Books On Cultural Studies

Consumer Culture, Popular Culture, Fashion Culture, Culture and Cultural Studies

Raymond Williams's Sociology of Culture : A Critical Reconstruction Book by Paul Jones

Freaks, Geeks and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of Consumption Book by Murray, Jr. Milner

Cultures of Taste/Theories of Appetite : Eating Romanticism Book by Timothy Morton

Cultural Work: Understanding the Cultural Industries (Routledge Harwood Studies in Cultural Policy) Book by Andrew Beck

The Rise of a Jazz Art World Book by Paul Lopes

The Cultural Industries Book by David Hesmondhalgh

Cultural Sociology in Practice (21st-Century Sociology) Book by Laura Desfor Edles

Cultural Theory: The Key Thinkers (Routledge Key Guides)
Book by Andrew Edgar, Peter Sedgwick (Editors)

Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts (Routledge Key Guides) Book by Peter Sedgewick, Andrew Edgar (Editors)

Class-Passing: Social Mobility In Film And Popular Culture Gwendolyn Audrey Foster

The Minds of Marginalized Black Men: Making Sense of Mobility, Opportunity, and Future Life Chances (Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology) Book by Alford A., Jr. Young

Comparative Studies of Culture and Power (Comparative Social Research) Fredrik Engelstad

Confronting Culture: Sociological Vistas Book by David Inglis

The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology Book by Jeffrey C. Alexander

Sociology On Culture Book by John R. Hall, Mary Jo Neitz, Marshall Battani

Prime Time Animation: Television Animation and American Culture
Book by Carole A. Stabile (Editor), Mark Harrison (Editor)

Visual Culture Book by Richard Howells

Contemporary Cultural Theory Book by Andrew Milner, Jeff Browitt

The Claims of Culture : Equality and Diversity in the Global Era Book by Seyla Benhabib

A Glossary of Cultural Theory Book by Peter Brooker

Reviews:

Raymond Williams's Sociology of Culture : A Critical Reconstruction
Book by Paul Jones
This study of Williams provides the most detailed account available of the sociological dimensions of his project. While including an overview of central themes throughout his work, in particular it unlocks his late sociology of culture. Previously overlooked aspects of Williams's work are thus highlighted. These include: his critique of Birmingham cultural studies; his use of an Adorno-like approach to 'cultural production'; his 'social formalist' alternative to structuralism and post-structuralism and his later approach to 'the media'.

Freaks, Geeks and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of Consumption Book by Murray, Jr. Milner
Drawing upon two years of intensive fieldwork in one highschool and 300 written interviews about high schools across the country, he argues that consumer culture has greatly impacted the way our youth relate to one another and understand themselves and society. He also suggests that the status systems in high schools are in and of themselves an important contributing factor to the creation and maintenance of consumer capitalism explaining the importance of designer jeans and designer drugs in an effort to be the coolest kid in the class.
Examines the social structure of high school and claims that teenage behaviors stem from their lack of power over the central features of their lives. Shows how high school distills the worst features of American consumer society and shapes how people relate to their neighbors, partners, and coworkers.

Cultures of Taste/Theories of Appetite : Eating Romanticism
Book by Timothy Morton (Editor)
Cultures of Taste/Theories of Appetite brims with fresh material: from fish and chips to the first curry house in Britain, from mother's milk to Marx, from Kant on dinner parties to Mary Wollstonecraft on toilets.

Cultural Work: Understanding the Cultural Industries (Routledge Harwood Studies in Cultural Policy) Book by Andrew Beck
Why do studies of film, popular music and television frequently talk about consumers rather than those who produce the work? What do we actually know about those involved in the creative industries?
Cultural Work examines the conditions of the production of culture. It maps the changed character of work within the cultural and creative industries, examines the increasing diversity of cultural work and offers new methods for analyzing and thinking about cultural workplaces. Cultural Work brings together a mixture of practitioners and scholars to think about the production of culture in an industrialised context: it includes those who began in the creative industries and now teach and study cultural practices, those who have left academia and are now involved in cultural production as well as those who maintain profiles as both educators and practitioners. Beck investigates previously unexplored aspects of the creative industries. Studying television, popular music, performance art, radio, film production and live performance the book offers occupational biographies, cultural histories, practitioners' evidence, considerations of the economic environment as well as new ways of observing and studying the cultural industries.

