SOCIOLOGY 326.6, "CELEBRITY STATUS," SPRING 2005
Professor Charles
Kurzman
Department of
Sociology, University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill
http://www.unc.edu/~kurzman/Soc3266.htm
Updated February 21, 2005.
Class Sessions:
Twice a month, times to be arranged randomly at the last minute.
Office Hours:
227 Hamilton Hall, by appointment (919-962-1241,
kurzman@unc.edu)
Course Goals:
1) To acquaint students with social science research
on celebrity.
2) To introduce students to major trends in the study of social status.
3) To develop a jointly written paper on celebrity as a contemporary form of social status.
4) Not to overburden the students or instructor, since this
is only a 1-credit course.
Course Description:
This course will examine whether celebrities constitute a status group
in the sense described by Max Weber. It may be that celebrities usurp
honor, command authority, engage in a distinctive lifestyle, and pass
along their status (sometimes in diminished form) to their children,
just like the aristocratic elites whom Weber analyzed a century ago. At
the same time, celebrity may be unlike Weberian status in other ways.
The goal of the course is to write a jointly authored paper for
publication on this topic.
Readings will include "Class, Status, Party" and other selections from Economy and Society by Max Weber; more recent works on status
hierarchies, including Distinction by Pierre Bourdieu, The
Celebration of Heroes by William J. Goode, and Social Closure by
Raymond Murphy; and social-scientific analyses of celebrity, including
coverage of the history of celebrity, the scale of the phenomenon, its
linkages with economic, legal, and/or political power, its enactment in
micro-interactions, and its implications for social theory.
Assignments will include attendance at twice-monthly class sessions;
research adding to the following starter list of readings; reading notes
on overlapping portions of the reading list (each reading will be read
by at least two students); and writing one portion of the jointly
authored paper.
Course Requirements:
1. Attendance and Participation (10% of final grade).
Class will meet every other week for two hours.
2. Assigned Reading (not graded directly).
3. Reading Notes, due 24 hours before each class (30%
of final grade). Please submit these via e-mail to the course list-serve -- copying and pasting
the notes into the text of the message, not sending them as an attachment.
These notes, approximately 250 words per article or chapter, should include:
(a) the full bibliographic citation of the work
(b) the main points of the reading, including summaries
of each chapter or section
(c) definitions of major concepts and examples of their
use in the text
(d) significant quotations and items that you find interesting
(e) answers to the "big questions" identified at the
start of the course
(f) your reactions/questions/critiques/linkages with
other theorists/etc. (these analytical notes should
be set aside from the descriptive notes via brackets).
(g) page references throughout; these notes will serve
as your customized index to the reading. The notes will be graded 2 points
each if complete and turned in on time, 1 point if incomplete or one class
late, and 0.5 points if more than one class late.
4. An undergraduate syllabus on the sociology of
celebrity or on social status (your choice), annotated with
explanations for your choice of readings and themes., due
April 30, 2005 (15% of final grade).
5. One component of the jointly-written paper on celebrity status. (45% of final grade).
Class meetings:
1. Friday, January 14, 2005, 10 a.m.: Planning.
No readings.
2. Friday, January 28, 2005, 10 a.m.: Weber.
Readings:
1. Max Weber, "Class, Status, Party."
(pp. 180-195), in From Max Weber, edited by Hans Gerth and C. Wright Mills (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1958).
2. Max Weber, Economy and Society,
edited by Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 1978, Vol. 1, pp. 225-226 (bureaucracy's leveling
effect), 264-265 (education and status group formation), 305-307
(definition of status group), 390-391 (ethnic groups); Vol. 2, pp.
695-698 (legal communities), 932-938 (from "Class, Status, Party"),
959-963 (officials' status), 967-968 (status vs. coercion), 975 (bureaucracy's leveling effect), 1068-1069
(patrimonialism and honor), 1149 (discipline of ruling status groups),
1239-1240 (medieval Europe), 1354-1359 (ancient and medieval). (From
index, Vol. 2, p. lx.)
3. Thursday, February 7, 2005, 4 p.m.: Status since Weber.
Readings:
1. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction, translated by Richard Nice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984).
or 2. William J. Goode, The Celebration of Heroes: Prestige as a Social Control System (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1978).
or 3. Raymond Murphy, Social Closure: The Theory of Monopolization and Exclusion (Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press; New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1988).
