University of Georgia

Fall 2008

Sociology 3010: Sociology of Culture

 

Dr. David Smilde, Baldwin 115A

Tel. 583.8071; e-mail dsmilde@uga.edu

Office hours: 12:15-2pm, Tuesday, or by appt.

 

 

In this class we will begin by reviewing classical issues in the study of culture, and contemporary trends in the sociological study of culture. We will then turn to studying culture and globalization. We’ll start by looking at the thesis of globalization as increasing standardization and homogenization. Then we will look at globalization as localization of cultural products. Finally, we will look at globalization as a form of cultural “heterogenization.”

 

Class participation

The immense logistic difficulty and expense of getting forty-odd adults to be in the same place at the same time can only be justified by us interacting over the topic of this class. Thus this class will be a mixture of lecture and discussion. Participating actively in class will be the best way for you to get a handle on the concepts and to stimulate participation, I will provide the following incentive structure.

 

Enthusiastic participation                                    + 2pts

Strong participation                                            + 1pts

Average participation                                         no points

Irregular or substandard participation                  - 1pt

Negative or uncooperative participation              - 2pts

 

“Enthusiastic participation” means you contribute to the collective realization of this thing called a SOCI 3010. Negative or uncooperative participation means you arrive late, leave early, say inappropriate things, treat others disrespectfully, or are lost when I call on you, etc.

 

I will frequently use my name cards to call on people when I ask a question. I will keep track of whether it seems you are thinking about the issues, are lost, not present, etc. The idea of class participation is for us to learn to work with ideas verbally. This is a university which means discussion is open. All political perspectives and cultural beliefs are legitimate objects of discussion, even if they are yours. One object of this class is to make clear that beyond the world of cable TV news, the issues confronting contemporary society cannot be broken down into conservative vs. liberal, red state vs. blue state. In this class there are no “politically correct” positions, and you do not even have to believe the position you are promoting or defending. In fact I recommend you try on an unpopular idea and take it for a spin. Both policies of calling on people and open discussion can sometimes cause uncomfortable moments. But that is what universities are about: freely working with ideas so that you’re ready when you’re in the “real world.”

 

Evaluation

1. Each chapter of Griswold has discussion questions at the end of it. Each section of Lechner and Boli does as well. During the course of the semester, you need to submit to dr.smilde@gmail.com  two discussions of one page or less (double spaced) of one of these questions before class that day. These will be worth ten points each, so be sure to take them seriously. In the case of Lechner and Boli you need to figure out which question corresponds to which reading.

 

2. The multiple-choice midterm will cover all of the material covered in the first part of the class and will be worth thirty-five points.

 

3. There will be a quiz after the global tourism movie worth five points.

 

4. The final project will really be a sort of take home exam worth forty points. You will need to choose one phenomena of globalization and analyze it from the different perspectives on globalization we will be discussing. You can choose one of the topics I list below, or you can choose your own topic and okay it with me. Your paper must be of the following structure

 

Pages 1-2         Introduction to the phenomena and statement of the issue.

Pages 3-4         Homogenization

Pages 5-6         Localization

Pages 7-8         Heterogenization

Page 9             Concluding remarks: what do we learn about culture and globalization from your case?

Page 10            Bibliography

 

Your paper must be formatted as follows:

 

  1. Typed with 12 point text, one inch margins, page numbers.
  2. It must have internal divisions using the headings listed above
  3. A title page with the course number and title, term and year, professor, and title of your paper
  4. Proper social science citation and bibliography. If you don’t know how to do this, go to the reference desk on the first floor of the Main Library and ask the librarian for the Chicago Manual of Style. Alternatively, you can simply look at the Griswold text and copy her style. You may not use internet cites unless they are online versions of written material—for example, the online version of the New York Times.

 

The reason that this is as much a take home exam as final paper is that in addition to the coherence and reason demonstrated in your paper, you will be graded based on how many sources we used in class, you use in your paper. You should have three sources from our class for each of the following sections: Homogenization, Localization and Heterogenization. A “source” is determined by authorship. So, for example, Griswold is one source. However, any of the individual chapters in Spillman or Lechner and Boli count as one source. You can use the same source in more than one section.

 

You would be wise to choose your empirical phenomena early and work on it as we work through the second half of the class. In this way you will not have to go back and reread texts long after we discussed them. Since this is a short term, time is of the essence. Here are the topics you can choose from.

