This analysis of two hundred American and Canadian novels offers a new theory of national literatures, demonstrating that national canon formation occurs in tandem with nation-building. It accounts for cross-national differences and illuminates the historically constructed and symbolic nature of the relationship between literature and the nation-state. High-culture national literatures are selected as different from other novels; popular-culture bestsellers are mass market commodities for the largest, least differentiated audience.

This original and engaging book investigates American television viewing habits as a distinct cultural form. Based on an empirical study of the day-to-day use of television by working people, it develops a unique theoretical approach integrating cultural sociology, postmodernism and the literature of media effects to explore the way in which people give meaning to their viewing practices. Accessibly written and at the cutting edge of cultural studies and television research, this book is essential reading for students and academics in cultural studies, television research, media and...

This exciting new volume brings together seminal work by leading figures in what is emerging as a new and important intellectual tradition, relating them to other work in sociology and different disciplines. The book is divided into sections on Culture as Text and Code, The Production and Reception of Culture, and Culture in Action, each containing edited theoretical and empirical contributions that address the key debates in cultural sociology: the autonomy of culture, power and culture, structure and agency, and the concept of meaning.

What is it like to be Jewish and to be born and raised in Germany after the Holocaust? Based on candid interviews with nearly 100 German Jews, this book offers an understanding of how the memory of the Holocaust shapes Jews' everyday lives. As their views of non-Jewish Germans and of themselves, their political integration into German society, and their friendships and relationships with Germans are uncovered, the obstacles to readjustment when sociocultural memory is still present are better understood. This is also a book about Jewish identity in the midst of modernity. It shows how the...

Piotr Sztompka presents a comprehensive theoretical account of trust as a fundamental component of human actions. Professor Sztompka's detailed and systematic study takes account of the rich evolving research on trust, and explains its meaning, foundations and functions. He illustrates and supports his claims with statistical data and his own impressive empirical study of trust, carried out in Poland after the collapse of communism. This conceptually creative and elegant work will be of interest to scholars and students of sociology, political science and social philosophy.

Piotr Sztompka presents a comprehensive theoretical account of trust as a fundamental component of human actions. Professor Sztompka's detailed and systematic study takes account of the rich evolving research on trust, and explains its meaning, foundations and functions. He illustrates and supports his claims with statistical data and his own impressive empirical study of trust, carried out in Poland after the collapse of communism. This conceptually creative and elegant work will be of interest to scholars and students of sociology, political science and social philosophy.

In Louis XIV's France, land took on new importance in politics and court life. A sequestered aristocracy promenaded in formal gardens while the military moved across the landscape, marking state boundaries with fortresses and refiguring the interior with canals and forests. Chandra Mukerji highlights the connections between the seemingly disparate activities of engineering and garden design, showing how the gardens at Versailles showcased French skills in using nature and art to design a distinctively French landscape and create a naturalized political territoriality.

Steven Seidman examines the implications for social theory and sexual politics of taking difference seriously. He explores the troubles difference can make for the social sciences and for the very people--feminists, queer theorists, postmodernists--who champion difference. This is a wide-ranging and sophisticated discussion of contemporary social theory and sexual politics, focusing on difference, knowledge and power. It also argues persuasively for a pragmatic approach to questions of difference in theory and politics.

Situated at the crossroads of feminism, queer theory, and poststructuralist debates around identity, this is not a book about Simone de Beauvoir, but, rather, a book that addresses the different ways in which she is constructed as an intelligible "self" by academics, biographers and the media. It shows how key Western concepts such as individuality constrain attempts to deconstruct the self and prevent bisexuality being understood as an identity. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari to see what this construction of bisexuality offers contemporary theories, it also critiques Foucault's work.

Since the early nineteenth century, African-Americans have turned to Black newspapers to monitor the mainstream media and to develop alternative interpretations of public events. Ronald Jacobs tells the stories of these newspapers--in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles--for the first time, comparing African-American and "mainstream" media coverage of racial crises such as the Watts riot, the beating of Rodney King, the Los Angeles uprisings and the O. J. Simpson trial. In an engaging yet scholarly style, Jacobs shows us why a strong African-American press is still needed today.