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A unique and vivid study of American civic life which shows how citizens talk politics in private, while avoiding politics in public. Nina Eliasoph challenges received ideas about culture, power, and democracy and exposes the hard work of producing political apathy.

Although competitions in classical music have a long history, the number of contests has risen dramatically since the Second World War, all of them aiming to launch young artists' careers. This is not the symptom of marketization that it might appear to be. Despite the establishment of an international governing body, competitions are plagued by rumors of corruption, and even the most mathematically sophisticated voting system cannot quell accusations that the best talent is overlooked. Why do musicians take part? Why do audiences care so much about who wins? Performing Civility is the first book to address these questions. In this groundbreaking study, Lisa McCormick draws from firsthand observations of contests in Europe and the US, and in-depth interviews with competitors, jurors and directors, as well as blog data from competition observers to argue that competitions have endured because they are not only about music, they are also about civility.

Darnell M. Hunt explores how race shapes the construction of news and viewers' understandings of it, by examining televised coverage of the Los Angeles 'riots' and viewers' responses to it. A major contribution to the debates about the power of television and our power to resist it.

This book, first published in 2000, explores the relationship between experiences of selfhood and patterns of social life. It does so through an encounter with young people who confront urgent social and cultural transformations, whose experience of selfhood is unclear, often shaped by social forces that while powerful, appear difficult, if not impossible to name. These young people live in a world where institutions are weakening and identities fragmenting, where socialisation into roles is being replaced by imperatives of communication and self-esteem. Their world is shaped by different forms of freedom, but also by different forms of social polarisation and conflict. More than other social groups, young people confront the imperative of locating a sense of self and subjectivity, and this book is an account of this struggle in a context of profound social and cultural change.

Ali Mirsepassi explores Eurocentric assumptions about modernity and Islamic Fundamentalism. He argues the Iranian Revolution was not a clash between modernity and tradition but an attempt to accommodate modernity within a sense of authentic Islamic identity and culture and assesses the future of secularism and democracy in the Middle East.

A major comparative analysis of fundamentalist movements in historical and cultural context, spanning revolutionary France, America and Japan, with an emphasis on the contemporary scene. The central theme is the Jacobin nature of modern fundamentalist movements, with their ambivalence towards tradition and the surprisingly progressive role they sometimes play.

This volume brings together seminal work in an important intellectual tradition in sociology. Sections on Culture as Text and Code, The Production and Reception of Culture, and Culture in Action contain theoretical and empirical contributions addressing the key debates in cultural sociology.

Suzanne Kirschner traces psychoanalytic theories of the self back to biblical and neoplatonic roots to show that religious themes and values still influence how modern psychologists make sense of the human condition.

Kenneth Tucker examines the evolving productivist discourse of the Confederation Generale du Travail at the turn of the century and offers a Habermasian twist to the recent linguistic turn in labour history. His study makes an eloquent case for using history as a cultural resource in confronting our own fin de siecle.

This book is a comparative study of the interaction between monasticism and society in Theravada Buddhism and Medieval Catholicism. It investigates the forces that shaped the ideological power of religious elites in the historical framework of the Great Traditions.

American patriotism is a civil religion organized around a sacred flag. Its citizens periodically sacrifice their children to unify the group. Using an anthropological approach, this groundbreaking study explains the rituals of American nationalism, and analyses the malaise pervading post-war American society.

A pathbreaking study, based on extensive interviews, which examines the place of Holocaust memory in the identity and sociocultural adjustment of Jews born and raised in Germany since the Holocaust. Lynn Rapaport considers modern Jewish identity and how collective memory affects ethnicity.

Matters of Culture, first published in 2004, is an introduction to some of the best theorizing in cultural sociology, focusing in particular on questions of power, the sacred and cultural production. Contains a major theoretical introduction that lays out the internal structure of the field and contributions from leading academics.

The Making of English National Identity is a fascinating 2003 exploration of Englishness and what it means to be English rather than British. Drawing on historical, sociological and literary theory, Kumar examines the rise of English nationalism and issues of race and ethnicity from the Norman Conquest to the present day.

