My thesis explores the extent to which people's nationality informs their engagement with popular culture and strategies of social distinction (Bourdieu 1984). I address this question by studying the emergence of popular music criticism as a new cultural sector in Italy, and more specifically the practices of critics working during the 1970s. Drawing on Bourdieu's field theory (1996), and combining archival research, social history and discourse analysis, the thesis explores the different dimensions of criticism as a social practice. On the one hand, it analyses the social biography of critics and the boundaries of music criticism as a cultural field; especially as regards class, gender and place. On the other hand, it studies the way critics evaluated different forms of Anglo-American popular music – such as rock, jazz and soul – and how their aesthetic claims and distinctions were received by their audience. The thesis argues that the social trajectory of critics shaped the way they distinguished themselves from national culture and, as a result, their cosmopolitan critique of Italian cultural and political institutions. Furthermore, the thesis argues that the social diversity of critics' audience, and their active contestation of critics' claims, made the music press a space for reflexivity about the inequalities shaping both the field and Italian youth culture. From a theoretical point of view, the thesis expands Bourdieu's field theory taking into account: a) the effects of global forces on the construction of national cultural fields; b) the impact of aesthetic experiences on the habitus (Bourdieu 1984) and practices of cultural producers; c) the forms of reflexivity and critique enabled by specific fields of practice. The thesis provides an original contribution to the study of media, music cultures, taste and cultural production.

This thesis is about women rock musicians in the U.K. It is based on in-depth interviews with 36 female rock musicians in the 1980s. Firstly, it examines the relative absence of women in rock music-making and explains this in terms of gender socialisation and a number of social constraints operating on women. Secondly, it looks at those women who, despite all the obstacles, do become rock musicians. A number of variables are put forward which, it is suggested, have helped these women overcome gender constraints. These factors are conceptualised as "escape routes" into rock music-making. Thirdly, all-women bands are examined, and the individual careers of the women who constitute them. An ideal-type model is constructed of the stages of a female band's career. It is concluded that, compared to male bands, there are a whole set of factors which make it more difficult for women's bands to be set up and continue along the career path. These factors have the strongest effect in the early career stages. Lastly, some non-typical career patterns are investigated, and particularly the strategies developed by feminist musicians as alternatives to the mainstream commercial path.

A World of Their Own? The Novel and the Total Institution is an exploration of the sociological concept of the Total Institution with particular reference to its relationship with English literature, followed by the presentation of Chasing Elena, an original novel. The term ‘Total Institution’, attributed to Erving Goffman (1961) encapsulates an environment in which a large number of individuals participate in an enclosed and formally administered way of life. Chapter 1 of the critical text defines the Total Institution and sets the scene for Chapter 2, which examines selected literary texts that feature life in all-encompassing institutions and considers Goffman’s ‘moral career of the inmate’ in terms of the experiences of the fictional characters. Chapter 3 is a literature review reflecting upon Goffman’s work. It expands the model and metaphor of the Total Institution and includes my original interpretation of the concept called here the ‘New Total Institution’. Chapter 4 offers a close reading of contemporary literary texts in which this new interpretation is examined for strength and sustainability when applied to a belief system, a social structure and an isolated physical environment respectively. Chapter 5 considers the relevance of the (New) Total Institution, initially, in terms of the family. It then highlights specific groups of people who live in constrained and constraining circumstances: those affected by domestic abuse, and displaced persons such as refugees. Chapter 6 turns to the relationship between the (New) Total Institution and the novel, looking at the choices and experiences of the writer and the reader. It goes on to describe the ways in which the (New) Total Institution has informed the writing of Chasing Elena. Finally, this novel is presented in its entirety.

The main purpose of the thesis is to analyze the phenomenon of conflicts between urbanism and ruralism, which reveals the development of early Chinese society and social collective consciousness, thereby comprehending the social meanings of Congwen Shen¡¦s novels; to explore the connection of themes of conflicts between urbanism and ruralism, tradition of the May Fourth realistic literature, and the early local realistic literature, and to interpret the literary meanings of Shen¡¦s novels. Besides the introduction and conclusion, the text is divided into three parts: Chapter Two is the ordination of sociologists¡¦ research on the transition of Chinese society from Ching dynasty to 1949, to serve as the frame of reference of Shen¡¦s novels for later-on discussion. Chapter Three is to apply Lucien Goldmann¡¦s literary critique to analyzing the binary opposite structure in Shen¡¦s novels and homologies of Chinese economy, politics, cultural transition, and collective consciousness. Chapter Four is to analyze the theme of urban and rural conflicts in Shen¡¦s novels, which may inherit from the tradition of realistic literature, to compare similarity and dissimilarity of the important local realistic literature in 1920s or 1930s, and to explore how the author and the social collective keep objectivism and subjectivism in balance, thereby evaluating the status of Shen¡¦s novels in early Chinese literature.

