This book examines the influences of various cultural factors on economic analyses that could be misrepresented by existing economic theories. Most significantly, the book measures the cultural diversity and bilateral similarity indexes of the existing 200 or more countries and regions, and quantifies their impacts on economic activities.
Since sociologists returned to the study of culture in the past several decades, a pursuit all but anathema for a generation, cultural sociology has emerged as a vibrant field. Edited by three leading cultural sociologists, The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology presents the full theoretical and methodological vitality of this critically significant new area.The Handbook gathers together works by authors confronting the crucial choices all cultural sociologists face today: about analytic priorities, methods, topics, epistemologies, ideologies, and even modes of writing. It is a vital collection of preeminent thinkers studying the ways in which culture, society, politics, and economy interact in the world.Organized by empirical areas of study rather than particular theories or competing intellectual strands, the Handbook addresses power, politics, and states; economics and organization; mass media; social movements; religion; aesthetics; knowledge; and health. Allowing the reader to observe tensions as well as convergences, the collection displays the value of cultural sociology not as a niche discipline but as a way to view and understand the many facets of contemporary society. The first of its kind, The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology offers comprehensive and immediate access to the real developments and disagreements taking place in the field, and deftly exemplifies how cultural sociology provides a new way of seeing and modeling social facts.
The populations of many countries in the world are becoming more culturally diverse. This spurs a growing need for an informed debate on the socio-economic implications of cultural diversity. This book offers a solid statistical and econometric perspec
The book explores the relationship between cultural heritage and local economic development by introducing the original idea that one possible mediator between the two can be identified as creativity. The book econometrically verifies this idea and demonstrates that cultural heritage, through its inspirational role on different creative talents, generates an indirect positive effect on local economic development. These results justify important new policy recommendations in the field of cultural heritage.
“This masterful collection illuminates many of the all-important interfaces between culture and economy. . . . These insights have never been more important.” —W. Lance Bennett, author of News: The Politics of Illusion The backlash against globalization and the rise of cultural anxiety has led to considerable rethinking among social scientists. This book provides multiple theoretical, historical, and methodological orientations to examine these issues. While addressing the rise of populism worldwide, the volume provides explanations that cover periods of both cultural turbulence and stability. Issues addressed include populism and cultural anxiety, class, religion, arts and cultural diversity, global environment norms, international trade, and soft power. The interdisciplinary scholarship from well-known contributors questions the oft-made assumption in political economy that holds culture “constant,” which in practice means marginalizing it in the explanation. The volume conceptualizes culture as a repertoire of values and alternatives. Locating human interests in underlying cultural values does not make political economy’s strategic or instrumental calculations of interests redundant: The instrumental logic follows a social context and a distribution of cultural values, while locating forms of decision-making that may not be rational.