Sociology of Culture

Focusing on the pivotal 1917–1919 conjuncture in Russia and Ukraine, this paper analyzes the efforts of the divided Jewish nationalist intelligentsia to disseminate new forms of Jewish culture to a mass audience, the reception of these efforts in the former Tsarist empire’s variegated Jewish population, and the intelligentsia’s parallel exploration of other forms of cultural formation less dependent on popular support. Comparing the cultural programs of Hebraism and Yiddishism, it demonstrates important parallels in their cultural visions and highlights their shared belief in the possibility of implanting a secularist, aestheticist intelligentsia culture in the whole of “the nation.” The paper reconstructs both substantial forms of popular openness to this culture and its sociocultural weaknesses. Finally, it examines experiments made by the intelligentsia with alternative routes to cultural transformation: suppression of popular culture, non-market cultural arrangements, cultural revolution through education, and the uses of the state. The paper seeks a fuller understanding both of the roots of interwar cultural programs in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and of the Jewish nationalist intelligentsia’s underlying conception of “culture,” its own authority, and the evolving relationship between these conceptions and the realities of East European Jewish social, cultural, and political life from the 1890s onward.

Résumé français: Certains métiers sont attractifs, moins pour le confort matériel qu’ils garantissent qu’en raison de l’image valorisée et valorisante qui leur est associée, ou de l’épanouissement dont ils portent la promesse. Ils reposent sur un fort engagement personnel, qui peut être subjectivement vécu sur le mode de la passion et du désintéressement. L’orientation professionnelle vers le secteur culturel participe de cette logique vocationnelle. Quelles sont les modalités de cet appel ? Qu’est-ce qui prédispose à y répondre ? Quels sens ces orientations revêtent-elles ? Pour répondre à ces questions, Vincent Dubois a enquêté sur les étudiants qui se destinent à l’administration culturelle. En révélant qui et ce qui s’y investit, ce livre apporte un éclairage inédit sur ces métiers. Ces positions intermédiaires où se croisent héritages familiaux et investissements scolaires, espoirs d’ascension sociale et lutte contre le déclassement, offrent plus largement un point de vue privilégié pour l’analyse des modes de reproduction dans la France contemporaine.

English abstract: Some occupations are attractive, not so much in terms of material comfort as in terms of prestige and self-fulfillment. Among them, some imply a strong personal commitment, which can be subjectively experienced in the mode of passion and selflessness. The combinations of these aspects define a vocational logic, of which the choice of a career in the cultural sector can provide a good example. What are the terms of this calling? What predisposes individuals to answer it? What are the meanings of such an orientation? To answer these questions, this book focuses on would-be cultural managers. By identifying their social patterns, by revealing the resources, expectations and visions of the world they invest in their choice, it sheds new light on these occupations. In these intermediary and indeterminate social positions, family heritages intersect with educational strategies; aspirations of upward mobility with tactics against downward mobility. Career choices in cultural management constitute therefore a revealing case, for a renewed analysis of modes of social reproduction. The empirical findings of this research conducted in France are set in a broader comparative perspective, at the European level and with the USA.

Glocal Spirituality:  Consumerism and Heritage in Puerto Rican Brujería
With the recent intensification of the circulation of ritual experts and commodities, folk religions such as Puerto Rican brujería (witch-healing) have entered a transnational arena of ritual experimentation and eclecticism. Concomitantly, the politics of identity, operating at local-political and global-commercial stages, propel the search for origins and the production of essential identities, leading to the revitalization and orthodoxy of folk religions as well as their folklorization, following a local—though globally pervasive—heritage discourse.  Why glocal spirituality? My main argument is that both these forces—the actual insertion into global circulations that promote a high degree of ritual eclecticism and the local demand for an essential Puerto Rican national identity that promote orthodoxy—work in tandem creating a complex set of conditions for ritual practice and meaning.
How can these apparently contradictory processes be theorized within folklore studies? From a historic-pragmatic perspective to ritual and through an intimate ethnographic account that traces the encounters between practitioners, clients and suppliers of ritual goods, I will show how these two processes work in tandem. That is, without an a-priori public recognition of brujos (witch-healers) as repositories of Puerto Rican wisdom (in the context of the unresolved neocolonial political status of the island), the fame and celebrity that enabled the open incorporation of African based rituals, of bureaucratic gestures and interventions, and transnational religious commodities could not have been viable. Critics of the culture industry and consumerism tend to suggest that commercial forces inherently taint the authenticity of culture, and in this case would taint the spiritual effectiveness of brujería. For practitioners and clients, however, material and spiritual progress not only are not at odds but also are intimately connected. Indeed, practitioners are driven by the attainment of “blessings”—defined by material success as well as spiritual power—which presume the spirituality of commodities and the thinghood of spirituality. Especially in a world guided by capitalist modes of production and the sensuous insatiable consumption of life styles and self-images, brujos and their clients take advantage of the opportunities opened up by multiculturalism and identity politics. They openly expand the pantheon of spirits as well as their ritual expertise, protected by the idiom of heritage—yet outside of its constraints, showing that more than endangered species they are active participants in these glocal forces, speaking to them in their own particular modern yet spiritual idiom.

