Saint-Louis University - Bruxelles
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SOCA1210 - Sociology of culture


USL-B


Credits : 5

Lecturer :
Teaching assistant :
Mode of delivery :
Face-to-face , first term, 30 hours of theory.

Timetable :
First term
Wednesday from 08:30 to 10:30 at 119 Marais 1200

Language of instruction :
French (with the possibility of texts in English).

Learning outcomes :

This EU focuses on a particular field of sociology and assumes having already taken at least one introductory general course in this discipline.

The objectives of the course are:

- Understand the definitional issues around the notion of culture.
- Acquire the conceptual tools to analyze the concrete functioning of cultural fields, as well as the norms that make sense in the worlds of art and culture (eg the so-called legitimate culture and its challenges, cultural policy references, etc.).
- Overview of the challenges of cultural policies of modern states.
- Presentation of classical approaches and current trends in sociology of culture.
- Transversal reflection, of an epistemological / methodological nature: not only how to study sociologically "culture", but also what "culture" is capable of teaching us about the state of a society (from the angle production and / or reception of cultural goods).
- Demonstrate the ability to appropriate elements of the theoretical course as part of an individual written work (research paper) designed in an exploratory perspective (see below).



Prerequisites :
None

Co-requisites :
For the Bachelor in Information and Communication :

For the Bachelor in Political Sciences: General :

For the Bachelor in Sociology and Anthropology :


Course contents :

Some highlights:

- Culture, a term that is not only polysemic, but also polemical: symbolic struggles around the definition of culture (eg notions of legitimate culture, popular or vernacular culture, commercial culture, cultural eclecticism or omnivority, cultural identity, cultural marketing, etc.).
- The sociological definition of culture and the anthropological definition of culture.
- Debates relating to the understanding of different cultures or life forms (culturalism and its avatars, between relativism and deconstruction of cultural identities, the question of interpretation in a pragmatic perspective, controversies around the interpretative turn see C. Geertz, M. Sahlins, D. Cefai, F. Barth, F. Boas ...).
- The emergence and institutionalization of an autonomized cultural field in the context of modern societies: historical and sociological perspective (see the cultural / civilization antithesis according to N. Elias, the "cultural bifurcation" in the American context according to L Levine, the rules and logics of the cultural field according to P. Bourdieu, N. Heinich, H. Becker, etc.).
- The major approaches in sociology of culture, according to two axes (creation / production vs. reception / consumption, primacy of the artwork vs. primacy of the context). Main contributions presented in this course: sociology of artists and cultural producers (the figure of the classical artist, the cultural industries, the "creatives" and the economy of creation, etc.), sociology of tastes and cultural practices (Bourdieu's distinction and his re-readings), Adorno and the double impulse of a criticism of mass culture and a refuge in aesthetics, interactionist and pragmatic approaches (Becker and the worlds of art, A Hennion and the sociology of amateurs, etc.), Cultural Studies, etc.
- A guiding thread: uses of culture and metamorphoses of distinction in the era of assertiveness, digital technologies and cultural marketing.



Planned learning activities and teaching methods :

The EU consists of a 30-hour theoretical course and a complementary exercise consisting of individual research paper.

As part of the theoretical course, the teacher exposes the subject in a way that is pedagogically effective and attractive. Students are invited to ask questions and to debate, the size of the audience allowing an interactive pedagogy. Some parts of the course may be suitable for a reverse class device.

In addition to the study of the lecture, the student has to write during the quadrimester an individual written work (research paper). This work must enable the student to demonstrate his / her ability to use in a precise, rigorous, relevant, justified and articulated way, conceptual resources and elements of problematization that have been presented as part of the theoretical course. In order to help him / her to carry out this work, the student will benefit from a supervision provided by an assistant.e (two presentation sessions + hours of permanence [note that the interview with the assistant .e will be based on a note of intention transmitted previously]). In addition, the student will be required to submit his or her departure question to the assistant via Moodle (taking into account the periods specified in the "instructions" document, available online at the beginning of the quadrimester).

The research paper must relate to an object having close and explicit links with the subject taught in the course of the theoretical course (see in particular the thread around the differentiated uses of culture and the metamorphosis of the distinction, or even the symbolic struggles around definition of culture). The initial question must be well targeted / dimensioned and methodologically controllable in the context of an exercise of this type (input mode or well-defined analyzer, avoid speculative or abstract reflections, privilege an analytical and non-normative register, articulation between theory and empiricism ...). The work, written in an exploratory perspective, must include the following steps (see the DMSS course):

- starting questioning.
- A brief review of the scientific literature (1 to 2 pages).
- A problematization leading to a draft analysis model (with formulation of at least one working hypothesis, empirically testable) (3 to 5 pages).
- Analytical exercise related to an empirical material (an interview, a life story, an observation, a cultural work taken as analyzer ...) (3 to 5 pages).
- Provisional conclusions (and possible leads).
- Bibliography.

