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When something is happening but you don’t know what it is: mood and agency after a stolen election American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2024-02-27
Abstract The street protests in Belarus following an allegedly stolen election provide a context for an examination of the expression of public mood. We argue that political moods involve pre-agentic intuition rather than cognitively formed agency; and that they constitute a vital, too often overlooked stage of democratic action. Focusing upon such moments entails an understanding of the ways in which
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Attentional apartheid: spatial filters of ethno-national identity in Palestinian and Israeli mental maps of “Al-Quds” and “Jerusalem” American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2024-02-23
Abstract What do Palestinian and Israeli Jerusalemites see and unsee in their city? What epistemological prisms are used to construct and reify their ethno-national view of place? How do these attentional frames “filter” the spatial information? Tracing the phenomenological visibilities, invisibilities, and boundary-works in local sketch-maps and mental maps of Al-Quds and Jerusalem, the present analysis
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From incorporation to emplacement in the cultural sociology of immigration American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2024-01-13 Andrea Voyer
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On love American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2023-09-29 Jochem Kotthaus
In this paper, I will explore love as a universe of meaning constituted at the crossroads of cultural patterns and actors’ biographical experiences. Universes of meaning provide a structure of cognitive pre-selections. While the social in general is composed of a multitude of universes of meaning, they belong to the public. Romantic relationships are private and enable privacy. I will (1) propose a
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Living in the shadow of market competition: career commitment and orders of worth of social workers in Shanghai American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2023-09-29 Xiaoli Tian, Dan Liu, Xiaoyan Han
Much of the cultural sociology literature has noted how actions are justified by citing available cultural resources, but few have examined how and why a particular order of worth is accepted while another is rejected at the individual level. In this paper, we address this research gap by examining how social workers in Shanghai understand their choice of a career that offers a low salary and lack
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The performative power of cinema: theorizing successful performances of realism in cinema American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2023-09-09 Jessie Dong
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Agentic selves, agentic stories: cultural foundations of beliefs about meritocracy American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2023-09-08 Jacqueline Ho
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Gendered embodiment and bodily change: how mastectomy and pregnancy bloggers perceive and resolve physical disruptions American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2023-07-31 Jessica Poling
There are times when our bodies change in unexpected or undesirable ways, challenging our sense of self. Medical sociologists have largely discussed this phenomenon using the concept of “biographical disruptions.” I argue that this classical framework is insufficient for understanding how individuals' social contexts shape their experiences of disruptions and their ability to rationalize them. Bridging
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Capital and distinction or goods and traditions? Toward a post-Bourdieusian cultural theory American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2023-05-16 Galen Watts
Few theoretical traditions dominate the sociological study of culture as does that of the late Pierre Bourdieu. Yet the Bourdieu that dominates is not the only Bourdieu there is, for Bourdieusian sociology is comprised of two incompatible philosophical strands—naturalism and interpretivism. In turn, the first goal of this essay is to make the case that cultural sociologists are wrong to give primacy
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Protest Event, Political Culture, and Biography: Post-protest Local Activism in Russia American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2023-04-13 Svetlana Erpyleva
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‘Walking the talk’: transposition of religious culture in OWS American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2023-03-22 Scott R. Beck
This paper analyzes the participation of Kundalini Yoga teachers in the Occupy Wall Street social movement. While much of the existing literature on the intersection of social movements and religion focuses on how religious culture supports activism, I examine how actors with strong religious commitments attempt to expand the scope of their participation within a predominantly secular social movement
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Appropriating the civil sphere: the construction of German collective identity by right-wing populist actors during the Covid-19 pandemic American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2023-03-04 Polina Zavershinskaia
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From multiculturalism to antisemitism? Revisiting the Jewish question in America American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2023-03-04 Chad Alan Goldberg
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The return of antisemitism? Waves of societalization and what conditions them American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2023-02-28 Jeffrey C. Alexander, Tracy Adams
