Cultural Sociology

Catalog description

Cultural sociology is focused on the production, transmission, structure, usage, and implications of social meaning. The course provides tools to conceptualize and understand numerous dimensions of "culture," as well as training in how to study society through a focus on the relation of social meaning to other social processes. The field has numerous theoretical foundations, with much contemporary empirical work being done across sociological subdisciplines. As a result, readings are from an array of sources and may include a wide variety of methods (ethnography, interviews, surveys, social media, big data, and historical). The core questions of the course are: What is culture? How does culture work through different processes? What are the strengths and weaknesses of different theoretical assumptions and methods for the study of culture? The course is structured around ongoing theoretical debates and conceptual tools, using classic and contemporary research examples.