Piotr Sztompka presents a comprehensive theoretical account of trust, explaining its meaning, foundations and functions. Professor Sztompka supports his claims with an impressive empirical study of trust, carried out in post-communist Poland. Trust: A Sociological Theory is a major work of social theory.

Building on their studies of sixties culture and theory of cognitive praxis, Ron Eyerman and Andrew Jamison examine the mobilization of cultural traditions and formulation of new collective identities through the music of activism. They combine a sophisticated theoretical argument with historical-empirical studies of nineteenth-century populists and twentieth-century labour and ethnic movements, focusing on the interrelations between music and social movements in the United States and the transfer of those experiences to Europe. Specific chapters examine folk and country music, black music, music of the 1960s movements, and music of the Swedish progressive movement. This highly readable book is among the first to link the political sociology of social movements to cultural theory.

To Rule Jerusalem is a historical and ethnographic account of the twentieth-century struggle for Jerusalem. The volume examines how Jerusalem is doubly divided, between Israelis and Palestinians and, within each community, between religious zealots and secularists. The book is based on hundreds of revealing interviews.

Challenging Diversity looks at the key issues facing social, political and cultural theory. Taking examples from religion, gender, sexuality, state policy-making and intentional communities, it maps new ways of understanding equality, explores the politics of its pursuit, and asks what kinds of diversity does a radical version of equality engender.

Leading social theorist Alberto Melucci builds on his highly influential Nomads of the Present to consider collective action in the postmodern age of information. Challenging Codes shares the social psychological perspective of its companion volume The Playing Self.

The first comprehensive account of the development of the African-American Press in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, this book compares 'mainstream' and African-American media coverage of racial crises such as the Watts riot, Rodney King, the LA uprisings and the O. J. Simpson trial.

Chandra Mukerji challenges the association of state power with socials structures alone in a fascinating cultural analysis of how Louis XIV used Versailles to equate lawlike land control with the order of nature, showcasing distinctively French skills and design in a formal paralleling of military feats of engineering.

This book examines the effects of poverty and class through the personal testimony of the people living in the industrial area of Rotherham in South Yorkshire, England. It argues that the themes and problems identified in this book will be familiar to marginalized groups everywhere.

What is the morally acceptable response to images of starving children, bombed villages and mass graves brought to us by television? Luc Boltanski discusses the ways in which spectators have tried to respond to what they have seen and asks if there remains a place for pity in modern politics.

This book challenges the myth that individualism necessarily weakens commitments to the common good. Examining environmental and other activist groups in which individualism enhances political commitment, it invites us to rethink understandings of commitment, community, and individualism in a post-traditional world.

This book provides a powerful theoretical framework for understanding cross-national cultural differences. Focusing on France and America, researchers from both countries analyse varying attitudes on a diverse range of topics from racism and sexual harrassment to identity politics, publishing, journalism, the arts and the environment.

This is the first book to explore how lesbians and gay men use history to define themselves as social, cultural, and political subjects. Analyses of historiography, ancient Greece, Stonewall, and postmodern historical texts show how historical representations inform and reflect queer subjectivity.

Laura Desfor Edles takes a distinctively culturalist approach to Spain's transition to democracy after Franco. She uses textual interpretation of Spanish newspapers to examine the 'strategy of consensus' deployed at this time and uncovers the processes of symbolization and ritualization behind the political transition.

Leon Mayhew describes a 'New Public' which has replaced the modern public of the Enlightenment with an unstable social order subject to the rhetorical workings of mass communications cultures. Bridging Parsons and Habermas, he offers a new discursive theory of social influence in the age of advertising, lobbying, and media manipulation.

Colonial Fantasies, first published in 1998, examines the Western fascination with the veiled women of the Orient. It challenges dualistic conceptions of identity and difference, West and East, and questions the traditional masculinist assumptions of Orientalism and feminist discourses which seek to 'liberate' the veiled woman.

What are the experiences and symbols which define nationhood? Nation and Commemoration focuses on the major centennial and bicentennial celebrations to examine how two similar sets of people, Australians and Americans, have created and recreated their different national identities.