Department of Sociology Harvard University Culture, Power, and Inequality Soc 154 Fall 2004 Course instructor: Michèle Lamont, 510 William James Hall, (617) 277-8933; mlamont@wjh.harvard.edu Office hours: Mondays 2:15-4:15pm. Please contact Adam Kissel at 5-3849 or at akissel@wjh.harvard.edu to make an appointment. Teaching Fellow: Sabrina Pendergrass, 611 William James Hall Office hours: Thursdays 10am-12pm. Lectures are on Mondays and Wednesdays from 11-12 in 105 William James Hall. Objectives: This course is open to undergraduate and graduate students. It examines the role played by culture in explaining persistent inequality in the distribution of resources and power. We will first explore the theoretical tools needed before attacking the problem from various angles. We will analyze how contests for the definitions of reality affect social movements, social problems, and politics more generally. We will explore how these battles are fought at the individual, organizational, and macro levels, in the realms of the mass media and the shaping of public opinion. Other issues to be examined include the role of cultural tastes and cultural consumption in social reproduction, cultural resistance and hegemony, and how race, class, and gender shape identity. We will end with discussion of ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, national identity, and globalization in contemporary societies. Throughout the course, students will be asked to apply the conceptual tools and knowledge acquired to make sense of their experiences and of their immediate and remote environments. Requirements: Cumulative final in-class exam, worth 35 percent of the final grade Four assignments (4 pages max. each), worth 40 percent (10 percent each) (see description below). Due dates: October 14, 28; November 29; December 15. Class participation and attendance, worth 25 percent Class participation entails active engagement with the readings and participation in the section. You are required to contribute at least ten postings, evenly dispersed throughout the semester, to the online discussion forum, where you mobilize the tools and knowledge acquired in the seminar to analyze your environment. You are invited to include attachments of textual, visual, or audio material to illustrate or help elucidate the material presented in class. At least 50 percent of your posts should be responses to other students. The TFs will act as forum moderators. 1
The course website contains this syllabus, links to the online readings, the online homework assignments, course discussion forums, and other course-related resources. It is located at: http://www.courses.fas.harvard.edu/~soc154/ Readings: Murray Milner, Jr., 2004. Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of Consumption. New York: Routledge. Available at the Harvard Coop. A packet of readings also should be purchased from Harvard Printing Services. Please go online to http://www.uis.harvard.edu/digital_print_services/ to place your order. They will contact you about when and where to pick up your order. Several readings are available on the web. You can also find the material on reserve in the library in William James Hall, 33 Kirkland Street. Week 1 (September 20 and 22): Introduction Michèle Lamont and Virag Molnar. 2002. The Study of Boundaries Across the Social Sciences. Annual Review of Sociology. 28: 167-195. Online. Michèle Lamont, Jason Kaufman, and Michael Moody. 2000. The Best of the Brightest: Definitions of the Ideal Self among Prize-Winning Students. Sociological Forum. 15 (2): 187-224. Online. PART 1: DEFINING THE QUESTIONS AND THE CONCEPTUAL TOOLS Week 2 (September 27 and 29): Conceptualizing Culture William Sewell, Jr., 1999. The Concept(s) of Culture. Pp. 35-61 in Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Directions in the Study of Society and Culture, edited by Victoria E. Bonell and Lynn Hunt. Berkeley: University of California Press. Online. Norbert Elias, 1994 (1937). The Civilizing Process, Vol. 1: The History of Manners. Oxford: Blackwell. Pp. 89-109, 121-142. Clifford Geertz, 2001 (1973). Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture. (Orig. in The Interpretation of Culture.) Pp. 63-68 in Cultural Sociology, edited by Lyn Spillman. New York: Blackwell. Week 3 (October 4 and 6): Marxist Approaches to Culture Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1972 (1848). The German Ideology. Pp 154-155 and 172-174 in Robert C. Tucker, The Marx-Engels Reader. New York: W. W. Norton. 2
Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, 2001 (1944). The Culture Industry: Enlightenment and Mass Deception. (Orig. in Dialectic of Enlightenment.) Pp. 39-46 in Cultural Sociology, edited by Lyn Spillman. New York: Blackwell. Antonio Gramsci, 1990 (1971). Culture and Ideological Hegemony. (Orig. in The Prison Notebooks). Pp. 47-54 in Culture and Society: Contemporary Debates, edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander and Steven Seidman. New York: Cambridge University Press. Movie Fahrenheit 9/11 to be discussed in sections. Week 4 (October 11 and 13): Conceptualizing Power, Culture, and Inequality Michèle Lamont, 1989. The Power/Culture Link in a Comparative Perspective. Comparative Social Research 11: 131-150. Online. Pierre Bourdieu, 2001. Cultural Power. Pp. 69-76 in Cultural Sociology, edited by Lyn Spillman. New York: Blackwell. Assignment 1: Analyze texts by Parsons and Foucault (posted on website) illustrating different conceptions of power. Post paper on the website on October 14 by noon. Then, for each text, make at least one brief annotation and respond to at least one other student s annotation using the online Collaborative Annotation Tool. Your annotations are due before the section meets on the 15 th. PART 2: CONTESTED DEFINITIONS OF REALITY: SOCIAL MOVEMENT, SOCIAL PROBLEMS, AND POLITICS Week 5 (October 18 and 20): Framing, Social Problems, and Social Movements Abigail Saguy, 2003. What is Sexual Harassment? From Capitol Hill to the Sorbonne. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Pp. 1-18 and 96-127. Online. David A. Snow, 2004. Framing Processes, Ideology, and Discursive Fields. Pp. 382-412 in The Blackwell Companion to Social Movements, edited by David A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi. New York: Blackwell. Movie on the African American civil rights movement, Freedom on My Mind, to be discussed in section. Be ready to analyze a segment of the movie using the conceptual tools proposed by Snow, using the questions provided on the website. Week 6 (October 25 and 27): Media, Politics, and Public Opinion William A. Gamson, David Croteau, William Hoynes, and Theodore Sasson. 1992. Media Images and the Social Construction of Reality. Annual Review of Sociology 18: 373-393. Online. 3
Amy Gergjiff and Shana Kushner, forthcoming. The 9/11-Iraq Connection: How the Bush Administration s Rhetoric in the Iraq Conflict Shifted Public Opinion. Perspectives on Politics. Larry Bartels, 2003. Homer Gets a Tax Cut: Inequality and Public Policy in the American Mind. Policy Brief, Newsletter of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University. Online. Joseph N. Cappella and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, 1996. News Frames, Political Cynicism, and Media Cynicism. ANNALS, AAPSS 546: 71-84. Online. Assignment 2: Analyze one aspect of the electoral coverage (a Sunday morning show, an in-depth analysis in a popular news magazine, or several NYT or Washington Post op-ed pieces) to compare the use of strategic and issue frames. Drawing on Cappela and Jamieson, discuss: how useful are these frames to make sense of the coverage? Are other frames being used? Post paper on forum by October 28, noon, and post replies before section meetings on the 29 th. PART 3: INEQUALITY AND CULTURAL DIFFERENTIATION Week 7 (November 1 and 3): Inequality, Boundaries, and Cultural Consumption Richard A. Peterson and Albert Simkus, 1992. How Musical Tastes Mark Occupational Status Groups. Pp. 152-186 in Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality, edited by Michèle Lamont and Marcel Fournier. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Bethany Bryson, 2001. Symbolic Exclusion and Musical Dislikes. Pp. 108-119 in Cultural Sociology, edited by Lyn Spillman. New York: Blackwell. William Roy, 2002. Aesthetic Identity, Race, and American Folk Music. Qualitative Sociology 25 (3): 459-469. Online. David Halle, 1992. The Audience for Abstract Art. Pp. 131-151 in Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality, edited by Michèle Lamont and Marcel Fournier. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Guest speaker: Patricia Banks, Department of Sociology, Harvard University. What does the African-American middle class put on the wall? Week 8 (November 8 and 9): Subcultures and Resistance Patricia Ewick and Susan Silbey, 2003. Narrating Social Structure: Stories of Resistance to Legal Authority. American Journal of Sociology 108 (6): 1328-72. Online. 4
