Culture, cultural difference, and cultural conflict always surround us. Cultural sociologists aim to understand their role across all aspects of social life by examining processes of meaning-making. In this crisp and accessible book, Lyn Spillman demonstrates many of the conceptual tools cultural sociologists use to explore how people make meaning. Drawing on vivid examples, she offers a compelling analytical framework within which to view the entire field of cultural sociology. In each chapter, she introduces a different angle of vision, with distinct but compatible approaches for explaining culture and its role in social life: analyzing symbolic forms, meaning-making in interaction, and organized production. This book both offers a concise answer to the question of what cultural sociology is and provides an overview of the fundamental approaches in the field.
Popular conceptions hold that capitalism is driven almost entirely by the pursuit of profit and self-interest. Challenging that assumption, this major new study of American business associations shows how market and non-market relations are actually profoundly entwined at the heart of capitalism. In Solidarity in Strategy, Lyn Spillman draws on rich documentary archives and a comprehensive data set of more than four thousand trade associations from diverse and obscure corners of commercial life to reveal a busy and often surprising arena of American economic activity. From the Intelligent Transportation Society to the American Gem Trade Association, Spillman explains how business associations are more collegial than cutthroat, and how they make capitalist action meaningful not only by developing shared ideas about collective interests but also by articulating a disinterested solidarity that transcends those interests. Deeply grounded in both economic and cultural sociology, Solidarity in Strategy provides rich, lively, and often surprising insights into the world of business, and leads us to question some of our most fundamental assumptions about economic life and how cultural context influences economic.
What do people think when they imagine themselves as part of a nation? Nation and Commemoration answers this question in an exploration of the creation and recreation of national identities through commemorative activities. Extending recent work in cultural sociology and history, Lyn Spillman compares centennial and bicentennial celebrations in the United States and Australia to show how national identities can emerge from processes of 'cultural production'. She systematically analyses the symbols and meanings of national identity in these two 'new nations', identifying changes and continuities, similarities and differences in how visions of history, place in the world, politics, land, and diversity have been used to express nationhood. The result is a deeper understanding, not only of American and Australian national identities, but also of the global process of nation-formation.
Popular conceptions hold that capitalism is driven almost entirely by the pursuit of profit and self-interest. Challenging that assumption, this major new study of American business associations shows how market and non-market relations are actually profoundly entwined at the heart of capitalism. In Solidarity in Strategy, Lyn Spillman draws on rich documentary archives and a comprehensive data set of more than four thousand trade associations from diverse and obscure corners of commercial life to reveal a busy and often surprising arena of American economic activity. From the Intelligent Transportation Society to the American Gem Trade Association, Spillman explains how business associations are more collegial than cutthroat, and how they make capitalist action meaningful not only by developing shared ideas about collective interests but also by articulating a disinterested solidarity that transcends those interests. Deeply grounded in both economic and cultural sociology, Solidarity in Strategy provides rich, lively, and often surprising insights into the world of business, and leads us to question some of our most fundamental assumptions about economic life and how cultural context influences economic.
What do people think when they imagine themselves as part of a nation? Nation and Commemoration answers this question in an exploration of the creation and recreation of national identities through commemorative activities. Extending recent work in cultural sociology and history, Lyn Spillman compares centennial and bicentennial celebrations in the United States and Australia to show how national identities can emerge from processes of 'cultural production'. She systematically analyses the symbols and meanings of national identity in these two 'new nations', identifying changes and continuities, similarities and differences in how visions of history, place in the world, politics, land, and diversity have been used to express nationhood. The result is a deeper understanding, not only of American and Australian national identities, but also of the global process of nation-formation.
Daniel Monti, Michael Ian Borer, and Lyn C. Macgregor provide a thorough and comprehensive survey of the contemporary urban world that is accessible to students with Urban People and Places: The Sociology of Cities, Suburbs, and Towns. This new title will give balanced treatment to both the process by which cities are built (i.e., urbanization) and the ways of life practiced by people that live and work in more urban places (i.e., urbanism) unlike most core texts in this area. Whereas most texts focus on the socio-economic causes of urbanization, this text analyses the cultural component: how the physical construction of places is, in part, a product of cultural beliefs, ideas, and practices and also how the culture of those who live, work, and play in various places is shaped, structured, and controlled by the built environment. Inasmuch as the primary focus will be on the United States, global discussion is composed with an eye toward showing how U.S. cities, suburbs, and towns are different and alike from their counterparts in Africa, Asia, and Central and South America.
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