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Description: How has the meaning of culture been reconsidered? • What impact has this had on approaches to social enquiry? • Should culture be seen as central to social science?
Over the past three decades there has been a transformation in the ways that social science has been conducted. In order to understand what is happening, we have to explore the implications of a rethinking of the meaning of culture, from a hierarchical system of classification to a contested space. This wide-ranging introduction to the concept of culture examines the ways in which we approach social enquiry, and argues that cultural theory can help to overcome problems in disciplinary and interdisciplinary analysis.
Mark J. Smith explores how changes in the meaning of ‘culture’ have pinpointed key shifts in the way we research society, and draws on contemporary sociology, psychology, politics, geography and the study of crime to consider the ways in which cultural transformation has changed the landscape of social research. He concludes with a persuasive and focused discussion of the centrality of culture in post- disciplinary social science. This landmark text represents essential reading for students and researchers with an interest in the cultural dimension of social science.
Contents: A Genealogy of Culture: from Canonicity to Classification: Judgement and values • Warning! This site is under construction: ‘natural symbols’ at work • The problem with cultural transmission • The fear of the popular • Culture, science and authoritative knowledge • 2 Culture and Everyday Life the Ordinary is Extraordinary: Cultural meaning and the selective tradition • Culture and sociological analysis • Redefining the focus of cultural analysis • Culture and Structure: the Logic of Mediation: Culture and materialism: Marx’s legacies • The logic of mediation: culture and ideology • The cultural industry • Structuralism and culture • Inventing the subject • Towards the complexity of cultural representations • Culture and Hegemony: Towards the Logic of Articulation: Rediscovering Marxism’s hidden past: hegemony and dialogue • Culture goes political: the culturalist agenda meets the neo-Gramscian project • Culture and political change • Towards culture as a contested space • Contested Cultural Spaces: Identity, Discourse and the Body: Rethinking identity through the text • The body and power • On the importance of things • Reinventing the object as a cultural artefact: the new task of social science • Culture and the Prospects for a Postdisciplinary Social Science: Disciplinarily and complexity • Disciplinarily under erasure: identity, space and place • Disciplinarily in doubt: the mind as a contested space • Disciplinarily largely intact: the (re-)construction of criminal subjects • Disciplinarily, interdisciplinarity and postdisciplinarity: cultural analysis as a catalyst • References • Index ISBN - 9788176492805
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Pages : 160
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