 

  1. The transnational growth of a religion outside of its place of origin. Examples would include the growth of Pentecostalism in Latin America, the spread of Islam in Africa, etc. 
  2. The transnational growth of a particular sport like baseball, outside of its country of origin.
  3. The transnational growth of a particular food.
  4. The transnational reception of mass media products like rock and roll, soap operas, romance novels or Hollywood action movies.
  5. The transnational cultural dimensions of indigenous movements like the Zapatistas in Chiapas
  6. The transnational cultural reception of a particular product produced by a multi-national company such as Nike or Mercedes Benz. (This might be particularly attractive to marketing majors).
  7. The transnational cultural dimensions of anti-globalization activism.
  8. Any other topic Okayed by the professor.

 

The final grading scale will be the following. If course score plus or minus attendance and participation bonus points

 

A          94-100

A-         90-93

B+        87-89

B          84-86

B-         80-83

C+        77-79

C          74-76

C-         70-73

D          60-69

F          0-59

 

Please note that since bonus points are so easy to earn, I will not round up fractional points; that means, for example, that if a student has a final point score of 86.99, the student will receive a final grade of a B.

 

Attendance

Class will begin promptly at 8 am and end at 10:45. Please do not arrive late. Attendance will be taken by sign-up sheet at some point during the class (usually the beginning). Good attendance will be encouraged through the following incentive structure (note that each day counts for two classes)

 

0-1    classes missed = 2 points added to final grade

2-3   classes missed = 1 points added to final grade

5-6 classes missed = 1 point subtracted

7-8 classes missed = 2 points subtracted

> 8 classes missed = automatic withdrawl

 

There are no excused absences—if you miss a class on a day when attendance is taken, you will lose the bonus point regardless of your reason. That is why I give four freebies. Please do not bring me a medical or other excuse unless it accounts for more than four absences. It is your responsibility to see to it that you have signed the sign-up sheet. Any one signing for someone else is guilty of academic dishonesty, and will be dealt with through the Dean’s office.

 

Laptops

You are not allowed to use your laptop during class. I fully realize that many students now take their notes in class on their laptop. However, beyond the temptation of checking your e-mail, chatting or researching spring break hotel packages during class, the use of laptops breaks the flow of the university class room. Too often I have had excellent students that do not participate because they have their noses in their laptops trying to transcribe every word of our discussion. The goal of an upper-level class like this is not to take copious notes but rather to think, discuss and use the ideas we are working with. If you keep a register of your classes in word processing files, you can take this opportunity to develop your skills in jotting down notes and keywords that can be elaborated later at your computer.

 

Texts

The following texts were ordered by the University Bookstore:

 

*Wendy Griswold. 2004. Cultures and Societies in a Changing World. 2nd. Ed. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press.

*Lyn Spillman (ed). 2002. Cultural Sociology. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers.

*Frank J. Lechner and John Boli (eds). 2004. The Globalization Reader. 2nd Ed. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Publishers.

 

Please note that these days the University Bookstore only orders about ¼ of the number of copies that we faculty ask for, assuming that places like Off Campus Books will make up for the rest. However, there is almost always a shortage and they take weeks to get a second shipment. I would suggest that you check the University Bookstore and then the other three or four off campus bookstores to see if they have the books. If they do not, then immediately order them from amazon.com or half.com so that you will get them within a week. Otherwise you could wait many weeks for the bookstores to come through and you will fall behind.

 

 

About the Instructor:

I am Associate Professor of Sociology at UGA and have been here since August 2001. I received my Ph.D in sociology from the University of Chicago in December 2000. Besides UGA, I have taught at the Universidad Católica Andres Bello, the Universidad Central de Venezuela, University of Chicago, and Notre Dame University. During academic year 2006-07 I served as a Fulbright Scholar to Venezuela, researching religion and political conflict during the presidency of Hugo Chavez. I recently published Reason to Believe: Cultural Agency in Latin American Evangelicalism. University of California Press, 2007.

 

I was born in Southern California and grew up in West Michigan. Before moving to Athens I lived four years in Chicago and six in Caracas, Venezuela. I am married and have two daughters aged nine and ten. My wife is a Venezuelan national.

