This second edition of
Cultural Theory provides a concise introduction to cultural theory, placing major figures, traditional concepts, and contemporary themes within a sharp conceptual framework.
- Provides a student-friendly introduction to what can often be a complex field of study
- Updates the first edition in response to reader feedback and to the changing nature of the field
- Includes additional coverage of theorists from the classical period to include Nietzsche and Du Bois
- Introduces entirely new chapters on race and gender theory, and the body
- Considers themes that have become more important in theoretical activity in recent years such as computers and virtual reality, cosmopolitanism, and performance theory
- Draws on theories and theorists from continental Europe as well as the English-speaking world
Tabella dei contenuti
Preface to the First Edition: About this Book vi
Preface to the Second Edition ix
Acknowledgments x
Introduction: What is Culture? What is Cultural Theory? 1
1 Culture in Classical Social Theory 6
2 Culture and Social Integration in the Work of Talcott Parsons 26
3 Culture as Ideology in Western Marxism 34
4 Culture as Action in Symbolic Interactionism, Phenomenology, and Ethnomethodology 54
5 The Durkheimians: Ritual, Classification, and the Sacred 69
6 Structuralism and the Semiotic Analysis of Culture 92
7 The Poststructural Turn 111
8 Culture, Structure, and Agency: Three Attempts at Synthesis 128
9 British Cultural Studies 144
10 The Production and Reception of Culture 158
11 Culture as Text: Narrative and Hermeneutics 176
12 Psychoanalytic Approaches to Culture and the Self 195
13 The Cultural Analysis of Postmodernism and Postmodernity 207
14 Postmodern and Poststructural Critical Theory 228
15 Cultural Theories of Race and Gender 241
16 The Body in Cultural Theory 262
References 280
Index 296
Circa l’autore
Philip Smith is Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale University and Deputy Director of the Yale Center for Cultural Sociology. His books include
Cultural Theory: An Introduction (Blackwell, 2001),
Why War? The Cultural Logic of Iraq, the Gulf War and Suez (2005),
The Cambridge Companion to Durkheim (with Jeffrey C. Alexander) (2005), and
Punishment and Culture (2008).
Alexander Riley is Associate Professor of Sociology at Bucknell University. He is the author of Godless Intellectuals?: How Durkheimian Sociology and Poststructuralism Reinvented the Intellectual Pursuit of the Sacred (2008).
Altri ebook dello stesso autore / Editore
8.118 Ebook in questa categoria
