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Cambridge Cultural Social Studies is a forum for the most original and thoughtful work in cultural social studies. This includes theoretical works focusing on conceptual strategies, empirical studies covering specific topics such as gender, sexuality, politics, economics, social movements, and crime, and studies that address broad themes such as the culture of modernity. While the perspectives of the individual studies will vary, they will all share the same innovative reach and scholarly quality.

  • General Editors: Jeffrey C. Alexander, Yale University, Connecticut, Steven Seidman, State University of New York, Albany

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39 results in Cambridge Cultural Social Studies

Page 1 of 2

Performing Civility
  • International Competitions in Classical Music
  • Lisa McCormick
  • Published online:
    05 October 2015
    Print publication:
    23 September 2015
  • Although competitions in classical music have a long history, the number of contests has risen dramatically since the Second World War, all of them aiming to launch young artists' careers. This is not the symptom of marketization that it might appear to be. Despite the establishment of an international governing body, competitions are plagued by rumors of corruption, and even the most mathematically sophisticated voting system cannot quell accusations that the best talent is overlooked. Why do musicians take part? Why do audiences care so much about who wins? Performing Civility is the first book to address these questions. In this groundbreaking study, Lisa McCormick draws from firsthand observations of contests in Europe and the US, and in-depth interviews with competitors, jurors and directors, as well as blog data from competition observers to argue that competitions have endured because they are not only about music, they are also about civility.

The Performative Presidency
  • Crisis and Resurrection during the Clinton Years
  • Jason L. Mast
  • Published online:
    05 November 2012
    Print publication:
    18 October 2012
  • The Performative Presidency brings together literatures describing presidential leadership strategies, public understandings of citizenship, and news production and media technologies between the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt and Bill Clinton, and details how the relations between these spheres have changed over time. Jason L. Mast demonstrates how interactions between leaders, publics, and media are organized in a theatrical way, and argues that mass mediated plot formation and character development play an increasing role in structuring the political arena. He shows politics as a process of ongoing performances staged by motivated political actors, mediated by critics, and interpreted by audiences, in the context of a deeply rooted, widely shared system of collective representations. The interdisciplinary framework of this book brings together a semiotic theory of culture with concepts from the burgeoning field of performance studies.

Identity Before Identity Politics
  • Linda Nicholson
  • Published online:
    17 July 2009
    Print publication:
    20 November 2008
  • In the late 1960s identity politics emerged on the political landscape and challenged prevailing ideas about social justice. These politics brought forth a new attention to social identity, an attention that continues to divide people today. While previous studies have focused on the political movements of this period, they have neglected the conceptual prehistory of this political turn. Linda Nicholson's engaging book situates this critical moment in its historical framework, analyzing the concepts and traditions of racial and gender identity that can be traced back to late eighteenth-century Europe and America. She examines how changing ideas about social identity over the last several centuries both helped and hindered successive social movements, and explores the consequences of this historical legacy for the women's and black movements of the 1960s. This insightful study will be of particular interest to students and scholars of political history, identity politics and US history.

The Work of Global Justice
  • Human Rights as Practices
  • Fuyuki Kurasawa
  • Published online:
    01 December 2009
    Print publication:
    11 October 2007
  • Human rights have been generally understood as juridical products, organizational outcomes or abstract principles that are realized through formal means such as passing laws, creating institutions or formulating ideals. In this book, Fuyuki Kurasawa argues that we must reverse this 'top-down' focus by examining how groups and persons struggling against global injustices construct and enact human rights through five transnational forms of ethico-political practice: bearing witness, forgiveness, foresight, aid and solidarity. From these, he develops a new perspective highlighting the difficult social labour that constitutes the substance of what global justice is and ought to be, thereby reframing the terms of debates about human rights and providing the outlines of a critical cosmopolitanism centred around emancipatory struggles for an alternative globalization.

Arab Soccer in a Jewish State
  • The Integrative Enclave
  • Tamir Sorek
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    21 June 2007
  • Over the last two decades soccer has become a major institution within the popular culture of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel. They have attained disproportionate success in this field. Given their marginalisation from many areas of Israeli society as well as the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such a prominent Arab presence highlights the tension between their Israeli citizenship and their belonging to the Palestinian people. Bringing together sociological, anthropological and historical approaches, Sorek examines how soccer can potentially be utilised by ethnic and national minorities as a field of social protest, a stage for demonstrating distinctive identity, or as a channel for social and political integration. Relying on a rich combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, he argues that equality in the soccer sphere legitimises contemporary inequality between Jews and Arabs in Israel and pursues wider arguments about the role of sport in ethno-national conflicts. Ideal for researchers and graduate students.