The work must be written in accordance with the scientific writing conventions (see vade mecum), and may not exceed 30,000 characters (from 9 to 12 pages, line spacing 1.5).
The research paper must be submitted before the exam session to which the student belongs.
It should be addressed to the assistant in accordance with the terms and dead-line indicated in the document "instructions" (online).

The theoretical course should be given face-to-face, unless sanitary conditions do not allow it. In this case, we would switch to a remote mode (according to modalities to be specified).
The presentation and supervision of the research paper will be done in remote mode (via Teams).




Assessment methods and criteria :

The EU evaluation has two components whose weight in the overall score is as follows:

- evaluation of knowledge of the theoretical course during an oral examination (10/20);
- evaluation of individual written work (10/20).

It should be noted that the evaluation of the research paper is done in two stages: firstly, the assistant corrects the written work and assigns it an interim mark; in a second time, the teacher can return to this work during the oral examination and adjust the intermediate grade. This dual evaluation procedure justifies, on the one hand, that the two components subject to evaluation are not distinct (the two activities being complementary and partly linked), and on the other hand that the timely delivery of the written work is a condition to present the oral examination.

Formally, the subject of the theoretical course is evaluated only during the oral examination, but the oral examination is not only used to evaluate the material seen in the theoretical course, since it allows to return to the individual written work, in particular by considering the links between work and the course.

In the case where the student does not present the examination when he has submitted his written work in time, the provisional note relating to the latter is kept for subsequent sessions during the same academic year.

The delivery of the research paper on time is a condition that must be met in order to be able to take the exam.
In the event that the student does not submit his work at the end of the semester during which the course is given, he (or she) is required (e) to deliver it at a later session in accordance with same instructions. It should be noted that a student who does his work outside the semester during which the EU is scheduled will not benefit from supervision by the assistant (no permanence, etc.).

Clarification referring to the context of a “health crisis” (covid-19): at the time of writing this descriptive sheet, we can announce that the objective is to organize an oral exam which will take place face-to-face; if the sanitary conditions do not allow it, the examination will remain oral but will switch to remote mode.



Recommended or required reading :

- Howard Becker, Les mondes de l'art, Paris, Flammarion, coll. Champs, 2006 (traduit de l'américain; éd. orig. : 1982).
- Pierre Bourdieu, La distinction. Critique sociale du jugement, Paris, Minuit, 1979.
- Pierre Bourdieu, Les règles de l'art. Genèse et structure du champ littéraire, Paris, Seuil, 1992.
- Philippe Coulangeon, Sociologie des pratiques culturelles, Paris, La Découverte, coll. Repères, 2005.
- Philippe Coulangeon, Les métamorphoses de la distinction. Inégalités culturelles dans la France d'aujourd'hui, Paris, Grasset, 2011.
- Ph. Coulangeon et J. Duval (dir.), Trente ans après La Distinction, Paris, La Découverte, 2013.
- Denys Cuche, La notion de culture dans les sciences sociales, Paris, La Découverte, coll. Repères, 2010 (4ème éd.).
- Christine Détrez, Sociologie de la culture, Paris, Armand Colin, 2014.
- Olivier Donnat et Paul Tolila (dir.), Le(s) public(s) de la culture, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po, 2003.
- Nathalie Heinich, L'élite artiste. Excellence et singularité en régime démocratique, Paris, Gallimard, 2005.
- Antoine Hennion, La passion musicale. Une sociologie de la médiation, Paris, Métailié, 1993.
- Bernard Lahire, La culture des individus. Dissonances culturelles et distinction de soi, Paris, La Découverte, 2004.
- Lawrence W. Levine, Culture d'en haut, culture d'en bas. L'émergence des hiérarchies culturelles aux Etats-Unis, Paris, La Découverte, 2010 (traduit de l'américain; éd. orig. : 1988).
- Armand Mattelart, Erik Neveu, Introduction aux Cultural Studies, Paris, La Découverte, coll. Repères, 2003.
- Pierre-Michel Menger, Portrait de l'artiste en travailleur, Paris, Seuil, 2002.