“Draft Syllabus”:http://www.kieranhealy.org/files/teaching/culture-syllabus.pdf for Soc 508, a graduate seminar/survey course in the Sociology of Culture. Coming this Fall[1] to a University of Arizona near you. Comments welcome.
fn1. If August 24th can count as the Fall. The University of Arizona thinks it can.
{ 19 comments }
John Quiggin 06.01.04 at 6:27 am
My education doesn’t get me past Week 1, but I enjoyed Body Ritual among the Nacirema, especially the “Holy Mouth Man”.
lago 06.01.04 at 9:19 am
A few suggestions, which you may discard or disregard as you see fit. First, for a Lamont article I would go with the one on Derrida (“How to Become a Dominant French Philosopher” in AJS 93(3)). Second, I am shocked, shocked at the utter lack of Marshall Sahlins. Third, I suggest adding Stephan Fuchs’ article “Beyond Agency” in Sociological Theory 19(1) or his book Against Essentialism to the `current topics’ section. Fourth, if they’re going to have The Interpretation of Cultures in their hands, then they must read “Deep Play” since no graduate student should be allowed a Ph.D without reading it. Finally, the lack of both Adorno and Baudrillard makes me sad.
Not that I have any firm opinions on the matter.
Kieran Healy 06.01.04 at 10:52 am
Good suggestions, Iago. Some responses:
First, for a Lamont article I would go with the one on Derrida
Yeah, that’s a good piece, though I think the Neil Gross piece is a good substitute, and Michele’s work on boundaries is also worth reading.
Second, I am shocked, shocked at the utter lack of Marshall Sahlins
Well, I’d say the anthropologists are pretty well-represented in this list.
Stephan Fuchs’ article “Beyond Agency†in Sociological Theory 19(1) or his book Against Essentialism to the `current topics’ section
I reviewed Fuchs’ book for Contemporary Sociology and, while I think it certainly has some value, it’s got a number of severe problems. It sets fire to a lot of straw men in fine style. Others more famous than I — like Randy Collins — think it’s brilliant, so I may be in a minority.
Finally, the lack of both Adorno and Baudrillard makes me sad.
Adorno and Horkheimer nearly made the cut — once for the culture and class section and once for the markets and culture section. They were edged out by Bernstein in the former and James Boyle in the latter. And Baudrillard just doesn’t float my boat, I guess.
asg 06.01.04 at 12:30 pm
No Hayek?
Bill Tozier 06.01.04 at 1:36 pm
Over the last few years I’ve often found myself touting Sperber’s Explaining Culture (and sometimes Sperber & WIlson’s Relevance) in situations where it seems like a perfect fit.
And here I come upon your syllabus, and it seems a perfecter situation than most of those have been.
Cosma Shalizi has a review at
http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/reviews/explaining-culture/
q 06.01.04 at 4:42 pm
Looks like a very interesting course. Kieran, would you be so kind as to put it altogether in a book “Sociology of Culture”, then those of us who cannot attend can at least buy the book? :) Maybe you could post individual subject areas on the internet to make it a groupware project or get one or two CT contributors.
Six areas that spring to mind are :
“Christianity and Culture” – Nietzsche on herds/nihilism/buddhism,
“Race and Culture” – Very accessible and topical.*
“Culture and Film” – Hollywood/Bollywood
“Lost Cultures” – Aborigine/Maori
“Islamic/Iranian Culture” Pre/Post 79 revolution
“Trendy stuff” – SmartMobs and Generation X
*see for example films “Jungle Fever” “Lost in Translation” “Japanese Story” “Bend it like Beckham” “Save the Last Dance”
Mary Kay 06.01.04 at 5:05 pm
I’m not competent to comment on the course. This is just a note to say I enjoy boggling, from time to time, over how an Irishman might cope with the weather, culture, and landscape of Arizona.
Oh, and I always enjoy reading your posts.
