Raymond Williams's sociology of culture : a critical reconstruction / Paul Jones.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jones, Paul, 1954-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Williams, Raymond. Culture.

Williams, Raymond.

Culture.

Physical Description:

xx, 247 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2004.

Summary:

This study of Williams provides the most detailed account available of the sociological dimensions of his project. While including an overview of the central themes throughout his writings, it seeks especially to unlock his late sociology of culture. Previously overlooked aspects of Williams's 'mature' work are thus highlighted. These include: his critique of Birmingham cultural studies; his critique of conservative sociological orthodoxies; his debt to the work of the Frankfurt School; his use of an Adorno-like approach to 'cultural production'; his 'social formalist' alternative to formalism, structuralism and post-structuralism; and his later work on 'the media'. All these are related to his radical democratic vision. Comparisons are drawn between Williams's initiatives and contemporary sociologists such as Habermas and Bourdieu. The book is relevant to many contemporary theoretical debates, and aims in particular to make Williams's sociological project available for concrete analysis within sociology, media studies and cultural studies.

Contents:

Dates of First Publication and/or First Editions of Key Works by Williams xix

1 Settling Accounts with 'Culture' 1

1.1 Preliminaries: culture is ordinary? 1

1.2 Against class reductivism and a mythologized 'organic community' 4

1.3 Problems of 'Culturalism' or 'Cambridge'?: cultural studies parts company with Williams 13

1.4 'This is a problem of method...' 18

1.5 Williams's undeclared method: immanent critique 25

1.6 Post-Romantic Enlightenment: later formulations of 'culture' 29

2 Cultural Materialism versus 'Received Marxist Theory' 37

2.1 Cultural materialism: a modest proposal 37

2.2 Back to Marx but beyond base and superstructure? 38

2.3 'The Brumaire solution' and the attractions of homological analysis 42

2.4 Enter 'cultural production' 46

2.5 Problems of 'cultural production': Markus's critique 51

2.6 Excursus: Williams's 'cultural production' and some apparent 'fellow travellers' 58

3 From Criticism to Critique 61

3.1 Entertaining the Frankfurt School: emancipatory critique 62

3.2 From Goldmann to Gramsci? 68

3.3 Adorno and Benjamin: mediation, cultural productive forces, correspondence 76

3.4 Ideology, critique and form 83

4 Social Formalism 92

4.1 Against formalism and 'the language paradigm' 92

4.2 Language, signification, practical consciousness 95

4.3 Williams versus Birmingham cultural studies? 105

4.4 Social formalism and cultural forms 115

5 Towards a Sociology of Culture 127

5.1 Williams's (re)mapping of the sociological field 127

5.2 'Culture': the final settlement? 134

6 Cultural Production and Means of Communication 142

6.1 The cultural production typologies 143

6.2 Formations, avant-gardes, intellectuals, autonomy 146

6.3 Symmetries and asymmetries in cultural production and social reproduction 153

6.4 Overcoming conflations and 'projections' in McLuhan's 'media' 156

6.5 Overcoming technological determinism: the social shaping of means of communication 163

6.6 Means of communication and 'mediated' cultural forms 168

6.7 Means of communication as means of socialization? 171

6.8 Excursus: the infrastructure of modernity? 176

7 The Long Revolution(s) of Modernity 181

7.1 Modernity, modernism and public sphere 182

7.2 Tragic utopianism 187.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-234) and index.

ISBN:

0333666623

OCLC:

52477335

Online:

Publisher description