Cultural Studies

Throughout the development of sociological theory, there is one concept that prevails: social processes and ‘culture’ are interwoven and form a complex union. Depending on further premises and research interests, there are two different approaches in sociology to investigate those interdependencies:  the sociology of culture, on the one hand, often attempts to explain cultural phenomena as a product of social processes, while on the other hand cultural sociology sees culture as a component of explanations of social phenomena.

Within the scope of this introductory seminar, however, we will focus on a third possibility in analysing the link between social and cultural phenomena, i.e. Cultural Studies.

Cultural Studies emerged predominantly in the academic field of British literary and critical theory in the 1960s. Since it is not a unified theory, it therefore enables a diverse field of study including many different approaches, methods and academic perspectives. Despite this vast field of research, Cultural Studies focuses on the cultural analysis of daily life in various societies (abroad and at home) and its construction. It concentrates on how meaning relates to ideology, social, class, power relations (e.g. hegemony), nationality, ethnicity and gender within a given culture and society, respectively its institutions. For this very reason Cultural Studies combines insights of feminist theory, social, theory, political theory, history, philosophy, literary theory, media theory, communication studies and art criticism.

After an introduction to the history and main principles of Cultural Studies, this course will reflect on its advantages and disadvantages as compared to established sociological perspectives. For this, we will turn an eye to examples of research and difficulties in analysing culture within the framework of sociology and comparative analysis.   

 

Annotations:

This seminar will be held in English. Pieces of graded work will have to be prepared in English as well. 

 

Datenblatt
Semester: 
Wintersemester 2014/2015
Lehrende: 
Ort und Zeit: 
5.013, Mi 10:15-11:45
Sprache: 
Englisch
ECTS BA: 
5.0
AnhangGröße
Seminar Schedule21.71 KB

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