The study of popular culture has a long and intimate relationship to the field of cultural sociology, being both a subcategory of the field and a separate arena of inquiry taken up by other disciplines. This article examines the intellectual traditions that have shaped the sociology of popular culture, traces the points of connection and difference between sociologists and other scholars studying popular culture, and argues for the continued relevance of cultural sociology for addressing key issues and concerns within the realm of “the popular,” broadly conceived. These developments include the rise of new media/communication technologies and the increasing interdependence between popular culture and other arenas of social life.
Adorno, Theodore, and Max Horkheimer .1947/1979. Dialectic of enlightenment. London: Verso .
2.
Altheide David.1976. Creating reality: How TV news distorts events. Beverly Hills: Sage.
3.
Becker, Howard.1982. Art worlds. Berkeley: University of California Press.
4.
Benson, Rodney.2004. Bringing the sociology of media back in. Political Communication21:275-92.
5.
Best, Amy.2000. Prom night: Youth, schools, and popular culture. New York: Routledge.
6.
---. 2006. Fast cars, cool rides: The accelerating world of youth and their cars. New York: New York University Press.
7.
Bielby, Denise, and Molly Maloney. Forthcoming. Considering global media: Sociological contributions . In Media ownership: Research and regulation, ed. Ron Rice.Cresskill, NJ: Hampton.
8.
Bielby, William, and Denise Bielby.1994. "All hits are flukes": Institutionalized decision making and the rhetoric of network prime-time program development . American Journal of Sociology99 (5): 1287-1313.
9.
Bourdieu, Pierre.1984. Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
10.
---. 1993. The field of cultural production. New York: Columbia University Press.
11.
Bulman, Robert.2005. Hollywood goes to high school. New York: Worth.
12.
Carey, John.1992. The intellectuals and the masses: Pride and prejudice among the literary intelligentsia, 1830-1939. London: Faber and Faber.
13.
Coser, L., C. Kadushin, and W. Powell.1982. Books: The culture and commerce of publishing . New York: Basic Books.
14.
Couldry, Nick.2000. Inside culture: Re-imagining the method of cultural studies . Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
15.
Craig, Maxine.2002. Ain't I a beauty queen? Black women, beauty, and the politics of race. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
16.
Crane, Diana.1992. The production of culture: Media and the urban arts. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
17.
---. 2000. Fashion and its social agendas. Chicago : University of Chicago Press.
18.
Delli Carpini, Michael, and Bruce Williams.2001. Let us infotain you. In Mediated politics, ed. L. Bennett and Robert Entman, 160-81. New York: Cambridge University Press.
19.
DeNora, Tia.1995. Beethoven and the construction of genius. Berkeley: University of California Press.
20.
---. 2000. Music and everyday life. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
21.
DiMaggio, Paul.1977. Market structure, the creative process, and popular culture: Toward an organizational reinterpretation of mass culture theory. Journal of Popular Culture111:436-52.
22.
---. 1982. Cultural entrepreneurship in nineteenth-century Boston, part I: The creation of an organizational base for high culture in America . Media, Culture, and Society4:33-50.
23.
du Gay, Paul.1997. Introduction. In Production of culture/cultures of production, ed. Paul du Gay, 1-10. London : Sage.
24.
Erickson, Bonnie.2008. The crisis in culture and inequality. In Engaging art: The next great transformation of America's cultural life, ed. Steven Tepper and Bill Ivey, 343-362. New York: Routledge .
25.
Ferguson, Priscilla.1998. A cultural field in the making: Gastronomy in nineteenth century France. American Journal of Sociology104:597-641.
26.
Fine, Gary Alan.1987. With the boys: Little League baseball and preadolescent culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
27.
Fishman, Mark.1980. Manufacturing the news. Austin: University of Texas Press.
28.
Fiske, John.1989. Reading the popular. Boston: Unwin Hyman.
29.
Frank, Thomas.2004. What's the matter with Kansas? How conservatives won the heart of America. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
30.
Frith, Simon.1978. Sociology of rock. London: Constable.
31.
Gamson J.1998. Freaks talk back: Tabloid talk shows and sexual nonconformity . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
32.
Gans, Herbert.1974/1999. Popular culture and high culture: An analysis and evaluation of taste. 2nd ed. New York: Basic Books.
33.
Gitlin, Todd.1980. The whole world is watching: Mass media in the making & the unmaking of the new left. Berkeley: University of California Press
34.
---. 1983. Inside prime time. New York: Pantheon.
35.
Gray, Herman.1995. Watching race: Television and the struggle for blackness . Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
36.
Grindstaff, Laura2002. The money shot: Trash, class, and the making of TV talk shows. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
37.
Grindstaff, Laura, and Emily West.2006. Cheerleading and the gendered politics of sport. Social Problems53 (4): 500-518.
38.
Griswold, Wendy.1981. American character and the American novel. American Journal of Sociology86:740-65.
39.
---. 1994. Cultures and societies in a changing world. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge.
40.
Harrington, C. Lee, and Denise Bielby.1995. Soap fans: Pursuing pleasures and making meaning in everyday life. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
41.
