Communication and Social Order – serie

To what extent have Hollywood feature films shaped the meanings that Americans attach to alcoholics, their families, and the alcoholic condition? To what extent has the mass culture of the movie industry itself been conceptually shaped by a broad, external societal discourse? Norman Denzin brings to his life-long study of alcoholism a searching interest in how cultural texts signify and lend themselves to interpretation within a social nexus. Both historical and diachronic in his approach, Denzin identifies five periods in the alcoholism films made between 1932 and the end of the 1980s, and offers a detailed critical reading of thirty-seven films produced during these six decades.

To what extent have Hollywood feature films shaped the meanings that Americans attach to alcoholics, their families, and the alcoholic condition? To what extent has the mass culture of the movie industry itself been conceptually shaped by a broad, external societal discourse? Norman Denzin brings to his life-long study of alcoholism a searching interest in how cultural texts signify and lend themselves to interpretation within a social nexus. Both historical and diachronic in his approach, Denzin identifies five periods in the alcoholism films made between 1932 and the end of the 1980s, and offers a detailed critical reading of thirty-seven films produced during these six decades.

Presents an integrated theory of development and maturation focusing on the influence of childhood experience on adult women. The book draws on the theories of Mead, Habermas, and Schutz, and on narratives and group discussions to analyze case studies.

The concept of media logic, a theoretical framework for explaining the relationship between mass media and culture, was first introduced in Altheide and Snow's influential work, Media Logic. In Media Worlds in the Postjournalism Era, the authors expand their analysis of how organizational considerations promote a distinctive media logic, which in turn is conductive to a media culture. They trace the ethnography of that media culture, including the knowledge, techniques, and assumptions that encourage media professionals to acquire particular cognitive and evaluative criteria and thereby present events primarily for the media's own ends.Case studies and examples of the mass media presentation of entertainment, news, politics, organized religion, and sports during the past twenty years illustrate how scheduling, sources of information, style, format, and professional awards influence how the world is portrayed in the various media. The authors analyze the influence of media logic on society's perceptions and judgments of issues and its impact on public opinion, culture, and social institutions.

During the past decade, it has become commonplace to interpret social and cultural reality-the very groundwork of the social sciences-as linguistic constructions. Not only is society viewed as a text, but scientific texts themselves are seen as rhetorical constructions.This collection of scholarly essays begins with an overview of this emerging field, and covers the specific stylistic practices by which social scientists create "objective" or "true" representations of society. The volume closes with a consideration of the more telling challenges to the rhetorics of the social sciences and how these might be encompassed or overcome.

During the past decade, it has become commonplace to interpret social and cultural reality-the very groundwork of the social sciences-as linguistic constructions. Not only is society viewed as a text, but scientific texts themselves are seen as rhetorical constructions.This collection of scholarly essays begins with an overview of this emerging field, and covers the specific stylistic practices by which social scientists create "objective" or "true" representations of society. The volume closes with a consideration of the more telling challenges to the rhetorics of the social sciences and how these might be encompassed or overcome.

Herbert Blumer wrote continuously and voluminously, and consequently left a vast array of unpublished work at the time of his death in 1987. This posthumously published volume testifies further to his perceptive analysis of large-scale social organizations and elegant application of symbolic interactionist principles.Blumer's focus on the processual nature of social life and on the significance of the communicative interpretation of social contexts is manifest in his theory of industrialization and social change. His theory entails three major points: industrialization must be seen in processual terms, and the industrialization process is different for different historical periods; the consequences of industrialization are a function of the interpretive nature of human action and resembles a neutral framework within which groups interpret the meaning of industrial relations, and the industrial sector must be viewed in terms of power relations; industrial societies contain inherently conflicting interests.The editors' introductory essay outlines Blumer's metatheoretical stance (symbolic interactionism) and its emphasis on the adjustive character of social life. It places Blumer's theory in the context of contemporary macro theory, including world systems theory, resource dependence theory, and modernization theory.

Herbert Blumer wrote continuously and voluminously, and consequently left a vast array of unpublished work at the time of his death in 1987. This posthumously published volume testifies further to his perceptive analysis of large-scale social organizations and elegant application of symbolic interactionist principles.Blumer's focus on the processual nature of social life and on the significance of the communicative interpretation of social contexts is manifest in his theory of industrialization and social change. His theory entails three major points: industrialization must be seen in processual terms, and the industrialization process is different for different historical periods; the consequences of industrialization are a function of the interpretive nature of human action and resembles a neutral framework within which groups interpret the meaning of industrial relations, and the industrial sector must be viewed in terms of power relations; industrial societies contain inherently conflicting interests.The editors' introductory essay outlines Blumer's metatheoretical stance (symbolic interactionism) and its emphasis on the adjustive character of social life. It places Blumer's theory in the context of contemporary macro theory, including world systems theory, resource dependence theory, and modernization theory.

