New Cultural Sociologies from the Perspective of Gender, Sexuality, and Class

Abstract

This paper reviews the new research trends in Japanese cultural sociologies and suggests future changes in the point of both gender and sexuality and class of culture, especially high culture and arts.

The main themes of cultural sociological research using the perspectives of gender and sexuality have shifted over time. Although the objectified image of women has been discussed with regard to its representation in media, the research of female receivers of popular culture today has shed light on women’s subjectivity; recently, post-feminism theory and the third wave of feminism have been applied to such research. In addition, this paper suggests that a wider range of cultural phenomena must be analyzed from the perspective of gender and sexuality as well as from that of men’s studies and queer studies.

On the other hand, considering class in culture, researchers have focused on popular and mass culture, though the edges between high and low culture are changing. To examine such limits as collective activities, empirical studies have flourished in this quarter-century. Not only cultural sociologies but also other fields of sociology use culture and art to explain new contemporary phenomena.