Abstract

The study of culture - conceived as cultural production, cultural consumption, cultural organisation - is now at the centre of sociological and socio-historical research, but in Italy it is still a relatively neglected field. Specifically, in the Italian sociological literature, culture means above all the implicit culture of norms and values, or mass communication as a specialised field of study. The Italian social research on culture has not really met the new perspectives elaborated in British cultural studies and the so-called "new American cultural sociology", both focused (notwithstanding their differences) on recorded culture, arts and cultural industries besides the implicit culture of norms and values, and more generally interested in the cultural (that is, symbolic) dimensions of social, economic, and political phenomena. After a brief discussion of these perspectives, the article develops some considerations about their relevance and implications for the study of Italian culture.