The Rise of a Jazz Art World Book by Paul Lopes
The origins of jazz were in the barrelhouses of New Orleans and the speakeasies of Chicago. By the nineteen fifties, a musical renaissance transformed jazz into a high art form. Paul Lopes shows how the rise of a jazz art world was a unique movement--a socially diverse community of musicians, critics, collectors, producers, and enthusiasts that struggled in various ways against
cultural orthodoxy in America. This accessible, interdisciplinary book will be of great interest to scholars and students of sociology, cultural studies, American studies, African-American studies, and jazz studies.

The Cultural Industries Book by David Hesmondhalgh
"The Cultural Industries is an indispensable guide to the main forces at work in the production of media today. This lucid, careful and sophisticated book orders the entire field, for the US as well as Europe, and at one stroke becomes the state of the art, the standard."
-- Todd Gitlin, Columbia University
What are the "cultural industries"? What role do they play in contemporary society? How are they changing?
The Cultural Industries combines a political economy approach with the best aspects of cultural studies, sociology, communication studies and social theory to provide an overview of the key debates surrounding cultural production.

Cultural Sociology in Practice (21st-Century Sociology) Book by Laura Desfor Edles
Cultural Sociology in Practice is a concise introduction to the burgeoning new field of cultural sociology. Using straightforward language and popular examples, the book sorts out the various definitions of the word "culture" in a sociological context. After breaking down the term "culture" into three separate meanings - culture as artistic activity, as a way of life, and as a pattern of shared symbols - the book then applies these various meanings to cultural events, artifacts, and practices.
Part I demonstrates how culture and society intersect through religion, ideology, the media, pop culture, and race. Part II offers a primer on cultural methodology.

Cultural Theory: The Key Thinkers (Routledge Key Guides)
Book by Andrew Edgar (Editor), Peter Sedgwick (Editor)
A perfect companion to the recently published Key Concepts in Cultural Theory, this volume provides a comprehensive overview of the key terms, arguments, and theories relating to issues in cultural theory. The essays focus on those thinkers who have been essential in the development of this field of study.

Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts (Routledge Key Guides) Book by Peter Sedgewick, Andrew Edgar (Editors)
This comprehensive volume allows students to quickly and accurately come to grips with the key terms encountered in cultural theory today. In more than 350 clear and succinct entries, Cultural Theory: The Key Concepts provides an up-to-date and authoritative introduction to the essential terms, theories and major concerns of this complex field. It covers topics such as:Deconstruction, Epistemology, Feminism, Hermeneutics, Holism, Methodology, Postmodernism, Semiotics, Sociobiology and many more.

Class-Passing: Social Mobility In Film And Popular Culture
Book by Gwendolyn Audrey Foster
Oprah Winfrey, Donald Trump, Roseanne Barr, and Britney Spears typify class-passers—those who claim different socioeconomic classes as their own—asserts Gwendolyn Audrey Foster in Class-Passing: Social Mobility in Film and Popular Culture. According to new rules of social standing in American popular culture, class is no longer defined by wealth, birth, or education. Instead, today’s notion of class reflects a socially constructed and regulated series of performed acts and gestures rooted in the cult of celebrity.
In examining the quest for class mobility, Foster deftly traces class-passing through the landscape of popular films, reality television shows, advertisements, the Internet, and video games. She deconstructs the politics of celebrity, fashion, and conspicuous consumerism and analyzes class-passing as it relates to the American Dream, gender, and marriage.
Class-Passing draws on dozens of examples from popular culture, from old movie classics and contemporary films to print ads and cyberspace, to illustrate how flagrant displays of wealth that were once unacceptable under the old rules of behavior are now flaunted by class-passing celebrities. From the construction worker in Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire? to the privileged socialites Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie of The Simple Life, Foster explores the fantasy of contact between the classes. She also refers to television class-passers from The Apprentice, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, and Survivor and notable class-passing achievers Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Martha Stewart.