---. 2001. Constructing the popular: cultural production and consumption . In Popular culture: Production and consumption, ed. C. Lee Harrington and Denise Bielby, 1-15. Oxford, UK: Blackwell .
42.
---. 2007. Global fandom/global fan studies. In Fandom: Identities and communities in a mediated world, ed. Jonathan Gray, Cornell Sandvoss, and C. Lee Harrington, 179-197. New York: New York University Press.
43.
Ivey, Bill, and Steven Tepper.2006. Cultural renaissance or cultural divide?Chronicle of Higher Education52 (37): sec. B6-B8. http://chronicle.com/weekly/v52/i37/37b00601.htm .
44.
Jacobs, Ronald.2000. Race, media, and the crisis of civil society: From Watts to Rodney King. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
45.
Jenkins, Henry.1992. Textual poachers: Television fans and participatory culture . New York: Routledge.
46.
Kaniss, Phyllis.1991. Making local news. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
47.
Kibler, Alison.1999. Rank ladies: Gender and cultural hierarchy in American vaudeville. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.
48.
King, Neal.1999. Heroes in hard times: Cop action movies in the U.S. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
49.
King-O'Riain, Rebecca.2006. Pure beauty: Judging race in Japanese American beauty pageants. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
50.
Lamont, Michele.1992. Money, morals, and manners: The culture of the French and the American upper-middle class. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
51.
---. 2000. The dignity of working men: Morality and the boundaries of race, class, and immigration. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
52.
Levine, Lawrence.1988. Highbrow lowbrow: The emergence of cultural hierarchy in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
53.
---. 1992. The folklore of industrial society: Popular culture and its audiences. American Historical Review97 (5): 1369-99.
54.
Long, Elizabeth.2003. Book clubs: Women and the uses of reading in everyday life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
55.
Lopes, Paul.2002. The rise of a jazz art world. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
56.
Manga, J.2003. Talking trash: The cultural politics of daytime TV talk shows. New York: New York University Press.
57.
Martin-Barbero, Jesus.1993. Communication, culture, and hegemony. London: Sage.
58.
Mazzoleni, Gianpietro, Julianne Stewart, and Bruce Horsfield, eds. 2003. The media and neo-populism: A comparative analysis . London: Praeger.
59.
McChesney, Robert.2004. The problem of the media: U.S. communication politics in the 21st century. New York: Monthly Review Press.
60.
Miller, T., N. Govil, J. McMurria, and R. Maxwell.2001. Global Hollywood. London: British Film Institute.
61.
Montemurro, Beth.2006. Something old, something bold: Bridal showers and bachelorette parties. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
62.
Mukerji, Chandra, and Michael Schudson .1986. Popular culture. Annual Review of Sociology12:47-66.
63.
---. 1991. Introduction: Rethinking popular culture. In Rethinking popular culture: Contemporary perspectives in cultural studies , ed. Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson, 1-61. Berkeley: University of California Press.
64.
Parks, Lisa, and S. Kumar.2003. Planet TV: A global television reader . New York: New York University Press.
65.
Peterson, Richard.1990. Why 1955? Explaining the advent of rock music. Popular Music9:97-116.
66.
---. 1997. Creating country music: Fabricating authenticity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
67.
Peterson, Richard, and N. Anand.2004. The production of culture perspective . Annual Review of Sociology30:311-34.
68.
Peterson, Richard, and D.G. Berger.1975. Cycles of symbol production: The case of popular music. American Sociological Review40:158-73.
69.
Peterson, Richard, and R. Kern.1996. Changing highbrow taste: From snob to omnivore. American Sociological Review61:900-907.
70.
Peterson, Richard, and Gabriel Rossman .2008. Changing arts audiences: capitalizing on omnivorousness. In Engaging art: The next great transformation of America's cultural life, ed. Steven Tepper and Bill Ivey, 307-342. New York: Routledge.
71.
Press, Andrea.1991. Women watching television: Gender, class, and generation in the American television experience. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
72.
Powell, W.W.1985. Getting into print. Chicago: University of Chicago Press
73.
Rosenberg, B., and D. M. White, eds. 1957. Mass culture. Glencoe, IL: Free Press.
74.
Schudson, Michael.1978. Discovering the news: A social history of American newspapers . New York: Basic Books.
75.
Seiter, E.2004. Qualitative audience research. In The television studies reader, ed. Robert Allen and Annette Hill, 461-478. London: Routledge.
76.
Spigel, Lyn.2004. Introduction. In Television after TV: Essays on a medium in transition, ed. Lyn Spigel and Jan Olsson, 1-40. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
77.
Spillman, Lyn, ed. 2002. Cultural sociology. Malden, MA: Blackwell .
78.
Storey, John.2003. Inventing popular culture. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
79.
Swidler, Ann.1986. Culture in action: Symbols and strategies. American Sociological Review51 (April): 273-86.
80.
Tepper, Steven.2008. Conclusion. In Engaging art: The next great transformation of America's cultural life, ed. Steven Tepper and Bill Ivey, 363-385. New York: Routledge.
81.
Thompson, John B.2005. Books in the digital age: The transformation of academic and higher education publishing in Britain and the United States. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
82.
Tuchman, Gaye.1978. Making news: A study in the construction of reality. New York: Free Press.