TVÅ SIDOR AV SAMMA MYNT? Tabell 2. Söktryck efter namn på folkhögskolan, Ht 2009 Folk-Antal Antal N Profiler Söktryck St. d högskola sökande platser(medelvärden) Fridhem 450 25 1 Jazz 18, 0 Skurup 340 20 1 Jazz 17, 0 Billströmska 230 20 1 Blandad 11.5 Furuboda ...

The article traces the changes in everyday practices of production and consumption of amateur photographs at the beginning of the XXIst century. The authors argue that transformations were caused by a massive shift towards use of digital cameras and by rapid development of Web 2.0. As a result, the number of amateur photographs posted
in Internet has dramatically increased. This led to criticism resulted in uprising of specific resistance practices. Among the resistance practices are return to film-type cameras and the lomography movement.

В статье представлен анализ трансформации повседневных практик производства и потребления любительских фотографий в начале XXI века. Ее причиной, по мнению авторов, является переход
к использованию цифровых камер и активное развитие нового подхода к организации интернет-контента Web 2.0, в результате чего основной функцией любительской фотографии становится самопре-
зентация, направленная на создание образа творчества. В итоге насыщения информационной среды идентичными фотографическими образами появляется критика доминирующего способа обращения с
изображениями, а также специфические практики сопротивления. Среди последних в статье рассматривается возврат к технологии пленочной фотографии и появление движения ломографии, которое
позднее приобретает цифровую форму.

Réplica à resenha de "Machado de Assis: por uma poética da emulação", escrita por Lidiane Soares Rodrigues. Propõe-se a noção de "resenha passaporte" para caracterizar a estratégia empregada pela resenhista: trata-se de comentar determinado livro não pelo interesse em suas ideias, mas para reforçar alianças institucionais.

Humberto Mauro é considerado um dos pioneiros do cinema brasileiro. O presente artigo apresenta uma proposta de leitura de seu filme O descobrimento do Brasil (1937) a partir de elementos conceituais da Sociologia da Arte e do Cinema. O filme, pertencente ao acervo do antigo Instituto Nacional de Cinema Educativo, apresenta uma imagem para o descobrimento do país, propondo-se a ser uma ilustração da Carta de Pero Vaz de Caminha. Para isso ele trava um diálogo com a tradição visual brasileira, e realiza o que podemos chamar de uma pintura histórica em movimento. Nessa perspectiva, o filme contribui para forjar elementos do passado na construção de valores da época de sua produção, criando ou recriando mitos de uma nacionalidade. Com isso ele se torna parte de um projeto maior de construção da nação brasileira, no qual os objetos de cultura eram considerados um dos caminhos para sua efetivação.

A start to this reflection is the fact that "connection" derives from a Latin word that means binding together and close union (OED, Compact Edition, p838). Disconnection, with the usual negative meaning of the prefix "Dis", then can be understood as unbinding, separation and distant difference. What then is unconnection? This reflection was originally stimulated by my reading an article on academia.edu by a long-time Australian educator and writer who emphasized connection as a critical component of contemporary education. As a long-time international educator and writer, as well as a student of diverse disciplines, I understand that education now takes place in many different kinds of settings. Archeologists have also shown repeatedly that groups of human beings lived and learned in many different settings with no knowledge of most of the other groups and no need of any kind of product from other groups in order to survive and thrive in their specific environments. I suggest that this kind of noninterdepence for satisfactory, successful survival be considered unconnection.

Las  comunidades  online  de  videojugadores  se han convertido en espacios de debate sociopolíti-co,  campos  de  lucha  y  disputa  discursiva  donde se  dirime  la  hegemonía  de  los  marcos  dominan-tes. Convertidos en espacios centrales de subver-sión,  ordenamiento  y  discusión,  nos  aproximamos al estudio de caso de Cyberpunk 2077, un video-juego  de  rol  de  mundo  abierto  que  ha  sido  muy prolífico  en  la  emergencia  de  debates  y  activis-mo en comunidades online como YouTube. A par-tir de una observación participante y técnicas de web scraping y metadatos, realizamos un estudio del  discurso  y  de  contenido,  que  profundiza  en las  problemáticas  de  consumo  de  dispositivos  so-ciotécnicos  donde  se  reconfiguran  las  identida-des, discursos e imaginarios colectivos.

