DeepDyve eBooks - A Sociology of Culture, Taste and Value

Chapter 1Introduction

Stewart, Simon

Pages: 1 –7

[This book is an account of sociological debates in relation to culture, taste and value. It provides an introduction to several perspectives, and addresses a number of key questions. The book echoes Raymond Williams (1981, p. 13) in conceptualizing ‘culture’ as both ‘a whole way of life’ and as...

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Chapter 2Culture in a Rationalizing World

Stewart, Simon

Pages: 8 –31

[Whereas Karl Marx decried without hesitation or reticence what he saw as the ‘dominance of things over men’ in capitalist society, the German social theorist Max Weber (1864–1920), born 46 years after Marx, deployed the more ‘neutral’ notion of rationalization to describe a process that both...

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Chapter 3The Fate of Cultural Values

Stewart, Simon

Pages: 32 –55

[In public and private cultures, distinctive cultural values, whether ethical or aesthetic, are irrelevant when viewed from the perspective of formal rationality. So, what is the fate of such values with formal rationality in the ascendancy? They disappear from sight, they are repressed, they go...

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Chapter 4Why Do We Like What We Like?

Stewart, Simon

Pages: 56 –74

[Why do we like what we like? Why do we dislike what we dislike? From a commonsense perspective, taste is a purely subjective, private matter. This perspective is challenged by French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930 2002), one of the most influential thinkers of recent times, whose work on the...

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Chapter 5Expressing Taste

Stewart, Simon

Pages: 75 –104

[As we have discussed in the previous chapter, there is a commonly held view that some people seem to have been born with good taste. They are able to walk confidently into an art gallery and provide a convincing and elegant exposition of the meaning of the esoteric pieces of art that adorn the...

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Chapter 6Evaluating Culture

Stewart, Simon

Pages: 105 –129

[I laving probed into matters of taste, let us now consider the evaluation of culture. This chapter surveys a number of existing contributions to the debate concerned with sociology and aesthetic value and explores the difficult task of formulating an alternative approach. It argues that...

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Chapter 7Culture in a Globalizing World

Stewart, Simon

Pages: 130 –158

[In this chapter, debates regarding cultural heterogeneity and homogeneity are considered, and the argument is made that there is a conflict or tension between impersonal forces and creative, aesthetic impulses that can never be entirely contained. Even if many of the cultural objects that we...

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Chapter 8The Local on the Global Stage

Stewart, Simon

Pages: 159 –176

[Informed by Roland Robertson’s work on glocaiization, which he refers to as ‘the intensified interpenetration of the local and Lhe global, the universal and the particular’ (Giulianotti and Robertson, 2007, p. 168), this chapter examines the inventive strategies deployed by light-footed and...

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Chapter 9Conclusion

Stewart, Simon

Pages: 177 –179

[This book has examined the tensions between formal and substantive rationality; between courses of action which are instrumentally rational and those which are formulated with particular cultural values in mind; between impersonal forces and creative impulses; between the logic of profit and the...

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A Sociology of Culture, Taste and Value

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A Sociology of Culture, Taste and Value

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