The relation between sociology and literature opens up a broad field for discussion because of their closeness. The diploma thesis pursues a rather uncommon approach to literature that searches for manifestations of sociological thought in literature in order to use them within contexts of thematically similar sociological theories. A considerable attention is paid to definition of this approach, especially in relation to standard methods of sociology of literature, and to subsequent formulation of its methodological starting-points. Sociological reading as introduced in the text interprets a literary work in the perspective of selected sociological theories to which the interpretation is reversely related in the following step. In the thesis the novel White Noise by Don DeLillo, a classical work of American postmodern fiction, is taken as an object of such interpretation. The theme of effects of the mass media in contemporary society marked out widely in the beginning is specified by selected theories of Jean Baudrillard and Niklas Luhmann. In the case of Baudrillard's theory of hyperreality and simulation, changes in relation between reality and representation, respectively disappearance of their traditional opposition, are concerned. Luhmann's social systems theory is used to explore the...

Le champ littéraire belge francophone du second après-guerre n'a jamais fait l'objet d'une étude approfondie et exhaustive. Après avoir rappelé les conditions littéraires et culturelles de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, nous étudions l'épuration du champ littéraire, à savoir la réorganisation de celui-ci, par des instances qui lui sont extérieures. Nous analysons ensuite les rapports entre les écrivains et les institutions publiques et littéraires, avant de nous atteler à la description du champ littéraire de l'après-guerre. Nous tentons d'y décrire la position et les prises de positions des différents agents en présence. Se déploie alors en filigrane l'image d'une institution littéraire faible, incapable de faire émerger un nombre conséquent des auteurs de l'époque.

<p>This dissertation takes the paradoxical role of Colette in the canon of French and women's writing, from her earliest works to present, as an entry into a radically new interpretation of her life and literary oeuvre. This work is distinguished from previous works on Colette both in its approach and in the scope of its research, relying on extensive archival research revealing unpublished and unstudied aspects of Colette's biography and reception, and using a variety of modes of analysis to interpret this research. </p><p>This dissertation shows, in its first two chapters, how the myth of Colette as the incarnation of a particularly French brand of femininity, a spontaneous, natural writer, in no way literarily self-conscious, neither contributing to nor influenced by literary innovations, whose writing expresses her instinctive femininity, was constituted, from the earliest reviews of Colette's first novel, Claudine à l'école (1900), through feminist interpretations of Colette from the 1970s to present. Because Colette was understood to be a feminine writer of women by both misogynist conservatives of 1900 and radical feminists of the 1970's, their understanding of this writer remained remarkably homogenous and durable. The third chapter relies on contemporary celebrity theory in order to investigate Colette's own agency in the creation and policing of this durable public image, tracing both ways that Colette maintained her image, and ways that she profited from it, focusing in particular on her eponymous literary collection, the Collection Colette, and her "produits de beauté" cosmetics line and a beauty salon. This understanding of Colette's agential role in her public image inspires a new reading of the 1910 novel La Vagabonde and the relationship Colette depicts between the protagonist, Renée Néré's stage persona and her life when she is not in front of an audience.</p><p>The next two chapters suggest new ways of approaching Colette, beyond the durable myth of the spontaneous feminine writer that she worked so hard to maintain: as a consummate professional and as a literary innovator. The fourth chapter focuses on Colette's professionalism: using a Bourdieusian-inspired analysis of Colette's correspondence to uncover her role in the literary field, tracing the full extent of her social, artistic, and professional networks with other writers, journalists, and artists. This chapter then explores concrete examples of her manipulation of these networks, studying in particular her collaboration with Maurice Ravel in L'Enfant et les sortilèges and her management of the literary department at the newspaper Le Matin. The final chapter of this dissertation reads Colette in terms of discourses of modernism, from which she has long been excluded due to her imagined marginality to the literary field, focusing in particular on French conceptions of the harmonious reconciliation of classicism and literary innovation which reached their height in the 1920's, and which I have termed the "classique moderne." This dissertation makes a contribution to trends in French literature, literary history, the sociology of literature, women's studies, women's history, feminist literary criticism, and celebrity theory.</p> / Dissertation

The aim of this thesis is to provide an insight into the translation of non-literary texts in social sciences from French into Czech, in terms of both cultural and social specificities, and in terms of language use. This paper defends the hypothesis that this type of translation presents unique characteristics compared to other kinds of translations, and that social science translations are currently under published. Sociology was chosen as a discipline representative of the social sciences. The first part presents an outline of the historical development of Czech sociology with regard to French influence. Underlying data was used to conduct a survey among the Czech professional sociological community to evaluate aspects of its linguistic orientation. The first part of this thesis also provides a brief overview of the production and reception of Czech translations of French sociology, with the ultimate aim to compare the "supply" of these translations to the "demand" for them and to highlight several of their specific problems and obstacles. The second part is devoted to an analysis of the first Czech translation from the works of the renowned French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu: Raisons pratiques : sur la théorie de l'action (1994), (Teorie jednání (1998)). The results of the analysis are...

