The Cultural Sociology of Reading

“Reading is the interplay between embodied texts and human beings. It takes place in landscapes of politics, economics, emotions, memories, and hierarchies of both social power and cultural prestige. The essays in The Cultural Sociology of Reading untangle this rather mysterious practice.  More, they exemplify what the best sociology can do: They situate readers within specific local and global contexts, among unevenly distributed material and intellectual affordances, and then explore and illuminate what happens.”
—Wendy Griswold, Professor of Sociology and Bergen Evans Professor of Humanities, Northwestern University, USA


“The book edited by María Angélica Thumala Olave is a major contribution to the study of the book and its multiple appropriations, a particularly dynamic and fertile sector of cultural sociology. Thanks to the quality of the chapters, it succeeds in the tour de force of making us understand, in relation to varied national contexts, periods and types of texts, the meaning and functions, from the most political to the most intimate, of an object as central in the history of humanity as the book.”
—Bernard Lahire, Professor of Sociology, École Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France​

This book showcases recent work about reading, in sociology and the humanities across the globe. From different standpoints within the cultural sociology of reading, the eighteen chapters examine a range of reading practices, genres, texts and reading spaces. They contribute to current debates about the valuation of literature and the role of cultural intermediaries; the iconic properties of textual objects and of the practice of reading itself; how reading supports personal, social and political reflection; bookstores as spaces for sociability and the interplay of high and commercial cultures; the political uses of reading for nation-building and propaganda, and the dangers and gratifications of reading under repression. In line with the cultural sociology of reading’s focus on meaning, materiality and emotion, this book explores the existential, ethical and political consequences of reading in specific locations and historical moments.

María Angélica Thumala Olave is Lecturer in Global Sociology at the University of Edinburgh, UK.