Social Performance
  • Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics, and Ritual
  • Edited by Jeffrey C. Alexander, Bernhard Giesen, Jason L. Mast
  • Published online:
    07 December 2009
    Print publication:
    04 May 2006
  • Jeffrey C. Alexander brings together new and leading contributors to make a powerful and coherently argued case for a new direction in cultural sociology, one that focuses on the intersection between performance, ritual and social action. Performance has always been used by sociologists to understand the social world but this volume offers the first systematic analytical framework based on the performance metaphor to explain large-scale social and cultural processes. From September 11, to the Clinton/Lewinsky affair, to the role of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Social Performance draws on recent work in performative theory in the humanities and in cultural studies to offer a novel approach to the sociology of culture. Inspired by the theories of Austin, Derrida, Durkheim, Goffman, and Turner, this is a path-breaking volume that makes a major contribution to the field. It will appeal to scholars and students alike.

Evil and Human Agency
  • Understanding Collective Evildoing
  • Arne Johan Vetlesen
  • Published online:
    10 December 2009
    Print publication:
    01 December 2005
  • Evil is a poorly understood phenomenon. In this provocative 2005 book, Professor Vetlesen argues that to do evil is to intentionally inflict pain on another human being, against his or her will, and causing serious and foreseeable harm. Vetlesen investigates why and in what sort of circumstances such a desire arises, and how it is channeled, or exploited, into collective evildoing. He argues that such evildoing, pitting whole groups against each other, springs from a combination of character, situation, and social structure. By combining a philosophical approach inspired by Hannah Arendt, a psychological approach inspired by C. Fred Alford and a sociological approach inspired by Zygmunt Bauman, and bringing these to bear on the Holocaust and ethnic cleansing in the former Yugoslavia, Vetlesen shows how closely perpetrators, victims, and bystanders interact, and how aspects of human agency are recognized, denied, and projected by different agents.

Challenging Diversity
  • Rethinking Equality and the Value of Difference
  • Davina Cooper
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    03 June 2004
  • What challenges are presented by the claim that diversity should be celebrated? How should equality politics respond to controversial constituencies, such as smokers and sports hunters, when they position themselves as disadvantaged? Challenging Diversity brings a new and original approach to key issues facing social, political and cultural theory. Critically engaging with feminist, radical democratic and liberal scholarship, the book addresses four major challenges confronting a radical equality politics. Namely, what does equality mean for preferences and choices that appear harmful; are equality's subjects individuals, groups or something else; what power do dominant norms have to undermine equality-oriented reforms; and can radical practices endure when they collide with the mainstream? Taking examples from religion, gender, sexuality, state policy-making and intentional communities, Challenging Diversity maps new ways of understanding equality, explores the politics of its pursuit, and asks what kinds of diversity does a radical version of equality engender.

The Making of English National Identity
  • Krishan Kumar
  • Published online:
    07 December 2009
    Print publication:
    13 March 2003
  • Why is English national identity so enigmatic and so elusive? Why, unlike the Scots, Welsh, Irish and most of continental Europe, do the English find it so difficult to say who they are? The Making of English National Identity, first published in 2003, is a fascinating exploration of Englishness and what it means to be English. Drawing on historical, sociological and literary theory, Krishan Kumar examines the rise of English nationalism and issues of race and ethnicity from earliest times to the present day. He argues that the long history of the English as an imperial people has, as with other imperial people like the Russians and the Austrians, developed a sense of missionary nationalism which in the interests of unity and empire has necessitated the repression of ordinary expressions of nationalism. Professor Kumar's lively and provocative approach challenges readers to reconsider their pre-conceptions about national identity and who the English really are.

Cultural Trauma
  • Slavery and the Formation of African American Identity
  • Ron Eyerman
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    13 December 2001
  • In this book, Ron Eyerman explores the formation of the African-American identity through the theory of cultural trauma. The trauma in question is slavery, not as an institution or as personal experience, but as collective memory: a pervasive remembrance that grounded a people's sense of itself. Combining a broad narrative sweep with more detailed studies of important events and individuals, Eyerman reaches from Emancipation through the Harlem Renaissance, the Depression, the New Deal and the Second World War to the Civil Rights movement and beyond. He offers insights into the intellectual and generational conflicts of identity-formation which have a truly universal significance, as well as providing a compelling account of the birth of African-American identity. Anyone interested in questions of assimilation, multiculturalism and postcolonialism will find this book indispensable.