The object of this master´s thesis is to investigate how the Swedish person literary society movement acts. The Swedish history contains the well-known popular movements with their 19:th century roots. Today, some of them have turned into factors of power. Does the literary society movement have the chance to take over as such en established popular movement? What is their entire aim? My hypothesis is that the person literary societies bring the literature forward through collective memory making. As a theoretical background, I studied research upon literary tourism and collective memory. Heroic worship and person adoration often have been considered naive from a scientific point of view. For my field survey, I interviewed members of societies associated with Ester Ringnér-Lundgren, Carl Johan Love Almqvist, Carl Michael Bellman, Birger Sjöberg and Per Anders Fogelström. I found out that the person literary society movement might be a factor of power in creating discourses from different aspects of their respective authors. The Bellman society aspires to change people´s opinions upon Bellman, while the other ones principally want to make their authors visible. The person literary societies exist in an intermediate position between the academic comparative literature and the biographical. Their other main tasks are publishing, socializing and being responsible for places related to their authors. Foucault´s notion heterotopia (a place between reality and utopia) is applicable to the experience of participating in a person literary society meeting, according to my investigation. The person literary societies also create and maintain les Lieux de Mémoire. According to Nora, this notion signifies turning points where history meets memory. From one of my informants, I perceived a tension between the traditional popular movement society and the computer age. The relationship towards social media and internet differs among the person literary societies in my study. A possible explanation might be the average age of thier members. The society of the youth novelist Ringnér-Lundgren measures an average age of 50, while the other ones mostly consist of people reaching their retirement age. The Fogelström society stands out in attracting immigrants and in working towards the public. Taking part in the Book and Library Fair is the most common collaboration between the societies and the ALM sector. This is a two years master´s thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.

Multiple researchers argue that many authors of children’s books are influenced by the prevailing view of the child and childhood, in both subject selection and ways of writing. The aim of the study is to investigate how societies norms and values are reflected in picture books, written between 2010-2018. What kind of childhood is portrayed in the chosen literature? How does the illustrations and text interact to reflect the children’s characters and perspective? After an extensive selection process with several criteria, five picture books were finally chosen for analysis. With tools from researches Nikolajeva and Rhedin I’ll be focusing on illustrations, personality and environmental descriptions, as well as narration and point of view. The conclusion shows indications that the child's vision, which is portrayed in the picture books, goes hand in hand with the image of the child as subject and actor, a researching child actively in their own development. It is also possible to see traces of the multi-contextual view of children and the image of the child that is emphasized in the preschool curriculum. Another clear pattern is that the picture books reflect family constellations, gender, culture, diversity and ethnicity in a way that largely extends beyond underlying prejudices and stereotypes. / Ett flertal forskare hävdar att många barnboksförfattare påverkas av den rådande barnsynen samt barndom i både ämnesval och sätt att skriva. Syftet med studien är att undersöka hur samhällets normer och värderingar återspeglas i bildböcker, skrivna mellan 2010-2018. Vilken syn på barn gestaltas i den valda litteraturen och hur kommer den till uttryck? Hur interagerar illustrationerna och texten för att spegla barnens karaktärer och perspektiv? Efter en omfattande urvalsprocess med ett flertal kriterier valdes slutligen fem bildböcker för analys. Med verktyg från forskarna Nikolajeva och Rhedin kommer jag att fokusera på illustrationer, person- och miljöskildring samt berättarröst och synvinkel. Slutsatsen visar indikationer på att den barnsyn som speglas i bilderböckerna överensstämmer med bilden av barnet som subjekt och aktör, ett forskande barn aktivt i sin egen utveckling. Det är också möjligt att se spår av den mångkontextuella barnsyn samt den bild av barnet som framhävs i förskolans läroplan. Ett annat tydligt mönster är att bildböckerna speglar familjekonstellationer, kön, kultur, mångfald och etnicitet på ett sätt som i stor utsträckning sträcker sig bortom underliggande fördomar och stereotyper. Anknytningen mellan dagens samhälle och modernare bilderböcker är väl förankrad, och tydliga avtryck från samtiden syns i samtliga analyserade bilderböcker.