Dick Hebdige, 1979. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen. Pp. 5-45, 90-99. Prudence Carter, 2003. Black Cultural Capital, Status Positioning, and Schooling Conflicts for Low-Income African American Youth. Social Problems 50 (1): 136-155. Online. Week 9 (November 15 and 17): Racial and Class Boundaries Annette Lareau, 2002. Invisible Inequality: Social Class and Childrearing in Black Families and White Families. American Sociological Review 67 (5): 747-776. Online. Michèle Lamont, 2002. Symbolic Boundaries and Status. Pp. 98-107 in Cultural Sociology, edited by Lyn Spillman. New York: Blackwell. Assignment 3: Drawing on Murray Milner, 2004, Freaks, Geeks, and Cool Kids: American Teenagers, Schools, and the Culture of Consumption (New York: Routledge), pp. 3-150, compare the status hierarchies of your high school and that of Harvard. Post paper on the website on November 24 by noon. Engage in discussion before the section meets on December 3. Week 10 (November 22 and 24): Gender and Ethnicity Bartkowski, John P., and Jen nan Ghazal Read, 2003. Veiled Submission: Gender, Power, and Identity among Evangelical and Muslim Women in the United States. Qualitative Sociology 26 (1): 71-92. Online. Candace West and Don Zimmerman, 1987. Doing Gender. Gender and Society 1: 125-151. Online. Rogers Brubaker, Mara Loveman, and Peter Stamatov, 2004. Ethnicity as Cognition. Theory and Society 33 (1): 31-64. Online. Week 11 (November 29 and December 1): The Cultural Construction of Poverty Oscar Lewis, 1969. The Culture of Poverty. Pp. 187-200 in On Understanding Poverty: Perspectives from the Social Sciences, edited by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. New York: Basic Books. Elijah Anderson, 1994. The Code of the Streets. Atlantic Monthly 273 (5): 80-91. Online. Mario L. Small and Katherine Newman, 2001. Urban Poverty after the Truly Disadvantaged: The Rediscovery of the Family, the Neighborhood, and Culture. Annual Review of Sociology 27: 23-45. Online. 5
Guest Speaker: Joshua Guetzkow, Robert Wood Johnson Post-Doctoral Fellow. The Construction of the Poor and Criminals by American Policy Makers. PART 4: CULTURAL DIFFERENCES AND CONVERGENCE Week 12 (December 6 and 8): Relativism, Ethnocentrism, and Imperialism Claude Levi-Strauss, 1992. A Little Glass of Rum. Pp. 383-393 in Tristes Tropiques. New York: Penguin. Richard Shweder, 2003. What About Female Genital Mutilation? Pp. 168-216 in Why Do Men Barbecue? Recipes for Cultural Psychology. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Edward Said, 1979. Introduction. Pp. 1-30 in Orientalism. New York: Random House. Pierre Bourdieu and Loic Wacquant, 1999. On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason. Theory, Culture, and Society 16 (1): 41-58. Online. Week 13 (December 13 and 15): National Identity and Globalization Benedict Anderson, 1983. Introduction. Pp. 11-16 in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso, 1991. Philip Schlesinger, 1987. On National Identity: Some Conceptions and Misconceptions Criticized. Social Science Information 26 (2): 219-264. Online. Sophie Meunier, 2000. The French Exception. Foreign Affairs 79 (4): 104-116. Online. Diana Crane, 2002. Culture and Globalization. Pp. 1-28 in Global Culture: Media, Arts, Policy, and Globalization, edited by Diana Crane, Nobuko Kawashima, and Ken ichi Kawasaki. New York: Routledge. Assignment 4: Post and analyze textual, visual, or audio material that illustrates the material covered over the past two weeks. Possible themes include the construction of American national identity; globalization and cultural homogenization; and various forms of cultural imperialism. Post on December 15 by noon; engage in forum discussion before section. Week 14 (December 20): Wrapping up 6