Sociology

LUCA SALMIERI

1. Knowledge and understanding: after having passed the exam students should demonstrate knowledge and understanding of: analytical and critical conceptual tools for culture and cultural and communication processes in contemporary societies; cultural and communicative phenomena and processes concerning contemporary societies, with respect to the themes such as cultural change, pluralism of values, multiculturalism, religion, media and digital languages, symbolic systems of communication, cultural industries interpreted throughout classical and contemporary texts of sociological thought and analysis of mass culture products, subcultures and practices of cultural distinction
2. Applying knowledge and understanding: after having passed the exam students should possess adequate and useful skills to: analyse, compare, sustain and criticize key-tools and arguments related to the decoding of ideologies, common sense, styles and tastes in the dimensions of cultural consumptions, institutionalised culture, youth cultures and ethnic minorities; address problems related to social inequalities in accessing to education, knowledge and to apply techniques and methods for interpreting cultural processes. Students should also be able: to analyse contemporary cultural products and objects along processes of creation, production, distribution, reception, consumption and re-appropriation; to update and apply the sociological and anthropological contributions and the logical and epistemological foundations to the concept and study of culture; to identify and decode the various topics related to culture in contemporary societies and in particular to address the meanings of subcultures, mass culture, production, reception and cultural resistance, political culture and economic culture.
3. Critical faculties, that is being able to analyse, process and interpret quantitative data and qualitative information useful to develop judgments and evaluations in an autonomous form, should be developed through group work activities, laboratory activities in the composition of hypertexts, critical discussions and in-depth analysis of examples and the capacity to understand the key elements of theoretical and empirical literature in English and use it appropriately.
4. Communications skills. The ability to communicate what was learned should be developed through group work activities aimed at delivering PowerPoint presentations, through tasks performed in extra-classroom moments but delivered also via moodle and discussed in the classroom and through oral communications.
5. Learning skills. The ability to continue studying the topics should make concretely possible for the students to acquire scientific knowledge in a reflective and competent manner in order to undertake further studies not only in the degree programs in LM87 (Social Service and Social Policies) and LM88 (Sociology and Social Research); but also in LM01 (Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology), LM19 (Information and Publishing Systems), LM37 (European and American Modern Languages and Literature), LM39 (Linguistics); LM49 (Planning and Management of Touristic Systems); LM57 (Educational Sciences of Adults and Continuing Education); LM59 (Sciences of Public Communication, Business and Advertising); LM65 (Performance Sciences and Multimedia Production); LM76 (Economics for the Environment and Culture); LM92 (Communication Theories).

Knowledge and understanding. After successfully passing the exam, the student will have acquired: knowledge and skills for identifying, analyzing, and critically assessing the conceptual tools necessary to understand culture and cultural processes in contemporary societies; knowledge and ability to comprehend phenomena and processes of a cultural and communicative nature, particularly regarding issues of cultural change, value pluralism, multiculturalism, religious sentiment in contemporary society, media and digital languages, symbolic systems of communication, and cultural industries, supported by classical and contemporary texts of sociological thought as well as analyses of mass culture products, subcultures, and practices of cultural distinction; interpretative tools capable of framing the contributions of classical sociologists to the study of culture and its most relevant traits in complex societies.

Ability to apply knowledge and understanding. After successfully passing the exam, the student will be able to produce arguments related to the decoding of common sense, styles and tastes linked to cultural consumption, youth cultures, and ethnic minorities, in order to address problems related to social inequalities in access to knowledge and education, and to apply techniques and methods for interpreting cultural processes. The student should also be able to: analyze contemporary cultural products and objects across their phases of creation, production, distribution, reception, consumption, and reappropriation; update and apply sociological and anthropological contributions, as well as logical and epistemological foundations, to the concept and study of culture; reflect on various aspects of culture within contemporary societies and, in particular, address the meanings of subculture, mass culture, production, reception and cultural resistance, political culture, and economic culture.

The development of critical and judgment skills, consisting of analyzing, processing, and interpreting quantitative data and qualitative information useful for developing autonomous evaluations and assessments, must be pursued through group work, laboratory activities involving the composition of hypertexts, critical discussions and in-depth explorations of examples, and the ability to understand the key elements of theoretical and empirical literature in English and to use it appropriately.

