The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Culture Edited by Mark D. Jacobs and Nancy Weiss Hanrahan This collection of original, state-of-the-art essays by prominent international scholars covers the most important issues comprising the sociology of culture. Heightened recognition of the ways culture inflects politics and economics, social relations and personal identities has transformed scholarship in the social sciences and humanities. The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Culture reflects on this "cultural turn" by providing an invaluable reference resource to all interested in the cultural structures and processes that animate contemporary life. The book includes such topics as art, science, religion, race, class, gender, collective memory, institutions, and citizenship. This is the first-ever collection of original, synthetic essays that forms a comprehensive overview of the sociology of culture. Mark D. Jacobs is Associate Professor of Sociology at George Mason University. He is the author of Screwing the System and Making It Work: Juvenile Justice in the No-Fault Society (1990), as well as articles in such journals as Administration and Society and The Journal of Arts Management, Law, and Society. He served from 1994 to 1998 on the Executive Council of RC37 of the International Sociological Association. He has co-organized two international conferences at George Mason University for the Section on the Sociology of Culture of the American Sociological Association, and has edited Culture for that section since 2000. Nancy Weiss Hanrahan is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Women's Studies Research and Resource Center at George Mason University. Her scholar work, which addresses issues in cultural theory and criticism, is informed by her professional experience in the music business. She is the author of Difference in Time: A Critical Theory of Culture (2000) and a contributor to Critical Theory: Diverse Objects, Diverse Subjects (2003) and Rethinking Social Transformation (2001)