Over the past fifteen years, sociology has become increasingly concerned with culture as a focus for understanding the processes and systems of relations through which societies are arranged. This 'cultural' approach challenges earlier sociological models that have tended to regard culture as merely the by-product of structural experiences of class, gender, race, and so on, re-representing culture as a motor-force in itself for the creation of social experience. Cultural sociology also recasts 'culture' as the representation of not merely elitist definitions and understandings of culture - art, literature, classical music and so on - but rather encompassing a broad range of everyday social practices and conventions, from the spectacular to the mundane.Cultural Sociology: An Introduction will be the first dedicated student textbook to systematically address cultural sociology. The book will set out the key antecedents contributing to the emergence of cultural sociology and will present students with a firm grounding in theoretical and methodological principles applied by cultural sociologists. It will focus on key sociological themes and issues - such as gender, class, and race - and will illustrate these in a clear and accessible fashion in relation to cultural sociology. Finally, the book will offer students a rich overview of the various empirical applications of cultural sociology, outlining cultural sociological approaches to a variety of everyday cultural forms including music, fashion, eating, sport and media.