 

 

 

Class Schedule

 

August 20

Class 1: Student Information cards; Discussion of syllabus

Class 2: “Culture and the Cultural Diamond” Griswold ch.1 pp.1-20

 

 

I. THE SOCIOLOGY OF CULTURE

 

A. The Social World --- Cultural Object Link

 

            August 27

Classes 3 & 4: “Cultural Meaning” Griswold ch.2, pp.21-51

 

B. The Social Creation of Culture

            September 3

Class 5: “Culture as Social Creation” Griswold ch.3. pp.52-77

Class 6:. Christena Nippert-Eng, “Boundary Work: Sculpting Home and Work” Spillman pp.79-87

 

C. From Producers to Receivers

 

            September 10

The Culture Industry

Class 7: Griswold ch.4; pp.78-85; Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno. 2002[1944]. “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception,” pp.39-46 in Spillman

Class 8: Movie: Merchants of Cool

 

            September 17

Organizations and Markets in Cultural Production

Class 9: Griswold pp.85-89.

Class 10: Paul Dimaggio 2002. “Market Structure, the Creative Process, and Popular Culture: Toward an Organizational Reinterpretation of Mass-Culture Theory,” and “Why 1955: Explaining the Advent of Rock Music” pp.151-177 in Spillman.

 

            September 24

Cultural Reception

Class 11: Griswold pp.89-105;

Class 12: Darnell Hunt, “Raced Ways of Seeing,” Spillman pp.120-129;

 

D. Three Applications

 

            October 1

Culture and Social Problems

Class 13: “The Cultural Construction of Social Problems” Griswold ch.5; pp.107-127

Class 14:  Karen Cerulo, “The Cognitive Structure of Right and Wrong” Spillman pp. 257-271.

 

            October 8

            Culture in Organizations

Class 15: “Culture and Organizations: Getting Things Done in a Multicultural World” Griswold ch.6; pp.128-152.

Class 16: Gideon Kunda, “Corporate Culture” Spillman pp.88-97.

 

October 15

Culture and Postmodernity

Class 17. “Culture in a Wired World” Griswold ch.7; pp.153-174.

Class 18. Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” Spillman pp. 341-349.

 

October 22

Class 19  Midterm exam

Class 20  Movie: The Lau of Malaita

 

 

II. GLOBALIZATION AND CULTURE

 

 

A. Homogenization

 

            October 29

Class 21. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, “The Hidden Promise: Liberty Renewed” pp.9-15 in Lechner and Boli; John Boli and George M. Thomas, “World Culture in the World Polity: A Century of International Non-Governmental Organization” in Lechner and Boli pp.258-264;

Class 22. John Gray, “From the Great Transformation to the Global Free Market” in Lechner an Boli pp.22-28; Sean MacBride and Colleen Roach, “The New International Information Order,” Lechner and Boli, pp.

 

 

B. Localization

 

            November 5

Class 23. James Watson, “McDonalds in Hong Kong,” Lechner and Boli, pp.125-132; Heather Tyrrell, “Bollywood versus Hollywood: Battle of the Dream Factories,” pp.312-18.

Class 24. Bruce Fuller, “Strong States, Strong Teachers,” Lechner and Boli, pp.141-148; Gustavo Esteva and Madhu Suri Prakash, “From Global to Local: Beyond Neoliberalism to the International of Hope,” pp.410-416 in Lechner and Boli.

 

 

C. Heterogenization

 

November 12

Class 25 Benjamin Barber, “Jihad vs. McWorld;” Samuel Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?;” Lechner and Boli pp.29-43

Class 26. Martin Albrow, “Travelling Beyond Local Cultures,” pp.133-140. Timothy D. Taylor, “Strategic Inauthenticity,” pp.149-153

 

 

            November 19

Class 27 & 28. Movie: Global Tourism [5pt Quiz]

 

 

 

III. WRAPPING-UP

December 3

Class 29. Final lecture on Culture and Globalization. Ulf Hannerz, “The Global Ecumene,” Lechner and Boli, pp.109-119;

Class 30 Discussion of paper topics.

 

December 15

Final papers must be submitted to dr.smilde@gmail.com by 8am.

 

 

 

Student responsibility agreement

 

I have closely read they syllabus and fully understand what is expected of me in Sociology 3010, Fall Semester, 2008, and agree to the terms

 

 

 

Name: __________________________________________________________

 

 

 

Signature: _______________________________________________________

 

 

 

Date: ___________________________________________________________

 

 

 

[You have until next class 8/27 to either withdraw or hand this in, or you will be automatically withdrawn]