This essay employs societalization theory to explain the disturbing renewal of publicly antisemitic beliefs and actions in contemporary Western societies. These new explosions of anti-Jewish hatred are caused, not by increases in antisemitic feelings, but by the weakening of prohibitions against their public expression. Since Western civil spheres introduced such prohibitions in the early nineteenth
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The eternally rescued: the Jews and the boundaries of Danish civility American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2023-02-11 Maja Gildin Zuckerman, Jakob Egholm Feldt
In this paper, we argue that proximity to primordial(ized) Danish civil values has generally saved the Jews in Denmark from violent antisemitism. Combining Alexander’s (The civil sphere. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006) account of an assimilatory mode of civil incorporation with his concept of “societalization” (Alexander in Am Sociol Rev 83(6):1049–1078, 2018; What makes a social crisis? The
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Intimate strangers: theorizing bodily knowledge in shared housing American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2023-01-18 Maria Törnqvist
What does it mean to know and relate to others in a domestic context characterized by physical, but not necessarily emotional, proximity? This article investigates the role of the body in converting strangers into intimate others within the setting of shared housing. Addressing phenomenological work on situated bodies as sites of perception in dialogue with sociological theories of embodiment and attunement
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Gliding on the edge of the iron cage: performing rationality and artistry in the sport of figure skating American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-11-29 Zaoying Ji
Prior studies on growing formal rationalization in evaluation systems have overwhelmingly shown that they operate as “iron cages,” which redefine standards of excellence around quantifiable metrics. However, existing literature may have overestimated the extent of isomorphism in individual or organizational practices under highly rationalized systems of assessment. The judging system in figure skating
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The Performance and Reception of Race-Based Athletic Activism: Toward a Critical, Dramaturgical Theory of Sport American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-11-28 Douglas Hartmann, Alex Manning, Kyle Green
The emergence of an unprecedented wave of race-based athletic activism in the last decade presents the opportunity to formulate a more critical, cultural theory of the significance and socio-political function of sport in contemporary life. We begin by centering athlete agency and highlighting the distinctive performative, communicative, and symbolic opportunities that sport affords. However, athletic
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Beyond the inclusion–exclusion dichotomy in populism studies: Erdoğan’s Muslim nationalist discourse on Syrian refugees American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-11-25 Kerem Morgül
Research on the populism–nationalism nexus distinguishes between an inclusionary (left-wing) populism that defines the nation in civic/political terms and an exclusionary (right-wing) populism that defines the nation in ethnic/cultural terms. I challenge this framework by examining President Erdoğan’s discourse on Syrian refugees in Turkey within the context of a populist and civilizationist Muslim
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“Something other than real life:” digital life resistance in the civil sphere American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-11-25 Jeffrey Norquist
The pervasive use of digital life technologies, such as social media and smartphones, have fostered a social debate on the drawbacks of such modes of interaction and how the infiltration into social spaces by such technologies might be countered. This study employs Alexander’s civil sphere theory to study public expressions of antipathy towards digital technology communicated via online forums such
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Rapport: affective cultural structures in sociological inquiry American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-11-24 Ethan W. Johnson, Penny Edgell, Kathleen E. Hull
Rapport, a feeling of ease or comfort in an interactional setting, is not automatic or inevitable. Drawing upon and synthesizing literature in the sociology of ritual, studies of institutionalized feeling routines, theories of cultural resources, theories of small group culture, and theories of group structure from social psychology, we argue that rapport emerges from the fusion of culture, affect
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Agon and Apron: hybridizing gender by “sportifying” cooking in MasterChef USA American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-11-17 Laura Grindstaff, Rafi Grosglik
Competition is fundamental to American life, and sport is the cultural institution most closely linked to organized competition in the U.S. Historically, sport has been a male preserve. At the same time, the structures, practices, and iconography of sports have infiltrated a variety of social fields and institutions less obviously dominated by men—a process known as “sportification.” Reality programing
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Elite Environmental Aesthetics: Placing Nature in a Changing Climate American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-11-14 Andrew McCumber, Adam Davis