The Minds of Marginalized Black Men: Making Sense of Mobility, Opportunity, and Future Life Chances (Princeton Studies in Cultural Sociology)
Book by Alford A., Jr. Young
While we hear much about the "culture of poverty" that keeps poor black men poor, we know little about how such men understand their social position and relationship to the American dream. Moving beyond stereotypes, this book examines how twenty-six poverty-stricken African American men from Chicago view their prospects for getting ahead. It documents their definitions of good jobs and the good life--and their beliefs about whether and how these can be attained. In its pages, we meet men who think seriously about work, family, and community and whose differing experiences shape their views of their social world.
The book reveals how these men have experienced varying degrees of exposure to more-privileged Americans--differences that ground their understandings of how racism and socioeconomic inequality determine their life chances. The poorest and most socially isolated are, perhaps surprisingly, most likely to believe that individuals can improve their own lot. By contrast, men who regularly leave their neighborhood tend to have a wider range of opportunities but also have met with more racism, hostility, and institutional obstacles--making them less likely to believe in the American Dream.
Demonstrating how these men interpret their social world, this book seeks to de-pathologize them without ignoring their experiences with chronic unemployment, prison, and substance abuse. It shows how the men draw upon such experiences as they make meaning of the complex circumstances in which they strive to succeed.

Comparative Studies of Culture and Power (Comparative Social Research)
Book by Fredrik Engelstad
The "cultural turn" in sociology created a new interest in power questions. This has led to a renewed interest in conceptual discussions of power in the field of culture studies, whereas empirical work is still less developed. Comparative Studies of Culture and Power sets the focus on the uses of cultural and symbolic means in struggles for hegemony: in politics, music
markets, literature and the arts. Gender specific uses of rhetorical techniques is one salient theme, struggles for recognition of rhythm and blues music another. Several articles treat the role of the Arts in nation building, as well as the role of public monuments in the acknowledgement of war and terrorism. The analyses relate to cultures all over the Western world.

Confronting Culture: Sociological Vistas Book by David Inglis
The study of culture is crucial for understanding many of the most important aspects of human life. Social scientists increasingly regard it as one of their central areas of interest, and sociologists have offered valuable and provocative insights into the nature of cultural life. Confronting Culture rectifies this situation, offering a clear and accessible introduction to the complex field of the sociology of culture. Inglis and Hughson critically discuss the key contributions made to the study of culture by different streams of thought within sociology. They examine the nature of cultural matters as perceived by classical sociology, the Frankfurt School, English and American mass culture theorists, culturalists and cultural materialists, semioticians, poststructuralists and postmodernists, the
French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, and scholars within the ‘production of culture’ paradigm. The book will appeal to those studying culture both from within sociology and from the perspectives of other disciplines, such as cultural studies, media and communication studies, anthropology and literary studies.

The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology by Jeffrey C. Alexander
In this pathbreaking work, Jeffrey Alexander argues for a strong program in cultural sociology - one that gives culture the predominant place and "autonomy" it deserves. Using a wide range of empirical case studies, from Watergate and technology to war, trauma, and the Holocaust, Alexander demonstrates how cultural structures translate into concrete actions and institutions.
Only by identifying structural factors and the concrete mechanisms through which culture does its work, he argues, can the true power and persistence of violence, exclusion and degradation be understood. A work that will change the way sociologists think about culture and the social world.

