in US Independent Filmmaking. Sociological Inquiry, 92(2), 490-513. link

  • Rivera, Lauren. 2012. “Hiring as Cultural Matching: The Case of Elite Professional Service Firms.” American Sociological Review 77 (6): 999–1022. link

Week 6 (2/16): Culture, Institutions, and Historical Change

  • Berger, Peter L. and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise on the Sociology of Knowledge. New York: Anchor Books. (Introduction, Part I, Part II, Pp. 129-163)

  • Sewell, William H. Jr. 1992. “A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation.” American Journal of Sociology 98: 1-29.

  • Elias, Norbert. 1978. The Civilizing Process, Vol. 1: The History of Manners. New York: Urizen Press. (Preface, Pp. 53-85)

  • Foucault, Michel. 1977. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York: Random House. (Chap. 1 and Chap. 3)

Week 7 (2/23): Interpretation and Cultural Autonomy

  • Alexander, Jeffrey, and Philip Smith. 2001. “The Strong Program in Cultural Theory: Elements of a Structural Hermeneutics.” in Handbook of Sociological Theory, Pp. 135-150. Boston, MA: Springer.

  • Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Culture. New York: Basic Books. (Chap. 1, Chap. 8 and Chap. 15).

  • Eliasoph, Nina, and Paul Lichterman. 2003. “Culture in Interaction.” American Journal of Sociology 108(4): 735-794. link

  • Wagner-Pacifici, Robin, and Barry Schwartz. 1991. “The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a Difficult Past.” American journal of Sociology 97(2): 376-420. link

Week 8 (3/1): Culture, Politics, and Morality

  • Luker, Kristin. 1984. Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. (Introduction, Chap. 8)

  • Binder, Amy J. 2009. Contentious Curricula: Afrocentrism and Creationism in American Public Schools. Princeton: Princeton University Press. (Chap. 6)

  • Alexander, Jeffrey C. 2018. “The Societalization of Social Problems: Church Pedophilia, Phone Hacking, and the Financial Crisis.” American Sociological Review 83(6): 1049-1078. link

  • Kiviat, Barbara. 2019. “The Moral Limits of Predictive Practices: The Case of Credit-Based Insurance Scores.” American Sociological Review 84(6): 1134-1158. link

Week 9 (3/8): Culture and Economic Life

  • Marx, Karl. 1977. “The Commodity.” Pp. 125-177 in Capital, Volume 1. New York: Vintage Books.

  • Zelizer, Viviana. 2000. “The Purchase of Intimacy.” Law and Social Inquiry 25(3): 817-848. link

  • Fourcade, Marion. 2011. “Cents and Sensibility: Economic Valuation and the Nature of ‘Nature.’” American Journal of Sociology 116 (6): 1721-77. pdf

  • Fourcade, Marion and Kieran Healy. 2017. “Seeing Like a Market.” Socio-Economic Review 15.1: 9-29. link

  • Krippner, Greta R. and Daniel Hirschman. 2022. “The Person of the Category: The Pricing of Risk and the Politics of Classification in Insurance and Credit.” Theory & Society 51(5): 685-727. link

Week 10 (3/15): Culture and Cognition

  • Swidler, Ann. 1986. “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies.” American Sociological Review 51: 273-286. link

  • Vaisey, Stephen. 2009 “Motivation and justification: A Dual-Process Model of Culture in Action.” American Journal of Sociology 114(6): 1675-1715. link

  • Lizardo, Omar. 2017. “Improving Cultural Analysis: Considering Personal Culture in its Declarative and Nondeclarative Modes.” American Sociological Review 82(1): 88-115. link

  • Brubaker, Rogers, Mara Loveman and Peter Stamatov. 2004. “Ethnicity as Cognition.” Theory & Society 33: 31-64. link

  • Cerulo, Karen A., Vanina Leschziner and Hana Shepherd. 2021. “Rethinking Culture and Cognition.” Annual Review of Sociology 47: 63-85. link