Judith R. Blau

Crimes Against Humanity

Arnold W. Foster

There is currently no reader in print that provides a broad ranging overview for an undergraduate course on the sociology of the arts or the sociology of culture. This book remedies this situation as it provides students with an overall understanding of the current issues, theoretical approaches, and substantive contributions in the sociology of the arts. Included are chapters on the aesthetic meaning of art; the social and institutional production of art; the links among audiences, artists, and cultural organizations; tensions between artists and their bureaucratized working settings; the training and careers of artists; relations between art and society; and the dynamics of cultural change. In addition to section introductions, there is a comprehensive introduction to provide students with an understanding of the history of the field, its main theoretical currents, and also to provide them with an appreciation of the contributions to cultural studies by other disciplines, such as anthropology and history. An extensive bibliography is also included in the reader, which was developed to assist students who wish to pursue research topics.

Readings in the Sociology of the Arts

Art and Society

Keri E. Iyall Smith

Louis Edgar Esparza

Together, the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights comprise the constitutional foundation of the United States. These—the oldest governing documents still in use in the world—urgently need an update, just as the constitutions of other countries have been updated and revised. Human Rights Of, By, and For the People brings together lawyers and sociologists to show how globalization and climate change offer an opportunity to revisit the founding documents. Each proposes specific changes that would more closely align US law with international law. The chapters also illustrate how constitutions are embedded in society and shaped by culture. The constitution itself sets up contentious relationships among the three branches of government and between the federal government and each state government, while the Bill of Rights and subsequent amendments begrudgingly recognize the civil and political rights of citizens. These rights are described by legal scholars as "negative rights," specifically as freedoms from infringements rather than as positive rights that affirm personhood and human dignity. The contributors to this volume offer "positive rights" instead. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), written in the middle of the last century, inspires these updates. Nearly every other constitution in the world has adopted language from the UDHR. The contributors use intersectionality, critical race theory, and contemporary critiques of runaway economic inequality to ground their interventions in sociological argument.

How to Critique and Change the US Constitution

Human Rights Of, By, and For the People

Alberto Moncada

Justice in the U.S. is a sequel to Human Rights: Beyond the Liberal Vision, and the second in a trilogy on human rights. The Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution explicitly clarifies the personal political and civil rights of persons, and by court interpretation, the rights of corporations. Yet in the twentieth century, following World War II, most world leaders reached the conclusion that political and civil rights were not sufficient and they had to be supplemented with additional rights that would protect their citizens and create more robust societies. By the end of the century, most countries had amended their constitutions to include many other rights, notably those pertaining to social security, health care, housing, decent jobs, women, minorities, cultural and language rights, and environmental protections. This amounted to nothing less than a worldwide constitutional revolution, but it has gone largely unnoticed in the United States. In this volume, the authors compare the constitutional provisions of different nation-states and summarize some of the relevant United Nations' human rights declarations and treaties. To encourage US citizens to think critically about their Constitution in light of the constitutions of other states, the authors present a draft revision of the U.S. Constitution. Of course, revision of the Constitution must be a comprehensively a democratic process, and the authors wish to show how this process might begin.

Human Rights and the U.S. Constitution

Justice in the United States

This book systematically examines prevailing cultural patterns in contemporary American society. Using information on several thousands of cultural organisations, including elite ones (such as opera and chamber music companies) and popular cultural ones (such as cinemas and live rock concerts), Professor Blau examines the geography of culture, the changing demands for culture, the interdependencies among cultural organisations of different kinds, the nature of labour markets for artists, and the effects of arts subsidies on nonprofit cultural establishments over a ten year period. One of the major conclusions of the book is that the social conditions that support elite and popular culture are increasingly similar over time.

Judith R. Blau

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