The Unfinished Revolution
  • Social Movement Theory and the Gay and Lesbian Movement
  • Stephen M. Engel
  • Published online:
    31 October 2009
    Print publication:
    26 July 2001
  • The Unfinished Revolution compares the post-Second World War histories of the American and British gay and lesbian movements with an eye toward understanding how distinct political institutional environments affect the development, strategies, goals, and outcomes of a social movement. Stephen M. Engel utilizes an electic mix of source materials ranging from the theories of Mancur Olson and Michel Foucault to Supreme Court rulings and film and television dialogue. The two case study chapters function as brief historical sketches to elucidate further the conclusions on theory and whilst being politically-oriented, they also examine gay influence and expansion into mainstream popular culture. The book also includes an appendix that surveys and assesses the analytical potential of five critical understandings of social movements: the classical approach, rational choice, resource mobilization, new social movement theories, and political opportunity structures. It will be of value to academics and students of sociology, political science, and history.

Rethinking Comparative Cultural Sociology
  • Repertoires of Evaluation in France and the United States
  • Edited by Michèle Lamont, Laurent Thévenot
  • Published online:
    26 March 2010
    Print publication:
    11 December 2000
  • This book provides a powerful theoretical framework for understanding cross-national cultural differences. Focusing on France and America, it analyses how the people of these two different cultures mobilise national 'repertoires of evaluation' to make judgements about politics, economics, morals and aesthetics. The analysis draws on eight case studies by eleven French and American researchers who have worked together over a number of years to develop systematic comparisons between these countries. The topics are wide-ranging, comparing how individuals use the cultural tools at their disposal to answer questions such as: are races equal? What constitutes sexual harassment? What is the value of contemporary art? Should journalists be neutral? How can the defense of the environment be reconciled with economic imperatives? Moving beyond simplistic essentialist models of national character, this comparative approach offers important insights that will interest not only sociologists but also political scientists and anthropologists.

Thinking through Television
  • Ron Lembo
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    19 October 2000
  • This original and engaging book investigates American television viewing habits as a distinct cultural form. Based on an empirical study of the day-to-day use of television by working people, it develops a unique theoretical approach integrating cultural sociology, post modernism and the literature of media effects to explore the way in which people give meaning to their viewing practices. While recognising the power of television, it also emphasises the importance of the social and political factors which affect the lives of individual viewers, showing how the interaction between the two can result in a disengagement with corporately produced culture at the same time as an appropriation of the images themselves into people's lives.

Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernization
  • Negotiating Modernity in Iran
  • Ali Mirsepassi
  • Published online:
    06 October 2009
    Print publication:
    12 October 2000
  • In this thought-provoking study, Ali Mirsepassi explores the concept of modernity, exposing the Eurocentric prejudices and hostility to non-Western culture that have characterized its development. Focusing on the Iranian experience of modernity, he charts its political and intellectual history and develops a new interpretation of Islamic Fundamentalism through the detailed analysis of the ideas of key Islamic intellectuals. The author argues that the Iranian Revolution was not a simple clash between modernity and tradition but an attempt to accommodate modernity within a sense of authentic Islamic identity, culture and historical experience. He concludes by assessing the future of secularism and democracy in the Middle East in general, and in Iran in particular. A significant contribution to the literature on modernity, social change and Islamic Studies, this book will be essential reading for scholars and students of social theory and change, Middle Eastern Studies, Cultural Studies and many related areas.

Race, Media, and the Crisis of Civil Society
  • From Watts to Rodney King
  • Ronald N. Jacobs
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    03 August 2000
  • Since the early nineteenth century, African-Americans have turned to black newspapers to monitor the mainstream media and to develop alternative interpretations of public events. Ronald Jacobs tells the stories of these newspapers, showing how they increased black visibility within white civil society and helped to form separate black public spheres in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Comparing African-American and 'mainstream' media coverage of some of the most memorable racial crises of the last forty years such as the Watts riot, the beating of Rodney King, the Los Angeles uprisings and the O. J. Simpson trial, Jacobs shows why a strong African-American press is still needed today. Race, Media and the Crisis of Civil Society challenges us to rethink our common understandings of communication, solidarity and democracy. Its engaging style and thorough scholarship will ensure its appeal to students, academics and the general reader interested in the mass media, race and politics.

