Philip Smith & Alexander Riley 
Cultural Theory 
An Introduction

This second edition of Cultural Theory provides a concise
introduction to cultural theory, placing major figures, traditional
concepts, and contemporary themes within a sharp conceptual
framework.

* Provides a student-friendly introduction to what can often be a
complex field of study

* Updates the first edition in response to reader feedback and to
the changing nature of the field

* Includes additional coverage of theorists from the classical
period to include Nietzsche and Du Bois

* Introduces entirely new chapters on race and gender theory, and
the body

* Considers themes that have become more important in theoretical
activity in recent years such as computers and virtual reality,
cosmopolitanism, and performance theory

* Draws on theories and theorists from continental Europe as well
as the English-speaking world

Table of Content

Preface to the First Edition: About this Book vi

Preface to the Second Edition ix

Acknowledgments x

Introduction: What is Culture? What is Cultural Theory? 1

1 Culture in Classical Social Theory 6

2 Culture and Social Integration in the Work of Talcott Parsons 26

3 Culture as Ideology in Western Marxism 34

4 Culture as Action in Symbolic Interactionism, Phenomenology, and Ethnomethodology 54

5 The Durkheimians: Ritual, Classification, and the Sacred 69

6 Structuralism and the Semiotic Analysis of Culture 92

7 The Poststructural Turn 111

8 Culture, Structure, and Agency: Three Attempts at Synthesis 128

9 British Cultural Studies 144

10 The Production and Reception of Culture 158

11 Culture as Text: Narrative and Hermeneutics 176

12 Psychoanalytic Approaches to Culture and the Self 195

13 The Cultural Analysis of Postmodernism and Postmodernity 207

14 Postmodern and Poststructural Critical Theory 228

15 Cultural Theories of Race and Gender 241

16 The Body in Cultural Theory 262

References 280

Index 296

About the author

Philip Smith is Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale
University and Deputy Director of the Yale Center for Cultural
Sociology. His books include Cultural Theory: An
Introduction (Blackwell, 2001), Why War? The Cultural Logic
of Iraq, the Gulf War and Suez (2005), The Cambridge
Companion to Durkheim (with Jeffrey C. Alexander) (2005), and
Punishment and Culture (2008).

Alexander Riley is Associate Professor of Sociology at
Bucknell University. He is the author of Godless Intellectuals?:
How Durkheimian Sociology and Poststructuralism Reinvented the
Intellectual Pursuit of the Sacred (2008).