Content

This course consists of two parts:

Part 1: Culture and cultural sociology

The first part addresses the question of what culture is (learned ways of thinking, feeling and doing that people share with others) and the question into the specificity of cultural sociology. Cultural sociology is characterized as a type of sociology that understands culture as a social reality in and of itself. Culture is in this perspective thus not a mere ‘side issue’ that masks and distorts ‘real’ social reality, and can as such as a ‘dependent variable’ be explained from such an allegedly ‘more fundamental’ reality. Students are then introduced to the still relevant classical cultural sociologies of Weber and Durkheim, which are also used to demonstrate that cultural sociology can rely on quantitative as well as qualitative methods.

Part 2: Cultural sociology and the social significance of culture

The second part of the course then addresses examples of cultural-sociological analyses of social phenomena ranging from science and technology to religion, and from work to tourism and consumption.

Course material

• English chapters and articles
• Course slides

All course material is made available on Toledo.

Format: more information

Students are recommended to read the texts in advance, and have the opportunity to ask questions about the literature during the on-campus lectures.

Each of the lectures is recorded and is subsequently available on Toledo for one week. After the final lecture all recordings are made available once again.