SOS 328 - Sociology of Culture

The aim of this course is to examine how culture is produced, circulated, and acquires meaning within social relations as a social phenomenon through sociological theories. The course seeks to provide students with a theoretical framework ranging from classical sociological approaches to contemporary theories of culture, enabling them to critically evaluate key themes such as culture, power, class, representation, everyday life, and performance. The course also aims to help students understand cultural practices not merely as reflective phenomena, but as processes that actively constitute social reality.

This course systematically examines the fundamental concepts and theories of the sociology of culture. In the first part of the course, the emergence of the concept of culture in sociology and the approaches of classical thinkers (Marx, Weber, and Simmel) to culture are explored. The second part focuses on the relationship between culture and power through discussions of ideology, hegemony, and the culture industry. In the following weeks, themes such as representation, class and taste, everyday interaction, social performance, and everyday life practices are examined within the theoretical frameworks of contemporary scholars such as Hall, Bourdieu, Goffman, and Alexander. In the final part of the course, the transformation of cultural processes in the context of globalization, media, and digital culture is discussed.