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Militarizing politics of recognition through the Invictus Games: post-heroic exalting of the armed forces American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-11-01 Brad West
The Invictus Games is an international sporting competition involving military veterans who have become either wounded, injured or sick during their service. Having become a prominent event in the public sphere of participating nations that are drawn from Western security alliances, this article outlines results from a thematic analysis of Australian media surrounding the 2018 Sydney Games. While reporting
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Culture and poverty from a lifeworld stance: rehabilitating a controversial conceptual pair American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-10-26 Franz Erhard
This paper picks up Oscar Lewis’s controversial culture of poverty theorem and shows that it has analytical potential, if applied with a rigorous, dispassionate and actor-bound concept of “culture”. Based on Alfred Schutz’s socio-phenomenological model of the lifeworld, “culture” is understood as the interpretive und pragmatic ways in which actors approach the world. Staying true to this framework
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A sociology of the “and one!”: the culture of charisma in pickup basketball American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-10-15 Michael DeLand
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Ethical dilemmas of minority creative workers in the cultural industries: Palestinian actors in Israeli films and dramas American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-09-27 Amal Jamal, Noa Lavie
This article explores the dilemmas and challenges of minority creative workers in the cultural industries in settler-colonial/postcolonial contexts. More specifically, it sheds light on how minority actors perceive their involvement at such a sensitive and precarious juncture. To that end, it examines the impact of the roles these actors play and the genres in which they are typecast, experiencing
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“We love martyrdom, but we also love life”: Coptic cultural trauma between martyrdom and rights American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-07-25 Miray Philips
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Hegel contra celebrity: the reconciliation of subject and object American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-07-13 Chris Rojek
This paper argues that the philosophy of Hegel exposes a fundamental and damaging bias in the field of Celebrity Studies. This bias takes the shape of privileging questions of techne over form. The dominant paradigm in the field is here called Triangulation. The paper describes this paradigm and critically evaluates it in terms of adequacy. Hegel’s concept of World Historical Individuals is discussed
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The female nude and the naked guy: declarative and nondeclarative personal culture in aesthetic responses to artistic nude photography American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-07-02 Michaël Berghman, Thomas Calkins, Koen van Eijck, Yu-Chin Her
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Fingerprinting, civil codes, and the origins of surveillance culture in the United States American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-04-28 Fiona Greenland
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The call of ordinariness: peer interaction and superdiversity within the civil sphere American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-04-28 Denis Tajic, Anna Lund
Previous research conducted in Swedish schools and beyond has shown how newly arrived migrant students are excluded by peers from the majority population and by longer-term residents. The novelty of the present article is its focus on the opposite: how peer interaction between newly arrived and other students arises in superdiverse school settings and what this interaction means for newly arrived migrant
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Memories of Others for the Sake of Our Own: Imported Events in American Presidential Rhetoric (1945–2020) American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-04-28 Tracy Adams, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi
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Culture, the civic, and religion: characteristics and contributions of cultural analysis through three exemplary books. American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-04-28 Gary J Adler
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Rusty gardens: stigma and the making of a new place reputation in Buffalo, New York American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-04-15 Randolph Hohle
This article develops a conceptual framework to explain how local actors engage in grassroots reputational making activities to separate themselves, their homes, and their city from stigmas that mark places with bad reputations, and how these reputational making activities become institutionalized in urban regeneration practices. Through a case study that draws from field notes and 36 in-depth interviews
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The sounds of executions: sonic flaws and the transformation of capital punishment American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-04-11 Annulla Linders, Brittney Miles, Molly Broscoe, Jennifer Money
A robust literature addresses the historical transformation of executions, but it does so without attention to sound. To help us understand how the audible aspects of executions impacted these transformations, we develop a concept we call sonic flaws. Sonic flaws are characterized neither by their loudness nor their nuisance quality. Rather, sonic flaws are sounds that not only intrude upon but also
