Special topics in media and cultural studies: Capital and Culture
SOCI2098
CPD-1.21
10:30-12:20
Tuesday
1st semester
Lecture venue
Lecture time
Offer semester
Did you know that you will benefit in the economy if you know a great deal about the challenges of cultivating pinot noir? You will benefit even more from understanding why this matters. Sociology is, as Pierre Bourdieu once said, a “martial art” that gives you the tools to fight for yourself in an unequal capitalist world.
We will also talk about markets and how they shape people like you. Do they shape the way you think and act? Is it possible or perhaps even likely that you would have a different personality if you participated in a different market? What are alternative markets like? Can we learn from them? In what ways is our capitalist market culture changing? Will the future workplace be a neoliberal nightmare in which you’re an independent contractor directed and controlled by algorithms, or will we instead see a post-work world in which the boring stuff is automated and we can focus on creative and social activities that enrich our private and communal lives? These and other questions will be addressed in this math-free course on economic and cultural forces.
I will minimize my own talking time in our classes, as research shows you are more likely to learn from engaging with each other and the course material, through exercises and discussions. You are expected to be fully prepared for each class, and will be tested on the material. You might, at any time, be asked to provide summary and analysis of readings during lectures.
Students will learn to see how various forms of capital -- not just economic -- reproduce inequality, discuss how market forces affect creative work, how we think, and what we feel.
Task
Weighting
Class participation
15%
In-class quizzes
40%
Annotation assignments (on Perusall)
15%
Essay
30%
Bourdieu, P. (2018). The forms of capital. In The sociology of economic life (pp. 78-92). Routledge.
Coates, T. (2014). Acting French. The Atlantic.
Kay Hoang, K. (2011). “She’s not a low-class dirty girl!”: Sex work in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 40(4), 367-396.
Gladwell, M. (1999). Six degrees of lois weisberg. The New Yorker.
Kolbert, E. (2004). Why Work? The New Yorker.
Guillén, M. F. (2001). Is globalization civilizing, destructive or feeble? A critique of five key debates in the social science literature. Annual Review of Sociology, 27(1), 235-260.
Fourcade, M., & Healy, K. (2007). Moral views of market society. Annu. Rev. Sociol., 33(1), 285-311.
Fourcade, M., & Healy, K. (2017). Seeing like a market. Socio-economic review, 15(1), 9-29.
Fourcade, M., & Healy, K. (2024). The ordinal society. Harvard University Press. Selections.
Berman, E. P., & Hirschman, D. (2018). The sociology of quantification: Where are we now? Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews.
Ladegaard, I., Ravenelle, A. J., & Schor, J. (2022). ‘God is protecting me… and I have mace’: Defensive labour in precarious workplaces. The British Journal of Criminology, 62(3), 773-789.
Jeffries, S. (2017). Grand hotel abyss: The lives of the Frankfurt School. Verso Books. Selections.
Ladegaard, I. (2025). Open Secrecy: How Information Technology Empowers Shadowy Groups. University of California Press. Selections.
All key readings and recommended materials will be uploaded on Perusall.
