Poetics最新文献

This content analytical study (N = four series, 59 characters, and 2411 scenes) investigates how success stories are portrayed in work-related television series (i.e., television series centered on the working environment) that are available in several countries, namely Suits, Grey's Anatomy, The Bold Type, and The Good Doctor. Based on the ideas of cultivation theory, this study explores how such television series define (professional) success and whether the accomplishments portrayed in them adhere to the malleability narrative (i.e., a narrative in which success is portrayed as achievable by everyone provided they work hard for it). By analyzing the main and secondary characters, this study explores which character traits are associated with (professional) success and examines the presence of references to personal accountability and perseverance.

The article has a double purpose. On the one hand, it contributes to theories of cultural legitimacy and classification. Based on data about consumers’ music evaluations, it shows that taste hierarchies are configured as nested and relational classificatory systems. Nested, because rank systems of symbolic value are collectively recognized, reproduced, and negotiated by consumers not only at the level of genres, but also at lower, nested levels – e.g., sub-genre, artist, single artwork; relational, because the value attributed to music by consumers is ordinarily assessed and constructed through analogies and comparisons, and partly depends on the classifier's relative position in the social space. On the other hand, this paper makes a key methodological contribution: by analyzing large amounts of YouTube data through computational methods and in combination with survey data, it illustrates how the granularity of digital traces can advance sociological research on cultural categories, meaning structures and symbolic imaginaries.

I find that jazz gained a toehold in U.S. concert halls, music awards, festivals, and schools in the 1930s, 60s, 70s or 80s. I reconcile this with extant research, which identifies the 1940s and 50s as the crucial moment for jazz, by linking the processes that transpired in the sites I examine to those past research has focused on. During the 1940s and the 50s, facing resistance in the mainstream institutions I highlight, advocates of jazz built alternative institutions that duplicated or worked around the mainstream; some of these then helped jazz enlarge its mainstream foothold. Based on these findings, I extend the conceptualization of consecration as ongoing permanent revolution: in already settled fields, the consecration of new, racially stigmatized art forms may follow from uneven and combined development across multiple institutional sites, constituting a string of loosely-related events of varying intensity. A reassessment of the highbrow-lowbrow scheme follows.

Science fiction has become very popular across all mediatic forms (e.g., in short stories, in novels, in movies, in TV series). The cultural success of this genre is both geographically widespread and rather recent in history. Although such observations seem consensual, many problems remain and are debated in science fiction study, notably (1) the defining characteristics of the genre, (2) the reasons for its late emergence, and (3) the interindividual variability of its appeal. Previous attempts to solve such puzzles focused on proximate How-questions (e.g., How did the genre emerge?). The article presents a contribution from cognitive and evolutionary sciences, which make it possible to ask Why-questions (e.g., Why did the genre emerge?). We hypothesize that science fiction, with its emphasis on new and innovative features (e.g., new civilizations, innovative technologies, futuristic worlds), appeals to the human desire for new abstract information. We review research in neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, and behavioral ecology, showing that some specialized biological mechanisms in human cognition prompt exploratory preferences for such information. We show that this hypothesis can explain (1) why science fiction works are perceived as homogenous and different from works of fiction of other genres, (2) why science fiction emerged and became culturally successful rather late in literary history, and (3) why the preference for science fiction varies across time, across space, and across individuals. We provide empirical testable predictions that should be tested in the future to confirm this hypothesis.

Music and politics have been interconnected for centuries, and it is difficult to explain a political event without mentioning the subsequent music creation and vice versa; examples include anti-war music during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, a shift to country music with patriotic undertones after 9/11, and so on (Kay, 2017). Preliminary research suggests that there could be a connection between political ideologies and liking genres of music, but it is relatively outdated (Fox and Williams 1974). There is research surrounding how political polarization contributes to opposing attitudes and preferences, and how music has different origins and patterns, but there is no concrete knowledge of a direct relationship between political polarization and musical genres that have stark sonic differences. Using an original survey, this project seeks to identify the relationship between partisanship and music preferences and what effect, if any, said relationship has on political attitudes.

Despite a wealth of research about unequal transitions to adulthood in the U.S., we know less about how classed daily life (or “habitus”) carries with individuals as they age and experience socioeconomic mobility. Taking weekly time spent watching television as a form of class habitus, this research traces the trajectories of television time from adolescence to adulthood using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (N = 4,884). Using latent class growth analysis, I find four trajectories of TV time: Falling Watchers (8 %), Rising Watchers (2 %), Rise and Fall Watchers (3 %), and Steady Watchers (86 %). Findings both support and complicate previous understandings of habitus over time. Adolescent socioeconomic measures and socioeconomic mobility were associated with TV trajectory. While the majority of individuals maintained TV time across the life course, TV time habits could also change as individuals aged and these changes were more likely among those who have lower-class experiences.

Encounters with literary texts can lead to deeply cherished memories, some of which readers may ascribe powerful and enduring functions to in terms of acquired life insights, behavioral changes, consolation, and well-being. The present article charts how texts relate to readers’ experiences and how these text-experiences are related to how they are remembered. In the context of a Shared Reading group for people living with cancer, a multiple-case study was conducted, tracing examples of enduring impressions and how these are perceived as transformative and valuable resources for the participants in coping with their disease. Qualitative and quantitative data from four readers were collected at different points in time and were analyzed through the grounded theory method and a temporality framework. The results clarify how, in the long run, literature, and in particular Shared Reading, can affect personal growth and resilience.

Researchers have advanced two opposing accounts of the relationship between status and cultural innovation. We aim to reconcile these views – and their conflicting findings that either high- or low-status cultural producers are more likely to innovate – by adopting a dynamic view of status. We argue that changes in status – at the individual and the field level – affect the relationship between status and innovation. Focusing on the national American television industry over the period 1956–2010, we found that increases and decreases in producers’ status moderated the effect of their current status on the innovativeness of their shows. We also found that the degree of instability in the overall status hierarchy of producers conditioned the impact of status on show innovativeness. When the status hierarchy was relatively stable, high-status producers tended to create more innovative shows than low-status producers. Greater levels of instability, however, decreased the show innovativeness of high-status producers but increased that of low-status producers. By exposing the pressures and opportunities that cultural producers experience as a result of changes in both their status and the status hierarchy, we reveal that the relationship between status and innovation is more nuanced than prior studies suggested.

We study the symbolic value of places using the case of global tourism where places are explicitly objectified for valorization. Unlike most prior research that uses tangible measurements like UNESCO's World Heritage Sites for global comparison of place-based symbolic values, we harness the power of computational text analysis to measure the symbolic value of places based on travel writings of the New York Times Travel Section. Our results demonstrate that there is a symbolic hierarchy among places depending on the various meanings of culture and nature and the degree of engagement with either topic. NYT travel writers valorize European regions for cultural tourism according to the broadest meanings of culture, and often engage with the region's history as a main topic of the travel article. However, other regions – particularly the ones with legacies of past colonization – are valorized for their nature's scenic beauty while obscuring the significance of their “cultural” values. Even when a place's “cultural” values are recognized, the meanings of culture tend to be limited in non-European regions. Our findings have implications for the enduring symbolic inequality of places at the global level.