Culture : reinventing the social sciences / Mark J. Smith.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Smith, Mark J., 1962-

Series:

Concepts in the social sciences

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Culture.

Physical Description:

viii, 148 pages ; 22 cm.

Place of Publication:

Buckingham ; Philadelphia : Open University Press, 2000.

Summary:

A transformation has occurred in the ways that social science has been conducted and there needs to be an exploration of the implications of rethinking the meaning of culture, from a hierarchical system of classification to contested space. This introduction looks at how we examine social inquiry, arguing that cultural theory can help to overcome problems in disciplinary and interdisciplinary analysis.

Contents:

Prologue: Culture and the Postdisciplinary Imperative 1

1 A Genealogy of Culture: from Canonicity to Classification 4

Judgement and values 7

Warning! This site is under construction: 'natural symbols' at work 10

The problem with cultural transmission 13

The fear of the popular 16

Culture, science and authoritative knowledge 18

2 Culture and Everyday Life: the Ordinary is Extraordinary 20

Cultural meaning and the selective tradition 22

Culture and sociological analysis 30

Redefining the focus of cultural analysis 35

3 Culture and Structure: the Logic of Mediation 37

Culture and materialism: Marx's legacies 37

The logic of mediation: culture and ideology 40

The cultural industry 43

Structuralism and culture 47

Inventing the subject 57

Towards the complexity of cultural representations 61

4 Culture and Hegemony: Towards the Logic of Articulation 64

Rediscovering Marxism's hidden past: hegemony and dialogue 66

Culture goes political: the culturalist agenda meets the neo-Gramscian project 73

Culture and political change 76

Towards culture as a contested space 79

5 Contested Cultural Spaces: Identity, Discourse and the Body 83

Rethinking identity through the text 84

The body and power 91

On the importance of things 102

Reinventing the object as a cultural artefact: the new task of social science 106

6 Culture and the Prospects for a Postdisciplinary Social Science 109

Disciplinarity and complexity 111

Disciplinarity under erasure: identity, space and place 116

Disciplinarity in doubt: the mind as a contested space 119

Disciplinarity largely intact: the (re-)construction of criminal subjects 124

Disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity and postdisciplinarity: cultural analysis as a catalyst 130.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [134]-142) and index.

ISBN:

0335203191

0335203183

OCLC:

43884898