For many years Emmanuel Lazega has explored communication behavior and decision-making processes of small workgroups within larger organizations. To account for the knowledge claims of members of those groups, and for the ways in which such claims are legitimated collectively and translated into action, he presents a theory of the interactive elaboration of information on which decisions are based.

This book contains papers, presented at an international conference organized by the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism in Milan, that provide details on how corporate artifacts are invested with meaning, are related to control, and can be used as cultural indicators in research.

The present work is an elaboration of the author's previous efforts in Emile Durkheim and the Reformation of Sociology (1988) and The Coming Fin de Sibcle (1991) to demonstrate Durkheim's neglected relevance to the postmodern discourse. The aims include finding affinities between our fin de sibcle and Durkheim's fin de sibcle, and connecting the contemporary themes of rebellion against Enlightenment narratives found in postmodern culture with similar concerns found in Durkheim's sociology as well as in his fin de sibcle culture, contributing to Durkheimian scholarship as well as to the postmodern discourse. The distinctive aspects of the present study flow from the focus on culture, communication, and the feminine voice in culture. Durkheim is approached as a fin de sibcle student of culture, and his insights applied to our fin de sibcle culture. Furthermore, because Durkheim claimed that culture is comprised primarily of collective representations, he was a forerunner of the current, postmodern concerns with communication. Because Durkheim shall be read in the context of his fin de sibcle, this book shall lead to the conclusion that Durkheim was a kind of psychoanalyst such that society is the patient, culture comprises the symptoms, and the sociologist must decipher, decode, and even deconstruct collective representations. Yet, the Durkheimian deconstruction proposed here is unlike the postmodern deconstructions, which criticize and tear apart a text without substituting a better meaning or interpretation. Postmodern discourse has made respectable again the synthesis of multidisciplinary insights that was fashionable in Durkheim's fin de sibcle. In following this postmodern strategy, this book is more than a book about Durkheim. It is also a book about his contemporaries, among them, Carl Justav Jung, Thorstein Veblen, Henry Adams, Georg Simmel, and Max Weber. The author does not follow the postmodern strategy completely, because he finds common strands that bind these and other thinkers and their theories. Stjepan G. Meutrovic was born in Zagreb, Croatia, and is professor of sociology at Texas A & M University. Widely published in scholarly journals, he is the author of Emile Durkheim and the Reformation of Sociology (1988), The Coming Fin de Sibcle, and Genocide After Emotion: The Postemotional Balkan War.

The present work is an elaboration of the author's previous efforts in Emile Durkheim and the Reformation of Sociology (1988) and The Coming Fin de Sibcle (1991) to demonstrate Durkheim's neglected relevance to the postmodern discourse. The aims include finding affinities between our fin de sibcle and Durkheim's fin de sibcle, and connecting the contemporary themes of rebellion against Enlightenment narratives found in postmodern culture with similar concerns found in Durkheim's sociology as well as in his fin de sibcle culture, contributing to Durkheimian scholarship as well as to the postmodern discourse. The distinctive aspects of the present study flow from the focus on culture, communication, and the feminine voice in culture. Durkheim is approached as a fin de sibcle student of culture, and his insights applied to our fin de sibcle culture. Furthermore, because Durkheim claimed that culture is comprised primarily of collective representations, he was a forerunner of the current, postmodern concerns with communication. Because Durkheim shall be read in the context of his fin de sibcle, this book shall lead to the conclusion that Durkheim was a kind of psychoanalyst such that society is the patient, culture comprises the symptoms, and the sociologist must decipher, decode, and even deconstruct collective representations. Yet, the Durkheimian deconstruction proposed here is unlike the postmodern deconstructions, which criticize and tear apart a text without substituting a better meaning or interpretation. Postmodern discourse has made respectable again the synthesis of multidisciplinary insights that was fashionable in Durkheim's fin de sibcle. In following this postmodern strategy, this book is more than a book about Durkheim. It is also a book about his contemporaries, among them, Carl Justav Jung, Thorstein Veblen, Henry Adams, Georg Simmel, and Max Weber. The author does not follow the postmodern strategy completely, because he finds common strands that bind these and other thinkers and their theories. Stjepan G. Meutrovic was born in Zagreb, Croatia, and is professor of sociology at Texas A & M University. Widely published in scholarly journals, he is the author of Emile Durkheim and the Reformation of Sociology (1988), The Coming Fin de Sibcle, and Genocide After Emotion: The Postemotional Balkan War.

With a historical sweep that recent events have made definitive, the authors examine the influence of Soviet ideology on the presentation of social reality in films produced in the Soviet Union between the October Revolution and the final days of glasnost. Within the framework of an introduction that lays out the conceptual terminology used to describe that shifting ideological landscape, the authors analyze both the social groups appearing in the films and the relations of film directors and other film makers to state censorship and ideological control.

