Note-taking for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg The final reading for Learning of Culture is Despite the Best Intentions: How Racial Inequality Thrives in Good Schools by Amanda Lewis and John Diamond.
Tag Archives: Lisa Stulberg
High school masculinity
Note-taking for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg This week’s reading was C. J. Pascoe’s riveting study, Dude, You’re a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School. If you’re at all interested in gender, or the culture of schools, it’s a must-read.
Foucault – History of Sexuality: An Introduction, Volume One
Note-taking for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg This was a tougher read than Discipline and Punish. To get our morale up, let’s enjoy some Salt-N-Pepa first. Also, we should let Kanye West set up the other big theme of the book:
Foucault – Discipline and Punish
Note-taking for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg This week’s reading is Discipline and Punish, by noted ray of sunshine Michel Foucault. The book begins with a memorably graphic torture scene that pretty well sets the tone for what follows. This video gave me some helpful biographical context.
Music in a capitalist culture
Midterm paper for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg Max Weber locates the roots of capitalism in vestigial puritanical Protestantism. Émile Durkheim, in turn, gives a theory of how that Protestantism arose in the first place. In this paper, I ask two questions. First: can Weber’s and Durkheim’s theories of religion be extended to explain culture …
Marx and Althusser
Note-taking for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg Unlike most social theorists of his era and since, Marx can actually write. His prose has a rhythm and urgency that feels more like a sermon than a scholarly text. Of course, he has the advantage that he’s writing a manifesto, so he isn’t bogged down by nuance, …
Bourdieu and Swidler – Structures and the Habitus
Note-taking for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg This week’s reading was the second chapter of Pierre Bourdieu‘s Outline Of A Theory Of Practice, on Structures and the Habitus. Bourdieu writes the worst, most opaque prose of any social theorist. The second paragraph of this chapter includes the phrase “structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures.” Later: “the habitus, which at every …
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Freud – Civilization And Its Discontents
Note-taking for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg We have read some dense canonical European White Guys. None of them have been as difficult and off-putting as Freud. I would have rather read Civilization And Its Discotheques. Freud begins with the observation that for most of human history, our happiness has been tied to our …
Émile Durkheim – Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
Note-taking for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg This week, we read another cornerstone of the sociology canon: Émile Durkheim on where religion comes from. The book is very much a product of its time, with continual and annoying references to “primitive” religions and peoples. No question that Durkheim’s methodology doesn’t pass contemporary muster. But his theoretical insights are …
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The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Note-taking for Learning of Culture with Lisa Stulberg Our first reading in the class was Ta-Nehisi Coates. The second one is Max Weber. The transition between their prose styles is like gliding downhill on a bike into a brick wall. Nick Seaver calls it “the 1-2 relatable-canonical punch.” David Foster Wallace likes to tell this parable: There are these …
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