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Framing performance and fusion: how music venues’ materiality and intermediaries shape music scenes American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-03-12 Myrtille Picaud
How do performances contribute to meaning-making processes in cultural fields? This paper focuses on the spaces where performances happen and how music is framed and staged by intermediaries. I engage critically with cultural pragmatics from a Bourdieusian perspective to argue that performance contexts are central to the structure of music scenes, and that fusion may be understood as a moment when
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Transcendence, fast and slow: Infinite Jest and the dynamics of a cultural splash American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-01-19 Medvetz, Thomas
This paper builds on two leading models of artistic practice, the “network-building” and “autonomous sphere” approaches, to show how an expressive work can reverse the normal antinomy between artistic recognition and commercial success and become an immediate crossover hit. Focusing on a single “pointy” case from the world of literature—the 1996 novel Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace—I ask whether
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Bushwhacking: accounts as symbolic violence in the arts-based gentrification of Bushwick, Brooklyn American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-01-19 Collins, Devin
A sizable body of research on arts-based gentrification has documented how artist residences have been strategically deployed by developers to kick-start capital reinvestment and lure so-called “creative class” professionals into formerly disinvested neighborhoods. Yet researchers rarely investigate how actual occupants of such residences perceive their role in neighborhood change. Addressing this
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From reductive to generative crisis: businesspeople using polysemous justifications to make sense of COVID-19 American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2022-01-19 Sendroiu, Ioana
Both lay understandings of crisis moments and influential psychological models of cognition in times of uncertainty emphasize how crises limit thinking. Conversely, scholars as diverse as Foucault, Swidler, Bourdieu, and Butler have elaborated generative conceptions of crisis, which specify crises as moments of change, transformation, and heightened cognition. The research presented here takes up the
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Looking beyond interaction: exploring meaning making through the windows of an art gallery American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2021-11-27 Harris, Laura
How is meaning produced in and around the art gallery? Sociological answers to this question are limited by a narrow focus on inter-gallery group interaction and cognitive interpretation. I argue that such approaches would be strengthened by accounting for the diverting effects of gallery context and atmosphere, both in and beyond the gallery. Art gallery windows offer a lens through which to explore
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Everything’s going according to Plan(demic): a cultural sociological approach to conspiracy theorizing American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2021-10-13 Jaworsky, Bernadette Nadya
In this article, I examine the case of a viral film entitled “Plandemic,” its sequel, and the epidemiologist that is its main subject, and develop a cultural sociology of conspiracy theorizing through the concept of “performative conspiracy.” I argue that the Plandemic case represents a cultural performance within the (ongoing) serious social drama of the Covid-19 pandemic. I focus primarily on the
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Mapping multivocality: how critics communicate complex meanings through metaphor American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2021-09-28 Wohl, Hannah
In cultural fields, where audiences view meaning as indeterminant, how do experts communicate their interpretations of multivocal artworks? Drawing on an archival dataset of contemporary art reviews, I examine how critics discuss ambiguous and complex meanings. Critics do not convey multiple, discrete meanings but instead focus on the relationships among multiple meanings. In particular, they use spatial
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Remembering the dreams, forgetting the war: commemoration and narrative in Japanese girls’ culture American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2021-09-23 Yamamoto, Ai, Sonnett, John
In early twentieth-century Japan, girls’ magazines provided their young readers with a site to creatively express themselves, but when these magazines became channels of propaganda in WWII-era Japan, much of that independence was suppressed and the popularity of the magazines faded. Nevertheless, in 2009, a 100-year commemorative issue of one of the most influential magazines, Shōjo no tomo (Girls’
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Nostalgia and rumors in the rural methamphetamine market American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2021-09-01 Grundetjern, Heidi, Tchoula, Whitney
Rural Missouri previously had among the highest numbers of “mom and pop” methamphetamine laboratories in the United States, but after the Combat Methamphetamine Epidemic Act was passed (2005) such laboratories declined dramatically. Today, industrially produced methamphetamine imported from Mexico, ice, dominates in the United States (DEA in: National Drug Threat Assessment. United States Drug Enforcement
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Imagining cultural wealth: producer perceptions and potential value in cultural markets American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2021-08-19 Singer, Amy E.