This book is about the "public realm," defined as a particular kind of social territory that is found almost exclusively in large settlements. This particular form of social-psychological space comes into being whenever a piece of actual physical space is dominated by relationships between and among persons who are strangers to one another, as often occurs in urban bars, buses, plazas, parks, coffee houses, streets, and so forth. More specifically, the book is about the social life that occurs in such social-psychological spaces (the normative patterns and principles that shape it, the relationships that characterize it, the aesthetic and interactional pleasures that enliven it) and the forces (anti-urbanism, privatism, post-war planning and architecture) that threaten it. The data upon which the book's analysis is based are diverse: direct observation; interviews; contemporary photographs, historic etchings, prints and photographs, and historical maps; histories of specific urban public spaces or spatial types; and the relevant scholarly literature from sociology, environmental psychology, geography, history, anthropology, and architecture and urban planning and design. Its central argument is that while the existing body of accomplished work in the social sciences can be reinterpreted to make it relevant to an understanding of the public realm, this quintessential feature of city life deserves much more u it deserves to be the object of direct scholarly interest in its own right. Choice noted that: "The author's writing style is unusually accessible, and the often fascinating narrative is generously supported by well-chosen photos."

Language, Signs and Selves applies conversational analysis to the discourse of everyday life and its roles in social behavior. The explanation offered of the complex elements and processes of language use is theoretically and empirically grounded, synthesizing European post structuralist theory and semiotics with American pragmatist currents.This book parallels work done under other rubrics sociolinguistics, conversation and discourse analysis, and ethnomethodology. This work, however, presents the same matter from a different standpoint. While enthnomethodology and sociolinguistics focus on certain formal properties of conversations, they have pursued the quest for these properties with great methodological rigor, while avoiding questions about intentions. In their work, as in that of many structuralists, discourse has become depersonalized, with the linguistic form itself becoming an independent entity sealed from the world of selves, interaction, conflict, and suffering. Perinbanayagam's interest is in displaying the dialogic properties of such discourses, conceiving each element in them as pragmatic and directed.In many ways Language, Signs and Selves is an enlargement and exemplification of themes discussed in the analysis of language, interactions, and social relationships. The author takes dialogue to be the central event of human being and doing and argues that it is the defining principle of all actions and interactions. Drawing from a variety of sources, he seeks to construct a theory of interaction between humans that is dialectical in all senses of the word; that is to say, a theory concerned with dialects and double processes, as well as with speaking and the logic of relational processes.

The concept of media logic, a theoretical framework for explaining the relationship between mass media and culture, was first introduced in Altheide and Snow's influential work, Media Logic. In Media Worlds in the Postjournalism Era, the authors expand their analysis of how organizational considerations promote a distinctive media logic, which in turn is conductive to a media culture. They trace the ethnography of that media culture, including the knowledge, techniques, and assumptions that encourage media professionals to acquire particular cognitive and evaluative criteria and thereby present events primarily for the media's own ends.Case studies and examples of the mass media presentation of entertainment, news, politics, organized religion, and sports during the past twenty years illustrate how scheduling, sources of information, style, format, and professional awards influence how the world is portrayed in the various media. The authors analyze the influence of media logic on society's perceptions and judgments of issues and its impact on public opinion, culture, and social institutions.

Language, Signs and Selves applies conversational analysis to the discourse of everyday life and its roles in social behavior. The explanation offered of the complex elements and processes of language use is theoretically and empirically grounded, synthesizing European post structuralist theory and semiotics with American pragmatist currents.This book parallels work done under other rubrics sociolinguistics, conversation and discourse analysis, and ethnomethodology. This work, however, presents the same matter from a different standpoint. While enthnomethodology and sociolinguistics focus on certain formal properties of conversations, they have pursued the quest for these properties with great methodological rigor, while avoiding questions about intentions. In their work, as in that of many structuralists, discourse has become depersonalized, with the linguistic form itself becoming an independent entity sealed from the world of selves, interaction, conflict, and suffering. Perinbanayagam's interest is in displaying the dialogic properties of such discourses, conceiving each element in them as pragmatic and directed.In many ways Language, Signs and Selves is an enlargement and exemplification of themes discussed in the analysis of language, interactions, and social relationships. The author takes dialogue to be the central event of human being and doing and argues that it is the defining principle of all actions and interactions. Drawing from a variety of sources, he seeks to construct a theory of interaction between humans that is dialectical in all senses of the word; that is to say, a theory concerned with dialects and double processes, as well as with speaking and the logic of relational processes.

With a historical sweep that recent events have made definitive, the authors examine the influence of Soviet ideology on the presentation of social reality in films produced in the Soviet Union between the October Revolution and the final days of glasnost. Within the framework of an introduction that lays out the conceptual terminology used to describe that shifting ideological landscape, the authors analyze both the social groups appearing in the films and the relations of film directors and other film makers to state censorship and ideological control.

This book contains papers, presented at an international conference organized by the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism in Milan, that provide details on how corporate artifacts are invested with meaning, are related to control, and can be used as cultural indicators in research.