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"Offering a concise answer to the question "What is Cultural Sociology?," this book provides an overview of what you need to know to do cultural sociology. Spillman demonstrates many of the conceptual tools cultural sociologists use to help understand how people make meaning, with vivid examples from this rich and ubiquitous feature of our lives"--

Sociology began as a historical discipline, created by Marx, Weber and others, to explain the emergence and consequences of rational, capitalist society. Today, the best historical sociology combines precision in theory-construction with the careful selection of appropriate methodologies to address ongoing debates across a range of subfields.

Social movements play a central role in the scope and direction of social change. They were instrumental in the creation of the modern state and, today, are major forces in politics and culture. Environmentalism, gay rights, alterglobalization, and Islamic fundamentalism are all movements with far-reaching impacts on contemporary society. What is a Social Movement? traces how the study of movements such as these - of their structures, their ideas, and their repertoires of protest - have grown in recent years to become a major focus in the social sciences. It deftly navigates the organizational, ideational, and cultural complexity of political and social movements, and offers a succinct but comprehensive overview of the hows, whys, and wheretofores of studying them. The book analyzes how politics and culture frequently intersect as people participate in movements that call for change and pursue group interests. By focusing on movement organizations and networks, on what they do, and how they articulate their ideas of justice and collective interests, What is a Social Movement? lays the essential groundwork for understanding this significant and exciting field of research, where it came from, and where it is headed.