The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology

A collection of essays on various topics from the perspective of cultural sociology, based on the premise that culture retains autonomy from the social structures to which they refer and illuminate. These essays from an international cast of the best and brightest cultural sociologists cover topics in theory and method; power, politics, and states; economics and organization; mass media; social movements; religion; aesthetics; knowledge; and health. Organized by empirical areas of study rather than particular theories or competing intellectual strands, the editors demonstrate that cultural sociology is not so much as a specialized subfield of sociology but, rather, an intellectual approach that can be generalized across all the core fields of the discipline.