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Beyond culture vs. structure: The networks, habits and resistances of our digital times

TikTok might seem a million kilometres away from the world of social theory. But in this lecture, I use this example as a way to address the question, what is the relationship between social structure and culture? 

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References and Further Reading

Back, Les, ed. 2012. Cultural Sociology: An Introduction. 1st ed. London: Wiley Blackwell.

Bauman, Zygmunt. 2015. Intimations of Postmodernity. London: Routledge.

Beckenbauer, Lukas. 2019. ‘On Platform Aesthetics: TikTok as the next Level of the Gamification of Social Exchange Online’. New Media M.A. Research Blog, Media Studies, University of Amsterdam |. 23 September 2019. https://mastersofmedia.hum.uva.nl/blog/2019/09/23/on-platform-aesthetics-tiktok-as-the-next-level-of-the-gamification-of-social-exchange-online/.

boyd, danah. 2010. ‘Social Network Sites as Networked Publics: Affordances, Dynamics, and Implications’. In A Networked Self: Identity, Community and Culture on Social Network Sites., edited by Papacharissi Z., 39–58. New York: Routledge.

Browne, Simone. 2015. Dark Matters : On the Surveillance of Blackness. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Chaney, David. 2012. ‘Starting to Write a History of the Present Day: Culture and Sociology’. In Cultural Sociology: An Introduction, 3–18. London: Wiley Blackwell.

Chun, Wendy Hui Kyong. 2017. Updating to Remain the Same : Habitual New Media. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Cumiskey, K.M., and L. Hjorth, eds. 2013. Mobile Media Practices, Presence and Politics: The Challenge of Being Seamlessly Mobile. London and New York: Routledge.

Greenfield, Adam. 2018. Radical Technologies : The Design of Everyday Life. London; New York: Verso.

Hall, Stuart. 1997. ‘The Problem of Ideology : Marxism without Guarantees’. Journal of Communication Inquiry 10 (2): 28–44.

Hays, Sharon. 1994. ‘Structure and Agency and the Sticky Problem of Culture’. Sociological Theory 12 (1): 57–72.

hooks, bell. 2015. Black Looks : Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press.

Lash, Scott. 1990. The Sociology of Postmodernism. London: Routledge.

Ling, R. 2012. Taken for Grantedness: The Embedding of Mobile Communication into Society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Patterson, Geneviève, and Hannah Donovan. 2020. ‘Leveraging TikTok for Growth | TechCrunch’. TechCrunch. Fenruary 2020. https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/17/leveraging-tiktok-for-growth/.

Perez, Sarah. 2019. ‘It’s Time to Pay Serious Attention to TikTok’. TechCrunch. 30 January 2019. https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/29/its-time-to-pay-serious-attention-to-tiktok/.

Pettit, Harry. 2020. ‘Face ID Masks to Let You Unlock IPhone Sparked by Coronavirus | The Mercury’. Mercury. 18 February 2020. https://www.themercury.com.au/technology/designers-comes-up-with-mask-that-resembles-your-own-face-so-you-can-still-use-facial-recognition-on-your-phone/news-story/656c30189e9ff8d737f664a7ccccb548.

Schiller, Dan. 1999. Digital Capitalism: Networking the Global Market System. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

 

Alana Lentin