Zohar Shavit
Texts in Culture Research – A Reader 2017

We will read a selection of research articles and various texts taken mostly from printed and electronic media, in order to analyze the semiotic structure of social activities of the individual and their products.

After discussing basic concepts such as the structure of semiotic systems, semiotic conceptualization versus psychological conceptualization, habitus, field, institution and codes, tool box, presentation of the self and impression management, we will read articles that deal with the practices of the daily life of the individual in a certain society. Here we will deal with issues of food and eating habits, child care, leisure and taste, social codes in the public sphere, the construction of the human body, love, sex, romantic relationships, illness and death, and how these practices are organized and structured according to cultural models and repertoires in a given time and space.