U članku koji slijedi fenomenološki analiziramo imunizacijsku prirodu, porijeklo i suštinu kulture. U uvodnom dijelu članka analiziramo traumu rođenja i psihološki mehanizam nastanka svijesti, pokazujući da imunizacijski karakter kulture predstavlja funkciju imunizacijskog karaktera svijesti. U prvom dijelu članka analiziramo intencionalni karakter svijesti kako bi smo objasnili intencionalni karakter kulture. U drugom dijelu članka dajemo sažet pregled Sloterdijkove imunizacijske paradigme. U trećem dijelu članka analiziramo imunizacijsku funkciju kulture. U završnom dijelu članka ukazujemo na teorijski značaj imunizacijske paradigme kulture.

Partendo dalla constatazione che oggi il consumo sembra essere la principale proprietà capace di descrivere le caratteristiche individuali e l’appartenenza di ognuno all’interno della struttura sociale, questo lavoro empirico prende avvio dalle maggiori teorie sociologiche che hanno permesso il costituirsi di un ramo di studi indirizzato a spiegare fenomeni che al giorno d’oggi sono sotto gli occhi di tutti. Sono stati utilizzati strumenti metodologici e metodi di ricerca sociale quantitativi e qualitativi, in base a un approccio mixed-methods. Sembra che la società, con i suoi dettami consumistici, spinga l’attore sociale contemporaneo verso scelte di consumo legate al godimento immediato, all’hic et nunc. I beni acquistati e consumati con modalità sempre più fugaci sembrano avere ancora un fortissimo valore simbolico e, nonostante l’attuale momento di crisi economica, la corsa all’acquisto di prodotti costosi e destinati a una rapida obsolescenza prende senso se letta in un’ottica di definizione di un sé sociale sempre più transitorio.

Literary theorists and cultural sociologists alike acknowledge that there are no universal standards for appraising the value of a book. Yet, book critics regularly pronounce the literary merits and failures of novels in their reviews. Research on cultural criticism has shed considerable light on how reviewers are able to assess the meaning and value of novels in the absence of objective indicators of literary quality by relying on different cultural ''tools''. This study examines how critics use authors' race and ethnicity as a tool for constructing the value of literary fiction. Based on analysis of 265 book reviews from The New York Times Book Review and The New Yorker magazine, I find that reviewers use racial and ethnic identifiers to: (1) establish the authenticity of the novels, (2) classify works into ethnic genres, and (3) nominally identify international literary talent. I also present data on what influence racial and ethnic identification has for...

"Antes de tocar la tierra hay que pedir permiso, porque la tierra es un lugar sagrado, donde existen millones de especies, unas que vemos y otras que no, ahí están los espíritus de los hermanos animales y los tíos árboles, la chagra es un lugar sagrado donde hay vida, por eso hay que respetarlo, sanearlo, protegerlo y multiplicarlo. Antes de ir a sembrar, tabaqueese mijo pa´ que no muerda culebra, pa´ que no pique sancudo, pa´que no se corte con el machete, pa´que no le pase nada. Ahora, chupe ambil y mambee, porque pa´ eso es la coca y el tabaco…para trabajar" (Mambeos con Uzuma F+ruya Buinaima)

Th is paper focuses on relationship between volunteer work and cultural participation.
Volunteering is introduced as an important practice of cultural commitment. On the one
hand, it has all the major features of contemporary cultural practices. It can be described
in terms of culture-making, productivity, continuity, and glamour. On the other hand,
because of its subjectivity, relationship supporting mechanism, and lifestyle infl uence, it is
perceived as diff erent from other practices. Th is situation makes volunteering an important
aspect of cultural studies researches. Data analyzed in this paper are the results of the research
project entitled, „Involving volunteers into organization of big events – weaknesses
and strengths”.

In this article we develop an approach to coincidences as discursive activities. To illustrate the range of empirical questions that can be explored in the analysis of coincidence accounts, we examine one single written account, which was submitted to a website of a research project to investigate the statistical dimensions of coincidence experiences. Our analysis is broadly ethnomethodological in that we examine this single case to identify how structural and narrative components work to constitute the recognizably coincidental quality of the events so described. The analysis identifies a mirror structure that resembles chiasmus, a figurative device found in classical texts. The analysis also describes how the account is designed to address inferential matters related to the site to which it was submitted. In the discussion we reflect on the implications of this approach for other approaches to coincidence.

Este ensayo explora los modos participativos de traducción de la experiencia y de construcción de lo experimentado, a partir de verificar una obsesión, en particular antropológica pero que se expande hacia otras disciplinas, por la «participación» como modo de captura de la experiencia de otro, bien sea este un otro investigado, bien sea un otro receptor de lo investigado.