Cultural Theory An Introduction

by Smith, Philip; Riley, Alexander

• ISBN13: 9781405169080
• ISBN10: 1405169087
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-08-18
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

This second edition of the renowned Cultural Theory provides a systematic and accessible introduction to cultural theory, encapsulating a usually complex field in a concise and balanced overview. This fully revised and expanded second edition provides a comprehensive tour of the major figures, themes, and debates in cultural theory, from Durkheim and Weber through to Foucault and Butler, and from charisma to consumption, but also introduces entirely new chapters on race and gender theory, and the body. Other new material includes treatments of thinkers such as Nietzsche, DuBois, and Eagleton, and considers important contemporary themes, including virtual reality and cosmopolitanism. Internationally respected by students and teachers alike, the first edition of Cultural Theory has been translated into several languages and became legendary on campuses worldwide. This new, restructured edition, packed with special features for students and accompanied by a website, promises to be the most authoritative text of its kind.

Author Biography

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).

Table of Contents

Preface to the First Edition: About this Book	p. vi
Preface to the Second Edition	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. x
Introduction: What is Culture? What is Cultural Theory?	p. 1
Culture in Classical Social Theory	p. 6
Culture and Social Integration in the Work of Talcott Parsons	p. 26
Culture as Ideology in Western Marxism	p. 34
Culture as Action in Symbolic Interactionism, Phenomenology, and Ethnomethodology	p. 54
The Durkheimians: Ritual, Classification, and the Sacred	p. 69
Structuralism and the Semiotic Analysis of Culture	p. 92
The Poststructural Turn	p. 111
Culture, Structure, and Agency: Three Attempts at Synthesis	p. 128
British Cultural Studies	p. 144
The Production and Reception of Culture	p. 158
Culture as Text: Narrative and Hermeneutics	p. 176
Psychoanalytic Approaches to Culture and the Self	p. 195
The Cultural Analysis of Postmodernism and Postmodernity	p. 207
Postmodern and Poststructural Critical Theory	p. 228
Cultural Theories of Race and Gender	p. 241
The Body in Cultural Theory	p. 262
References	p. 280
Index	p. 296
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