This book showcases recent work about reading and books in sociology and the humanities across the globe. From different standpoints and within the broad perspectives within the cultural sociology of reading, the eighteen chapters examine a range of reading practices, genres, types of texts, and reading spaces. They cover the Anglophone area of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia; the transnational, multilingual space constituted by the readership of the Colombian novel One Hundred Years of Solitude; nineteenth-century Chile; twentieth-century Czech Republic; twentieth century Swahili readings in East Africa; contemporary Iran; and China during the cultural revolution and the post-Mao period. The chapters contribute to current debates about the valuation of literature and the role of cultural intermediaries; the iconic properties of textual objects and of the practice of reading itself; how reading supports personal, social and political reflection; bookstores as spaces for sociability and the interplay of high and commercial cultures; the political uses of reading for nation-building and propaganda, and the dangers and gratifications of reading under repression. In line with the cultural sociology of reading’s focus on meaning, materiality and emotion, this book explores the existential, ethical and political consequences of reading in specific locations and historical moments.
Author(s): María Angélica Thumala Olave
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 594
City: Cham
Acknowledgments
About This Book
Praise for The Cultural Sociology of Reading
Contents
Notes on Contributors
List of Figures
List of Tables
Chapter 1: Introduction
References
Part I: The Project of a Cultural Sociology of Reading
Chapter 2: Reading Matters: Toward a Cultural Sociology of Reading
1 Introduction
2 The Research
3 The Neglect of Subjective Experience and Meaning-Making in the Sociology of Reading
3.1 The “social practice” Approach to Reading
3.2 The Bourdieusian Approach to Reading
3.3 Reading in Historical and Institutional Contexts
4 Toward a Cultural Sociology of Reading
4.1 The Pleasures of Enchantment
4.2 Self-Understanding
4.3 Ethical Reflection and Social Bonds
4.4 Self-Care
4.5 Zooming in: Three Cases of Intensive Readers
Margaret
Alison
Frances
5 Conclusions
References
Part II: Reading, Books and Texts as Iconic Experience
Chapter 3: Why Do People Read Zines? Meaning, Materiality and Cultures of Reading
1 Introduction
2 Reading, Meaning and Materiality
3 Our Project
4 Zines Are DIY and Anti-mainstream
5 Zines Are Intimate and Intense
6 Discussion and Conclusion
References
Chapter 4: Between Self and Other: Anaïs Nin’s Transformative Erotics
References
Chapter 5: The Sociological Truth of Fiction: The Aesthetic Structure of a Novel and the Iconic Experience of Reading
1 Introduction
2 Aesthetic/Iconic Experience as a Source of Knowledge
3 Aesthetic Structure as a Methodological Framework
4 The Sociological Truth of Fiction: Implications and Prospects
4.1 An Unexpected Journey Toward Establishing a New Alliance
4.2 Autonomy and Agency: Let Literature Speak for Itself
4.3 Literature as General Social Theory
References
Chapter 6: Book Love: Attachment to Books in the United Kingdom
1 Introduction
2 Advancing the Cultural Sociology of Reading Through Materiality
3 The Book as Icon
4 Data and Methods
5 In the Presence of Books
5.1 Books and the Realisation of Sacred Values
5.2 The “Active Passion” of Reading
6 Books as Sacred Objects and the Difficulties of Parting with Them
7 Conclusions
References
Chapter 7: Easy to Handle and Travel with: Swahili Booklets and Transoceanic Reading Experiences in the Indian Ocean Littoral
1 Introduction
1.1 Islamic Reading Practices
2 The Sacrality of Reading as a Social Practice
2.1 Vidogo vidogo Formats for Specific Religious Communities and Markets
2.2 A Brief Cultural Ecology of Booklets
2.3 The Charity Book Market
3 The Sacred Printed Object: The Prayer of the Treasure of the Throne
4 “Cosmopolitan-and-Vernacular” Readers: A Transoceanic Cosmopolis “Niched” into Booklet Paratexts
4.1 bi al-Luġa al-Swahiliyya (“In the Swahili Language”)
5 Remarks in Lieu of a Conclusion: Portable Reading Practices before the Digital Age
References
Part III: Literary Value and Cultural Intermediaries
Chapter 8: Spatial Reading: Evaluative Frameworks and the Making of Literary Authority