4. Monday, February 21, 2005, 4 p.m.: More status since Weber.
Readings:
1. Recent articles and books to be contributed by students.
5. Thursday, March 10, 2005, 2 p.m.: Definitions, History, and Theory of Celebrity.
Readings:
1.
Gertrud Koch, "From Kingdom To Stardom." Constellations 6:206-215, 1999.
2. C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, [1956] 2000.. Chapters 1, 4, 15.
3. Chris Rojek, Celebrity. London, UK: Reaktion Books, 2001.
4. Thomas Spence Smith, "Aestheticism and Social Structure: Style
and Social Network in the Dandy Life." American Sociological Review
39:725-743, 1974.
5. Steven Stack, "Celebrities and Suicide: A Taxonomy and Analysis,
1948-1983." American Sociological Review 52:401-412, 1987.
6.
Bonnie H. Erikson and T. A. Nosanchuk, "The Allocation of Esteem
and Disesteem: A Test of Goode's Theory." American Sociological Review
49:648-658, 1984.
7. Joshua Gamson, Claims to Fame: Celebrity in Contemporary America.
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994.
8. Joshua Gamson, "The Web of Celebrity." The American Prospect
11(20):40-1, 2000.
9. Todd Gitlin, "The Culture of Celebrity." Dissent 45:81-3, 1998.
10. David P. Marshall, Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary
Culture. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
11.
PF Parnaby and VF Sacco, "Fame and Strain: The Contributions of
Mertonian Deviance Theory to an Understanding of the Relationship
Between Celebrity and Deviant Behavior." Deviant Behavior 25:1-26, 2004.
12. Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies, 2nd ed. (London, UK: Routledge, 2003).
13. Leo Braudy, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame & its History (New York : Oxford University Press, 1986).
14. Richard Schickel, Intimate Strangers: The Culture of Celebrity in America (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1985)
More to be contributed by students.
6. Monday, March 21, 2005, 4 p.m.: Celebrity's Interpersonal Privileges; Celebrity's Normative Privileges
Readings:
1. Kerry O. Ferris, "Seeing and Being Seen: The Moral Order of
Celebrity Sightings." Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 33:236-264, 2004.
2. JL Knight, TA Giuliano, MG Sanchez-Ross, "Famous or Infamous? The
Influence of Celebrity Status and Race on Perceptions of Responsibility
for Rape." Basic and Applied Social Psychology 23(3):183-190, 2001.
3. David S. Meyer and Joshua Gamson, "The Challenge of Cultural Elites: Celebrities
and Social Movements." Sociological Inquiry 65 (2): 181-206, 1995.
4. A. Raviv, D. Bar-Tal, A. Raviv, & A. Ben-Horin, "Adolescent
Idolization of Pop Singers: Causes, Expressions, and Reliance." Journal
of Youth and Adolescence 25:631-650, 1996.
More to be contributed by students.
7. Monday, April 4, 2005, 4 p.m.: Celebrity's Economic Privileges; Celebrity's Legal Privileges
Readngs:
1. David L. Andrews, Michael Jordan, Inc: Corporate Sport, Media
Culture, and Late Modern America. Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press, 2001.
2. SC Clay, "Starstruck: The Overextension of Celebrity Publicity
Rights in State and Federal Courts." Minnesota Law Review 79: 485-517, 1994.
3. Rosemary J. Coombe, "Publicity Rights and Political Aspiration:
Mass Culture, Gender Identity, and Democracy." New England Law Review
26:1221-1280, 1992.
4. Rosemary J. Coombe, The Cultural Life of Intellectual Properties:
Authorship, Appropriation, and the Law. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.
5. Michael Madow, "Private Ownership of Public Image: Popular
Culture and Publicity Rights." California Law Review 81:125-240, 1993.
6. Brian D. Till,and Terence A. Shimp, "Endorsers in Advertising: The Case of Negative Celebrity Information." Journal of Advertising
27:67-82, 1998.
7. Darrell West,and John Orman, Celebrity Politics. Upper Saddle
River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 2003.
More to be contributed by students.
8. Second half of April: Stitching Together Our Contributions.
Readings:
1. Student contributions to our joint article.