Theorizing the Standoff
  • Contingency in Action
  • Robin Wagner-Pacifici
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    13 March 2000
  • This book combines original theoretical analysis with real life case studies to examine the nature of the standoff. Starting with the standoffs of Wounded Knee, MOVE, Ruby Ridge, Waco, Freeman of Montana, Tupac Amaru, Republic of Texas, the author explores the archetypal patterns of human action and cognition that move us into and out of these highly charged situations and seeks to theorize the contingency of all such moments. As an emergency situation where interaction is both frozen and continuing, the standoff evokes original ideas about time, space and appropriate or anticipated action and individuals and organisations often find their standard operating procedures and categories deflected and transformed. By tracking and analysing such impositions and deflections, this book aims to develop a theory of the fundamental existential indeterminacy of social life and the possible role that improvisation can play in navigating this indeterminacy and preventing a violent and destructive conclusion. Co-winner of the 2001 Best Book Award given by the Sociology of Culture Section of the American Sociological Association.

Fundamentalism, Sectarianism, and Revolution
  • The Jacobin Dimension of Modernity
  • S. N. Eisenstadt
  • Published online:
    30 September 2009
    Print publication:
    03 February 2000
  • Fundamentalism, Sectarianism, and Revolution is a major comparative analysis of fundamentalist movements in cultural and political context, with an emphasis on the contemporary scene. Leading sociologist S. N. Eisenstadt examines the meaning of the global rise of fundamentalism as one very forceful contemporary response to tensions in modernity and the dynamics of civilization. He compares modern fundamentalist movements with the proto-fundamentalist movements which arose in the 'axial civilizations' in pre-modern times; he shows how the great revolutions in Europe which arose in connection with these movements shaped the political and cultural programmes of modernity; and he contrasts post-Second World War Moslem, Jewish and Protestant fundamentalist movements with communal national movements, notably in Asia. The central theme of the book is the distinctively Jacobin features of fundamentalist movements and their ambivalent attitude to tradition: above all their attempts to essentialize tradition in an ideologically totalistic way.Eisenstadt has won the Amalfi book prize.

A Phenomenology of Working-Class Experience
  • Simon J. Charlesworth
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    09 December 1999
  • This moving and challenging book by Simon Charlesworth deals with the personal consequences of poverty and class and the effects of growing up as part of a poor and stigmatized group. Charlesworth examines these themes by focussing on a particular town - Rotherham - in South Yorkshire, England, and using the personal testimony of disadvantaged people who live there, acquired through recorded interviews and conversations. He applies to these life stories the interpretative tools of philosophy and social theory, drawing in particular on the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Merleau-Ponty, in order to explore the social relations and experiences of a distinct but largely ignored social group. The culture described in this book is not unique to Rotherham and Charlesworth argues that the themes and problems identified in this book will be familiar to economically powerless and politically dispossessed people everywhere.

Struggles for Subjectivity
  • Identity, Action and Youth Experience
  • Kevin McDonald
  • Published online:
    05 December 2011
    Print publication:
    28 October 1999
  • This book, first published in 2000, explores the relationship between experiences of selfhood and patterns of social life. It does so through an encounter with young people who confront urgent social and cultural transformations, whose experience of selfhood is unclear, often shaped by social forces that while powerful, appear difficult, if not impossible to name. These young people live in a world where institutions are weakening and identities fragmenting, where socialisation into roles is being replaced by imperatives of communication and self-esteem. Their world is shaped by different forms of freedom, but also by different forms of social polarisation and conflict. More than other social groups, young people confront the imperative of locating a sense of self and subjectivity, and this book is an account of this struggle in a context of profound social and cultural change.

Distant Suffering
  • Morality, Media and Politics
  • Luc Boltanski
  • Translated by Graham D. Burchell
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    13 October 1999
  • Distant Suffering, first published in 1999, examines the moral and political implications for a spectator of the distant suffering of others as presented through the media. What are the morally acceptable responses to the sight of suffering on television, for example, when the viewer cannot act directly to affect the circumstances in which the suffering takes place? Luc Boltanski argues that spectators can actively involve themselves and others by speaking about what they have seen and how they were affected by it. Developing ideas in Adam Smith's moral theory, he examines three rhetorical 'topics' available for the expression of the spectator's response to suffering: the topics of denunciation and of sentiment and the aesthetic topic. The book concludes with a discussion of a 'crisis of pity' in relation to modern forms of humanitarianism. A possible way out of this crisis is suggested which involves an emphasis and focus on present suffering.

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