Alan Swingewood
Related: mass society - popular culture
Biography
Alan Swingewood is Lecturer in Sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. [May 2006]
The myth of mass culture (1977) - Alan Swingewood
The myth of mass culture (1977) - Alan Swingewood [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
As Alan Swingewood points out in The Myth of Mass Culture (1977:5-8), the aristocratic theory of mass society is to be linked to the moral crisis caused by the weakening of traditional centers of authority such as family and religion. The society predicted by Ortega Y Gasset, T.S. Eliot and others would be dominated by philistine masses, without centers or hierarchies of moral or cultural authority. In such a society, art can only survive by cutting its links with the masses, by withdrawing as an asylum for threatened values. Throughout the 20th century, this type of theory has modulated on the opposition between disinterested, pure, autonomous art and commercialized mass culture. --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popular_culture_studies#The_theory_of_mass_society [Nov 2004]
Cultural Theory and the Problem of Modernity (1998) - Alan Swingewood
Cultural Theory and the Problem of Modernity (1998) - Alan Swingewood [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
Book Description
This book provides a comprehensive account of different sociological theories of culture. Examining and comparing Marxist contributions from Gramsci, the Frankfurt School and Raymond Williams with the work of Weber, Durkheim, Simmel and Parsons, the author in turn contrasts these contributions with contemporary cultural theory. Concepts and theories of culture such as hegemony, force field and cultural materialism are discussed, and the work of Habermas, Bourdieu, Bakhtin, Jameson and Bell is examined critically. The author develops a sociological approach to the study and analysis of culture that allows the complex nature of social context to be taken into account. Arguing that cultural theory must equally develop theories of agency and self, he reviews the ways that both classical and contemporary sociological and Marxist theories have failed in this regard. --from the publisher
See also: culture theory - modernity
The sociology of literature (1972) - Diana T Laurenson, Alan Swingewood
The sociology of literature (1972) - Diana T Laurenson, Alan Swingewood [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]
See also: sociology - literature