Table of Contents

1: Culture and the Cultural Diamond
Two Ways of Looking at Culture
Connections: The Links Between Culture and Society
Summary
Questions for Study and Discussion
Recommended for Futher Reading
2: Cultural Meaning
Why Do We Need Meaning?
Culture and Meaning in Refelction Theory
Culture and Meaning in Marxian Sociology
Culture and Meaning in Functionalist Sociology
Culture and Meaning in Weberian Sociology
Meaning Systems or a Tool Kit?
Meaning, Modernity, and the Clash of Cultures
Summary
Questions for Study and Discussion
Recommended for Further Reading
3: Culture as a Social Creation
Durkheim and the Social Production of Culture
The Collective Production of Culture
Cultural Innovation and Social Change
Summary
Questions for Study and Discussion
Recommended for Further Reading
4: The Production, Distribution, and Reception of Culture
The Production of Culture
The Production of Ideas
Reception
Freedom of Interpretation: Two Views
Summary
Questions for Study and Discussion
Recommended for Further Reading
5: Identities, Problems, and Movements
Constructing a Collective Identity
Constructing a Social Problem
Constructing a Social Movement
Summary
Questions for Study and Discussion
Recommended for Further Reading
6: Organizations in a Multicultural World
Organizational Cultures
Organizations in Cultural Contexts
Working Across Cultures
Summary
Questions for Study and Discussion
Recommended for Further Reading
7: Culture and Connection
Media Revolutions and Cultural Communities
The Cultural Impact of the Internet
Communities of Meaning in a Global Culture
Mediated Transnationals
Questions for Study and Discussion
Recommended for Further Reading
8: Culture and Power
Power: What Is It, Who Has It, and Why Do People Submit to It?
Power in Face-to-Face Interactions
Identiy Politics
The Aesthetics of Power
Political Acts as Cultural Objects
Cultures Without Centers
Questions for Study and Discussion
Recommended for Further Reading

About the Author

Wendy Griswold has a background in both social science and the humanities. She received her doctorate in sociology from Harvard University in 1980 and has a master’s degree in English from Duke University. She taught at the University of Chicago from 1981 to 1997, She is the Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. She has been associate editor and book review editor of the American Journal of Sociology and has been on the editorial boards of Contexts, Poetics, and Acta Sociologica. She is on the Advisory Board for the Centro per lo Studio della Moda e della Produzione Culturale, Università Cattolica del Sarcro Cuore, Milan. She has received research support from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, support from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science American Council of Learned Societies, the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, and the European University Institute in Florence. Her research on culture has been international in scope. Her most recent book is Regionalism and the Reading Class (2008); she is currently completing a book on the WPA Federal Writers’ Project and its impact on American culture. Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers, and the Novel in Nigeria (2000), won the “Best Book” award for the Sociology of Culture section of the American Sociological Association. Her first book was on the English theater (Renaissance Revivals: City Comedy and Revenge Tragedy in the London Theatre 1576–1980 [1986]). In addition, she co-edited a book on the sociology of literature (Literature and Social Practice [1989]) and has written on the sociology of religion, specifically on conflict within churches. Her current research explores cultural regionalism; she is also studying the relationship between the Internet and reading in Africa. She has written an influential paper on sociological methods for cultural analysis (“A Methodological Framework for the Sociology of Culture,” Sociological Methodology 17 [1987]:1–35); much of her methodological thinking is incorporated in the present book.