Description
Hollywood Highbrow is a fine account of the process by which Americans came to view film as an art form. The book will be of great interest both to historians of film and to sociologists interested in how certain cultural products become respected and prestigious. Shyon Baumann is the first to address these issues broadly for the case of American film. He writes engagingly and the book is a good read. -- Paul J. DiMaggio, Princeton University
About the Author
Shyon Baumann is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto.
Reviews
"Hollywood Highbrow: From Entertainment to Art is an important contribution to many disciplines: sociology of art and cinema, political economy of culture, American studies, cultural studies, even marketing, and, of course, film studies."--Yves LaBerge, Canadian Journal of Sociology "What is perhaps most remarkable about Hollywood Highbrow is how it successfully synthesizes various causal explanations for how and why objects become culturally valorized. Here, Baumann presents an in-depth examination of how cultural hierarchies change, conceptualizing cultural hierarchies as mulitcausal 'processes'."--International Review of Modern Sociology "In sum, I strongly encourage scholars of cultural phenomena to read this fine text. It is a clear and through presentation of an extremely complicated process, and so it should satisfy the interest of both experts and their students and colleagues. The book establishes a high place for Baumann among the new generation of scholars of culture, and I highly recommend it."--Jennifer C. Lena, American Journal of Sociology
Book Information
ISBN 9780691125275
Author Shyon Baumann
Format Hardback
Page Count 248
Imprint Princeton University Press
Publisher Princeton University Press
Weight(grams) 454g