| The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth Contributor(s): Patterson, Orlando (Editor), Fosse, Ethan (With), Clarkwest, Andrew (Contribution by) |
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ISBN: 067465997X ISBN-13: 9780674659971 Publisher: Harvard University Press OUR PRICE: $30.40 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: March 2016 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Social Science | Ethnic Studies - African American Studies - Social Science | Popular Culture - Social Science | Sociology - Urban |
| Dewey: 305.235 |
| Physical Information: 2" H x 6.1" W x 9.2" (1.70 lbs) 688 pages |
| Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - African American - Demographic Orientation - Urban |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: The Cultural Matrix seeks to unravel a uniquely American paradox: the socioeconomic crisis, segregation, and social isolation of disadvantaged black youth, on the one hand, and their extraordinary integration and prominence in popular culture on the other. Despite school dropout rates over 40 percent, a third spending time in prison, chronic unemployment, and endemic violence, black youth are among the most vibrant creators of popular culture in the world. They also espouse several deeply-held American values. To understand this conundrum, the authors bring culture back to the forefront of explanation, while avoiding the theoretical errors of earlier culture-of-poverty approaches and the causal timidity and special pleading of more recent ones. There is no single black youth culture, but a complex matrix of cultures--adapted mainstream, African-American vernacular, street culture, and hip-hop--that support and undermine, enrich and impoverish young lives. Hip-hop, for example, has had an enormous influence, not always to the advantage of its creators. However, its muscular message of primal honor and sensual indulgence is not motivated by a desire for separatism but by an insistence on sharing in the mainstream culture of consumption, power, and wealth. This interdisciplinary work draws on all the social sciences, as well as social philosophy and ethnomusicology, in a concerted effort to explain how culture, interacting with structural and environmental forces, influences the performance and control of violence, aesthetic productions, educational and work outcomes, familial, gender, and sexual relations, and the complex moral life of black youth. |
Contributor Bio(s): Killewald, Alexandra A.: - Alexandra A. Killewald is Associate Professor of Sociology at Harvard University.Sampson, Robert J.: - Robert J. Sampson is Professor and Chair of Sociology at Harvard University.Venkatesh, Sudhir Alladi: - Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh is William B. Ransford Professor of Sociology at Columbia University.Fosse, Ethan: - Ethan Fosse is a doctoral student in Sociology at Harvard University.Shelby, Tommie: - Tommie Shelby is Caldwell Titcomb Professor of African and African American Studies and of Philosophy at Harvard University.Patterson, Orlando: - Orlando Patterson is John Cowles Professor of Sociology at Harvard University; the author of Freedom in the Making of Western Culture, which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and Slavery and Social Death (Harvard); and the editor of The Cultural Matrix: Understanding Black Youth (Harvard), for which he was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Lifetime Achievement. His work has been honored by the American Sociological Association and the American Political Science Association, among others, and he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as Special Advisor for Social Policy and Development to Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley and was awarded the Order of Distinction by the Government of Jamaica. |