The ability to communicate what has been learned must be developed through group work aimed at PowerPoint presentations, through assignments carried out outside the classroom but also submitted via Moodle and discussed in class, and through oral communication.

The ability to pursue independently further study of the topics covered must be realized through the reflective and critically competent acquisition of scientific knowledge in order to undertake subsequent studies not only in the classi di laurea magistrali LM87 (Servizio Sociale e Politiche Sociali) and LM88 (Sociologia e Ricerca Sociale), but also in LM01 (Antropologia Culturale ed Etnologia), LM19 (Informazione e Sistemi Editoriali), LM37 (Lingue e Letterature Moderne Europee e Americane), LM39 (Linguistica), LM49 (Progettazione e Gestione dei Sistemi Turistici), LM57 (Scienze dell’Educazione degli Adulti e della Formazione Continua), LM59 (Scienze della Comunicazione Pubblica, d’Impresa e Pubblicità), LM65 (Scienze dello Spettacolo e Produzione Multimediale), LM76 (Scienze Economiche per l’Ambiente e la Cultura), LM92 (Teorie della Comunicazione).

Attending and non-attending students should:
a) be familiar with main historical periods and facts of the Twentieth century
b) be able to read and understand an elementary text of sociology written in English
c) be able to read and interpret graphs and tables with percentages
d) be able to use the basic functions of Word, Excel and PowerPoint

The course is a reasoned introduction to the complex path of the concept of culture in the social sciences and in particular in sociology. Starting from the rupture of the Enlightenment distinction between culture as a form of high expressions of a civilization and culture as a set of general characteristics of a social group, the most important definitions of culture in the anthropological and sociological fields are reviewed, debated and discussed and debates from the sociology of culture of our current time are analysed and discussed. Students are called to study links between these definitions, the development of the resulting methodologies and the different aspects of the culture object of research and sociological analysis. The sociology of culture is also observed in the light of the direct or mediated influences of some classics of sociological thought and in particular Durkheim, Weber. Marx, Simmel, Parsons. Afterwards, the most recent topics of the sociology of culture and cultural sociology are at center stage starting and following the so-called "cultural turn" of the 1970s are addressed.

Sequence of topics:

The historical premises of the concept of culture
The crossroads of culture; The contents; Text and practice; Culture and power; Culture versus cultures
The anthropological gaze, the sociological gaze; Cultural relativism; The critical review of culture
Karl Marx, the culture between classes and capital

Emile Durkheim and the "social" of culture
Structuralism (from the textbook "Studi culturali e scienze sociali. Fatti, testi e contesti")
Georg Simmel, the cultural excess
Max Weber, how culture works
Culture in the Parsons's system
The cultural turn
American dream, Cold War and conformism
Methodological positivism
The complicated story of structural-functionalist hegemony (from the textbook "Studi culturali e scienze sociali. Fatti, testi e contesti")
The crisis of anthropology
Geertz and the success of interpretationism (from the textbook "Studi culturali e scienze sociali. Fatti, testi e contesti")
British Cultural Studies, American cultural studies
The birth of Cultural studies in Great Britain
Culture and/or power (from the textbook "Studi culturali e scienze sociali. Fatti, testi e contesti")
Pierre Bourdieu, the practice of culture
The Frankfurt School: cultural industry, mass culture
The production of culture's school. Culture and consumptions
Popular culture
Culture in reception and culturalism
Jeffrey Alexander and cultural sociology
Beyond the sociology of culture
The strong program of cultural sociology
Performance, culture, social action
Fusion, defusion, recasting: the heuristic force of the ritual
Religion, religions.
Common sense and everyday life
The re-emergence of other sociologies (from the textbook "Studi culturali e scienze sociali. Fatti, testi e contesti")
Language, communication, memory, semiotics
The semiotic dimension of culture
Post-structuralism (from (from the textbook "Studi culturali e scienze sociali. Fatti, testi e contesti")
How cultures changes
Generations, subcultures, young people
Social movements and cultural change (from the textbook "Studi culturali e scienze sociali. Fatti, testi e contesti")
The transition to adulthood
Men, women and beyond: gender
Women’s studies, Gender studies
Black is beautiful! (from the textbook "Studi culturali e scienze sociali. Fatti, testi e contesti")
Between equality and difference
Beyond the dichotomy: the plurality of genres
Minorities, migrations, multiculturalism
The cultural turn and post-modernity
Globalization, traffic in cultures, multiculturalism (from the textbook "Studi culturali e scienze sociali. Fatti, testi e contesti")