Whether the result of purposeful nation-branding projects or longstanding traditions, associations endure between specific nations and the particular goods they produce. Such associations can be harnessed on behalf of the symbolic and economic value recently recognized as national cultural wealth. Further, the cultivation of impression management strategies about geographical origins is requisite for
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Music and democracy in America: historical perspectives on ‘democratization’ in the digital age American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2021-08-07 Hanrahan, Nancy Weiss
What meanings of democracy are invoked in talk about democratization and music, and how does this discourse reflect struggles over democracy in our time? Contemporary music scholars and commentators have relied on ‘democratization’ to measure the promises and possibilities of music in the digital age. Yet ‘democracy’ is conceived in this discourse as a technological rather than a historical achievement
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The three generations of the French sociology of art American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2021-07-19 Nathalie Heinich
This paper introduces the French sociology of art to English-speaking scholars. Its story begins with a shift from the humanities to social sciences through the use of empirical methods, and a change in focus from artworks to the social conditions of their production, mediation, and reception. This meant, initially, a positivist turn, relying on a strong explanatory and determinist paradigm using social
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Incivility and danger: theorizing a Muslim undercaste in Europe American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2021-06-16 Elisabeth Becker
Positing Muslim positionality in Europe as an undercaste helps to make sense of how cultural stratification, rooted in associations with incivility, has resulted in deep and unrelenting inequalities experienced by diverse Muslims. Based on two years of ethnographic research with a Muslim community in Berlin as well as a survey of secondary research, this paper both theorizes and empirically showcases
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Theory of an art market scandal: artistic integrity and financial speculation in the Inigo Philbrick case American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2021-06-16 Amy Whitaker, Fiona Greenland
Focusing on the case of Inigo Philbrick and his alleged fraudulent overselling of artworks by Rudolf Stingel, we offer a new theory of art market scandal that builds upon Alexander’s framework of the pure and impure, and Adut’s concept of transgressive publicity. We argue that the presence of an art market creates latent impurity, according to the Hostile Worlds conception of markets as an impurification
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Culture beneath discourse: a conceptual model for analyzing nondeclarative cultural knowledge American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2021-06-11 Michael Rotolo
Sociology has increasingly drawn on concepts from the cognitive sciences to better theorize and measure culture, particularly nondeclarative personal culture beneath the level of conscious awareness. Despite several advances, these “cognitive cultural” concepts are drawn on selectively, and limited work has attempted to assemble them into a coherent framework, leading to conceptual murkiness and ambiguous
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Correction to: Exploring the sacrality of reading as a social practice American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2021-05-24 María Angélica Thumala Olave
A correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-021-00133-2
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Customer reviews of ‘highbrow’ literature: a comparative reception study of The Inheritance of Loss and The White Tiger American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2021-04-16 Daniel Allington
Bourdieu argues that legitimate or ‘highbrow’ cultural products depend for their appreciation on a style of consumption grounded in cultural knowledge acquired through formal education. To explore this idea, all available customer reviews of two Man Booker prize-winning novels—Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (2006) and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger (2008)—were collected from the Amazon.co.uk
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Knowing through feeling: the aesthetic structure of a novel and the iconic experience of reading American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2021-04-08 Jan Váňa
Following the strong program in cultural sociology, I propose a “literary turn” to recognize literary texts “as relatively autonomous cultural entities” with their own agency. This article is part of a larger project connecting cultural sociology with the sociology of literature and literary theory to develop a strong program in the sociology of literature. Instead of approaching literary fiction as
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Exploring the sacrality of reading as a social practice American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2021-04-03 María Angélica Thumala Olave
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Reviewing strategies and the normalization of uncertain texts American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2021-03-08 Álvaro Santana-Acuña
Reviewers help ease cultural products’ testing transition from the stage of production to that of circulation. Given their intermediate position between stages, reviewers have to deal with uncertainty when valuating new cultural products. How do reviewers in a transnational setting make sense of a novel product that challenges existing aesthetic boundaries, has commercial success, and is made by a
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Symbolic action and constraint: the cultural logic of the 2017 UK General Election American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2021-02-15 Marcus Morgan
This paper examines the influence of both the agential and structural aspects of culture on the 2017 UK General Election. The empirical section of the paper is organised around three aspects of the Labour campaign narrative: its promise to provide a national ‘alternative’, its mobilisation of Corbyn as simultaneously an individual and an icon, and its use of rallies and social media as alternative
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The politics of happily-ever-after: romance genre fiction as aesthetic public sphere American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2021-01-13 Anna Michelson
How does the romance reading community understand the genre in relation to sociopolitical concerns? This paper draws on interviews, observations of romance writers’ conferences, and a variety of text data to explore how popular romance fiction functions as an aesthetic public sphere, a site of political discourse. While I find that romance novels and the romance community address a range of sociopolitical
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Writing biography in the face of cultural trauma: Nazi descent and the management of spoiled identities American Journal of Cultural Sociology (IF 2.38) Pub Date : 2020-11-18 Joachim J. Savelsberg
Cultural trauma after mass violence poses challenges in micro-social settings. Children and grandchildren of the perpetrator generation address these challenges in multiple, more or less fictionalized, biographies and family histories, explored here for the case of the Nazi Regime and the Holocaust. Their books serve, at one level, as quarries for harvesting depictions of interactive situations in