Cultures and Societies in a Changing World (Sociology for a New Century Series) - Softcover

Griswold, Wendy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803990189 ISBN 13: 9780803990180

Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc, 1994

Synopsis

Cultures and Societies in a Changing World provides students with the basic skills necessary to understand the importance of culture and interpret the world in cultural terms.

Griswold encourages students to explore the concept of culture and the nature of its relationship to the social world; understand seemingly structural issues like poverty or ethnicity by applying cultural analysis to these issues; broaden their cultural and social horizons so that they may effectively operate in the global economy and international culture of the twenty-first century.

The metaphor of a diamond is used to focus on the links between culture and society, and how they can be applied to a study of social problems, to business practice in the global marketplace, and to the media.

About this title

Review:

"Excellent, comprehensive introduction to the key concepts in sociology of culture." (Nick Dempsey 2009-10-29)

About the Author:

Wendy Griswold has a background in both social science and the humanities. She received her doctorate in sociology from Harvard University in 1980 and has a master’s degree in English from Duke University. She taught at the University of Chicago from 1981 to 1997, She is the Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. She has been associate editor and book review editor of the American Journal of Sociology and has been on the editorial boards of Contexts, Poetics, and Acta Sociologica. She is on the Advisory Board for the Centro per lo Studio della Moda e della Produzione Culturale, Universitą Cattolica del Sarcro Cuore, Milan. She has received research support from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, support from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science American Council of Learned Societies, the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, and the European University Institute in Florence. Her research on culture has been international in scope. Her most recent book is Regionalism and the Reading Class (2008); she is currently completing a book on the WPA Federal Writers’ Project and its impact on American culture. Bearing Witness: Readers, Writers, and the Novel in Nigeria (2000), won the “Best Book” award for the Sociology of Culture section of the American Sociological Association. Her first book was on the English theater (Renaissance Revivals: City Comedy and Revenge Tragedy in the London Theatre 1576–1980 [1986]). In addition, she co-edited a book on the sociology of literature (Literature and Social Practice [1989]) and has written on the sociology of religion, specifically on conflict within churches. Her current research explores cultural regionalism; she is also studying the relationship between the Internet and reading in Africa. She has written an influential paper on sociological methods for cultural analysis (“A Methodological Framework for the Sociology of Culture,” Sociological Methodology 17 [1987]:1–35); much of her methodological thinking is incorporated in the present book.

About this edition

• Publisher: SAGE Publications, Inc
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0803990189
• ISBN 13: 9780803990180
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200