Sociology On Culture Book by John R. Hall, Mary Jo Neitz, Marshall Battani
Because the sociology of culture has grown so much and cultural studies have proliferated so widely over the past
quarter-century, there has been no easy way to obtain an informed introduction to the myriad issues at stake. Now, Sociology on Culture offers a wide-ranging and probing overview of sociological approaches to culture, their major arguments, and their findings. The book's discussions -- of topics ranging from medieval theater to the Internet, across a variety of societies -- are
informed by approaches from interpretive sociology and symbolic interactionism, to the Frankfurt school and Foucault.

Prime Time Animation: Television Animation and American Culture
Book by Carole A. Stabile (Editor), Mark Harrison (Editor)
The contributors explore a series of key issues and questions, including: How do we explain the animation explosion of the
1960s? Why did it take nearly twenty years following the cancellation of The Flintstones for animation to find its feet again as primetime fare? In addressing these questions, as well as many others, essays in the first section examine the relation between earlier, made-for-cinema animated production (such as the Warner Looney Toons shorts) and television-based animation; the role of animation in the economies of broadcast and cable television; and the links between animation production and brand image. Contributors also examine specific programs like The Powerpuff Girls, Daria, The Simpsons, Ren and Stimpy and South Park from the perspective of fans, exploring fan cybercommunities, investigating how ideas of "class" and "taste" apply to recent TV animation, and addressing themes such as irony, alienation, and representations of the family.

Visual Culture Book by Richard Howells
Visual Culture is an introductory textbook book on visual literacy, exploring how meaning is both made and transmitted in an increasingly visual world. It is designed to introduce students to the analysis of all kinds of visual texts, whether drawings, paintings, photographs, films, advertisements, television programs or new media forms. The book is illustrated with copious
examples that range from medieval painting to contemporary record covers and is written in a lively and engaging style, avoiding unnecessary jargon.
The first part of the book is concerned with differing theoretical approaches to visual analysis, and includes chapters on iconology, form, art history, ideology, semiotics and hermeneutics.
The second part shifts from a theoretical to a medium-based approach and comprises chapters on fine art, photography, film, television and new media. These investigate the complex relationship between reality and visual representation.

Contemporary Cultural Theory Book by Andrew Milner, Jeff Browitt
This lucid and concise overview brings a much-needed sense of historical and theoretical scale to the growth of cultural studies.
For this third edition, extensive revisions have been made to include new material on the new historicism, queer theory, black and Latino cultural studies, cultural policy and posthumanism, and on the work of such thinkers as Zizek, Bourdieu, Deleuze, and Guattari.

The Claims of Culture : Equality and Diversity in the Global Era Book by Seyla Benhabib
How can liberal democracy best be realized in a world fraught with conflicting new forms of identity politics and intensifying conflicts over culture? Maintaining that cultures are themselves torn by conflicts about their own boundaries, Seyla Benhabib challenges the assumption shared by many theorists and activists that cultures are clearly defined wholes. She argues that much debate--including that of "strong" multiculturalism, which sees cultures as distinct pieces of a mosaic--is dominated by this faulty belief, one with grave consequences for how we think injustices among groups should be redressed and human diversity achieved. Benhabib masterfully presents an alternative approach, developing an understanding of cultures as continually creating, re-creating, and renegotiating the imagined boundaries between "us" and "them."
Drawing on contemporary cultural politics from Western Europe, Canada, and the United States, Benhabib develops a double-track model of deliberative democracy that permits maximum cultural contestation within the official public sphere as well as in and through social movements and the institutions of civil society.

A Glossary of Cultural Theory Book by Peter Brooker
A Glossary of Cultural Theory provides the reader with lucid and up-to-date guidance through the vibrant and changing debates in cultural studies and related disciplines. This new edition has been updated throughout and contains entries on important new terms from Convergence and Cosmopolitanism, through Ecology and Everyday Life to Thirdspace and Translation.

E-Books