Includes bibliographical references and index.

Power, culture, hegemony / Frederik Engelstad -- Doing politics, doing gender, doing power / Anne Krogstad and Kirsten Gomard -- Ostentation in comparative perspective: culture and elite legitimation / Jean-Pascal Daloz -- Collective memories at "work": the public remembering of contested pasts / Anna Lisa Tota -- Modernisms in action: comparing the relationship between visual arts, social classes and politics in Israeli nation-building / Graciela Trajtenberg -- National literature, collective identity and political power / Fredrik Engelstad -- Structural power and the construction of markets: the case of rhythm and blues / Timothy J. Dowd -- Paradoxes of welfare states and equal opportunities: gender and managerial power in Norway and the USA / Gunn Elisabeth Birkelund and Toril Sandnes.

The "cultural turn" in sociology created a new interest in power questions. This has led to a renewed interest in conceptual discussions of power in the field of culture studies, whereas empirical work is still less developed. "Comparative Studies of Culture and Power" sets the focus on the uses of cultural and symbolic means in struggles for hegemony: in politics, music markets, literature and the arts. Gender specific uses of rhetorical techniques is one salient theme, struggles for recognition of rhythm and blues music another. Several articles treat the role of the arts in nation building, as well as the role of public monuments in the acknowledgement of war and terrorism. The analyses relate to cultures all over the Western world.

Description based on print version record.