1. Piccone Stella, S. e Salmieri, L. (2018), Il gioco della cultura. Attori, processi, prospettive, NUOVA EDIZIONE, Carocci, Roma.
2. Salmieri, L. (2017),Studi culturali e scienze sociali. Fatti, testi e contesti, Carocci, Roma.
3. Giancola, O e Salmieri, L. (2023), La povertà educativa in Italia. Carocci, Roma.

Further resources avalaible at: https://elearning.uniroma1.it/course/view.php?id=2726

The course takes place in the second semester. During the lessons the teacher adopts the flipped classroom methodology. In this regard, students are invited to attend classes with a notebook or a tablet, or at least with a smartphone equipped with the wi-fi system.

Attendance is not compulsory.
Students who at the end of the course will have duly completed the performance of the tasks and tests of skills assessment available on the e-learning platform (https://elearning2.uniroma1.it/course/view.php?id=2726) can choose to take an online test which works as a basis of prior assessment for the oral exam. Those who get a positive assessment at the online test and want to improve can take the oral exam on dates available on Infostud.

Assessment of learning outcomes takes place on the basis of written and intermediate tests, an optional final test administered online and the completion of an oral examination

• The historical passages from the concept of culture of the single person, to the concept of culture of a people, of a group of a class, to the concept of culture as a whole way of life
• What is cultural relativism?
• Marx: what is historical materialism?
• Marx: structure (base) and superstructure. Definitions, differences and relations between the two concepts (64-68; 92). Class per se and class per se
• Marx: ideology
• The role of culture in Marx’s system of thought
• Durkheim: social and cultural construction of religion
• Simmel: distinction between objective culture and subjective culture
• Simmel: cultural excess in modern society
• Simmel: money in modern culture
• Simmel: the metropolis in modern culture
• Simmel: fashion in modern culture
• Weber: Why can’t Weber be considered a cultural determinist by explaining the development of capitalism through Protestant ethics? Why not substitute cultural determinism for Marx’s economic determinism? Why his explanation of the birth of capitalism as a side effect of cultural change (Protestantism) is a critique of Marx sociologist and not political Marx
• Parsons: the components of culture for Parsons
• Parsons: distinction between the concept of society and the concept of culture
• Culture in functionalism-structuralism
• Geertz: symbol as vehicle of meanings
• Geertz: Culture as text
• Geertz: Interpretation and the thick description method
• The Cultural turn: what is it?
• • British cultural studies: symbolic resistance. Encoding/decoding. Culture and/is power
• Bourdieu: economic capital, social capital and cultural capital, habitus, taste and social distinction
• The Frankfurt School: revisiting Marxism; cultural industry; mass culture (165-173), dialectic of the Enlightenment .
• The official birth of the sociology of culture; the perspective of the production of culture (175-180); institutionalism versus interpreting in the study of culture
• Jeffrey Alexander and the performance. What is the performance, from which elements it consists
• Religion, religions: asceticism and mysticism, monotheism and polytheism; secularization and counter-secularization
• What is common sense?
• What is ethnomethology?
• Goffman: what are frameworks and reframing? Distinction between backstage and limelight
• Model of conditioning (Durkheim and Parsons) and model of interaction in socialization and transmissions of culture (Piaget and Mead; Berger and Luckann)
• Language: De Saussure: difference between langue and words and between meaning and signifier (252); the structuralism of Lévi-Strauss
• Communication: face-to-face communication, mass communication, digital media communication
• What does semiotics study?. Umberto Eco: the relationship between text and context
• Distinction between social memory and collective memory
• Definition of globalization. What is globalization?
• Concept of subculture
• Transition to adult life: the stages to become adults
• Gender differences: feminism and gender theories: 4 perspectives (cultural essentialism; deconstructionism; thought of sexual difference; multiple differences
• Bourdieu: the male domain
• National minorities and ethnic minorities
• Multiculturalism as social reality and multiculturalism as politics