1 Introduction
2 Single-Logic Concepts of Value: Literary Events Versus Readerly Uses
3 Beyond a Single Logic: Taylor’s Theory of Strong and Weak Frameworks
4 Strong Value as Public Feeling: Consecration, Canonization
5 Spatial Reading
6 Addictive Reading: An Eighteenth-Century Debate
7 Multiple Spatialities: Scholar-Connoisseurs Versus Generalist Middlebrows
8 Spatial Reading in the Civil Sphere: From the Byron Controversy to Handke’s Nobel Prize
9 Conclusion
References
Chapter 9: Editor’s Love: Matching, Reading, and the Editorial Self-concept
1 Introduction
2 What’s in an Editorial Reading?
3 What Does an Acquisition Editor Do?
4 Literature Review
5 The Editor as a Pragmatist Philosopher
6 What’s in a Match?
7 The Editor as a Stabilized Object
8 Conclusion: Opening up the Black Box of Matching
References
Chapter 10: Reviewing Strategies and the Normalization of Uncertain Texts
1 Introduction
2 Theory and Literature Review
3 Data and Methods
4 Background: A Boom in Publishing
5 Analysis and Results
5.1 Accommodation: A Latin American Novel and Writer
5.2 Accommodation: A Traditionalist Work of Art
5.3 Rejection, Description, Accommodation, and Resignification: Toward Magical Realism
5.4 Description and Rejection: A Humorous Novel
5.5 Rejection: Negative Reviews as Reputation Enhancer
6 Global Orchestration: The Normalization of OHYS’s Magical Realism
7 Discussion and Conclusion
References
Chapter 11: Customer Reviews of “highbrow” Literature: A Comparative Reception Study of The Inheritance of Loss and The White Tiger
1 Introduction
1.1 Elite and Popular Styles of Cultural Consumption
1.2 The Inheritance of Loss and The White Tiger
1.3 Amazon Customer Reviews
2 Methodology
2.1 Data Collection and Cleaning
2.2 Data Analysis
3 Dataset
4 Findings
5 Conclusion and Scope for Further Work
6 Technical Note
References
Chapter 12: A Self Enlarged by Fiction
1 Introduction
2 Reading for Models of Agency
3 Reading for Easing Overwhelming Emotion
4 Reading for More Capacious Worlds
5 Conclusion
References
Part IV: Bookshops, Libraries, and the Interplay of “High” and “Popular” Culture
Chapter 13: Reading, Novels and the Ethics of Sociability: Taking Simmel to an Independent English Bookshop
1 Introduction
2 The Ethics of Sociability
2.1 Sociability I: Self and Society
2.2 Reading and Sociability I: Being with Others
2.3 Sociability II: Self and Other
2.4 Reading and Sociability II: Knowing Others
3 The Bookshop: An Ethnography
3.1 The Bookshop’s Modernist Ethos
3.2 Modernist Selves
Harriet’s Sociability of Difference
Graham’s Missed Life as an Anthropologist
3.3 Reading Sebald’s the Emigrants
4 Conclusion: From Sociability and Reading to Modern Transcendence
References
Chapter 14: The Value of Books and Reading as Social Practices in Nineteenth-Century Chile: The Perspectives of Government and Citizens
1 Introduction
2 Popular Reading: Between the Library and the Penny Leaflets
2.1 Popular Libraries
2.2 The Penny Leaflets (hojas sueltas)
3 Conclusion
References
Chapter 15: Between Avant-Garde and Kitsch: Intellectual Bookstores and Post-Mao China’s Reading Culture
1 Introduction
2 Individual Reading and the Bookstore: From Avant-Garde to Kitsch
3 Guarding the Avant-Garde: The Intellectual Bookstore in Zhongguancun, Beijing
4 Encroachment of the Kitsch: The Nanjing-Based “Libraire Avant-Garde”
5 Conclusion: From “Between” to Beyond
References
Part V: Modes of Reading, the State and the Public Sphere
Chapter 16: The Politics of Happily-Ever-After: Romance Genre Fiction as Aesthetic Public Sphere
1 Introduction
2 A Cultural Sociology of Romance Reading
3 Genre as Community
4 Romance and the Aesthetic Public Sphere
5 Data and Methods
6 The Happily-Ever-After
7 Entertainment and Engagement: Expectations for Reading and Community
8 Envisioning Romancelandia as Aesthetic Public Sphere or Apolitical Space
9 Reader Response to Red, White, and Royal Blue: A Case Study in Entertainment and Engagement
10 “It’s Very Hopeful”: Romance Reading and the Real World
11 Conclusion
Appendix 1: Novels Included in Content Analysis
Appendix 2: Interview Respondent Demographics
Appendix 3: Romance Reader Demographics
References
Chapter 17: Clandestine Reading Practice in the Chinese Cultural Revolution
1 Introduction
2 Reading as Healing
3 Reading for Safety Purposes
4 Reading for Romantic Love
5 Clandestine Reading Under Repressive Rule
References
Chapter 18: The Decline of Literary Reading and the Rise of the Literal Mind
1 Introduction
2 Literary Versus Literal Reading
3 Readership and Literary Demise
4 Market Bestsellers
5 Regimes of Reading
6 The Politics of the Literal Mind
References
Chapter 19: The Functions of Reading in Chinese Literature and Society
1 Introduction
2 Modes of Normative Reading in China
3 Reading Acts as Interfaces in/to Chinese Fiction
4 Conclusion
References
Index
