ASOK15102U Advanced Culture, Lifestyle and Everyday Life

This is the compulsory course for the MA specialization in Culture, Lifestyle and Everyday Life. In this course we critically review a range key theoretical perspectives and empirical studies, each contributing to a sociological understanding of sociocultural problems within contemporary urbanized society. The course relates to but also seeks to move beyond existing understandings of what sociocultural phenomena are and how they can be empirically studied within a cultural sociology framework. 

First, we introduce the students to a problem based approach to cultural sociology: While the cultural aspects of everyday life and lifestyles have a “bright side” of enjoyable sociality, the course will focus on “dark side” of sociocultural life, especially in the context of the contemporary city. Urban problems arises, for example, in relation to contested uses of space, subcultural and delinquent lifestyles, street violence and cultures, and various criminal activities. This is moreover the case when lifestyles are related to transgressive risk behaviors, when cultures neutralize their deviance and thus provokes mainstream societies norms, or when one finds pleasures in others pains and loss. In the course we will examine these and related dark side of everyday urban life.  Within this part of the course we will present five explanatory principles of (micro) sociology: 1) Person-situation interaction. Social life is enacted in an interplay of situational and personality specific forces.  2) Situations and solidarity. Dense interaction generates emotions of solidarity and conformity. In this lecture, we look into the theory and evidence supporting the former aspect.  3) Situations and conformity. Dense interaction generates emotions of solidarity and conformity. In this lecture, we look into the theory and evidence supporting the latter aspect. 4) Personality and self-control inface-to-face interaction. Social life is shaped in the interaction of persons and situations. In this lecture we highlight self-control as a key personality aspect of social live. 5) Social background and lifestyle. Within this explanatory principle we will focus on how social background and lifestyle shapes entrance to social life and especially deviance. 

Second, in the course we will examine the interface and interplay between the cultural and pre-cultural aspects of everyday life, reflecting the view that we are better analytically equipped to conceptualize cultural phenomena when these are compared to their pre-cultural flip side: Emotions, for example, are structured by cultural norms and rules but emotions also unfold as raw pre-cultural affects in a biological body. In a similar manner, the course will examine and discuss how the physical forms of urban space, the psychosomatic stimulants of drugs, and the biological underpinnings of face-to-face interaction have to considered as pre-cultural processes that shape the cultural expression of urban life, drug use and socio-moral order.