MKK
agm 06.01.04 at 6:34 pm
Ah, this is the sort of thing that tempts me to leap from one field to another. I wish I was more able to wrap my mind around this stuff.
I must agree about the Baudrillard. Even accounting for his penchant for fragments of thought, Simulacra and Simulation is hard as hell to get through. It’s worth seeing (if nothing else for its influence on computer science), but perhaps it’s not the best use of time.
laura 06.01.04 at 6:59 pm
Umm, it’s not coming up for me.
laura 06.01.04 at 7:07 pm
I mean the syllabus doesn’t show up when I click the link.
Also, as to “Deep Play.” While it may be that no graduate student should be allowed a PhD without reading it, I had to read it at least twice, possibly more, en route to the BA. The additional time or two I read it in grad school served only to irritate me.
Ted K. 06.01.04 at 9:33 pm
I think I am showing my total lack of formal reading in this stuff (I might steal the syllabus and do some fun reading) but I don’t see anything whose title addresses taste clusters. I find them a very useful analytical concept and would expect to see them in a class like this. Of course, if they are already there, then (cue Gilda Radnor voice) Never Mind.
Kieran Healy 06.01.04 at 10:07 pm
Sperber’s Explaining Culture
I was thinking about something from the evolutionary literature on culture but so much of it “is crap”:http://www.lrb.co.uk/v21/n12/runc02_.html that it’s hard to know where the good stuff is. I’ll have a look at this one.
I enjoy boggling, from time to time, over how an Irishman might cope with the weather, culture, and landscape of Arizona
Yeah I should have a week on culture shock.
I don’t see anything whose title addresses taste clusters
Maybe week 10? Though I’m not familiar with the specific concept of ‘taste clusters’ — sounds like a marketing idea.
DJW 06.01.04 at 10:23 pm
Good to see sociologists still read Simmel. I wish more political scientists did.
Kieran Healy 06.02.04 at 1:19 am
OK, Horkheimer and Adorno are in. Also some other changes, thanks to comments from “Marion”:http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/fourcade-gourinchas/, including some Latour and also Norbert Elias. (Is anyone in the world now named Norbert?) I need to find a way to get Foucault in there too, I suppose.
Jimmy 06.02.04 at 3:32 am
Thank goodness there’s still a place for (a little) Howard S. Becker. His Art Worlds changed my life.
Kieran Healy 06.02.04 at 3:37 am
_Art Worlds_ is a classic all right. Rest assured that we make the students read it for prelims. And it’d be first on the list if this course was mainly about the Arts.
Doug Carmichael 06.02.04 at 3:58 am
Could you post a link to the prelim reading list?
DJW 06.02.04 at 7:05 am
Don’t fall into the trap that you need to cram everything important to the field into the course. Is it really that important to add Foucault if you’ll only have 20 minutes of seminar time to discuss on excerpt?
I loves me my Foucault, but I’m just sayin…
It does look like a great mix of classic social theory and contemporary research; most of my graduate seminars were one or the other, but not really a mix.
I must say I’m pleasantly surprised by how ‘post-modern friendly’ the syllabus is. You don’t see much of that stuff around these parts. And I always thought Soc at Arizona was really ratcho.
lago 06.02.04 at 8:43 am
While I am pleased at the inclusion of Latour, I will note here that it is sometimes difficult for folks who haven’t been introduced to semiotics (the Greimas version) to understand why non-human agency makes sense in the liquid way Latour employs the concept in The Pasteurization of France. It tends to be confused with the Sewell-style mainstream “agency” when it is not the same thing at all, rendering Latour’s work either unintelligible or apparently trivial to someone who doesn’t understand what he’s trying to do. But hey, maybe that’s the point of reading it.
As for Foucault, well, how about going really lateral and engaging, say, Maffesoli? Surely “neotribe” is a much more relevant cultural concept these days, bad SF adaptations of the idea notwithstanding?
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