Iconic Power : Materiality and Meaning in Social Life

A collection of original articles that explore social aspects of the phenomenon of icon. Having experienced the benefits and realized the limitations of so called 'linguistic turn', sociology has recently acknowledged a need to further expand its horizons.

Iconic Power is a collection of original articles that explore social aspects of the phenomenon of icon. What counts as iconic in late modern society? How do icons work? What exactly makes an image, object, or person iconic? Why should we care about icons? These are among the central questions of this volume. From elite wine brands to popular music festivals, from the Berlin Wall to the Abu Ghraib scandal, the contributors to this volume discuss the cultural biographies of various iconic images and events. They show that icons seduce and shock, and that the iconosphere can represent at once the richness and the poverty of culture, its superficiality as well as its depth. Each contribution to this book carefully tests the analytic purchase and empirical implications of iconicity. If we can succeed in understanding the iconic, we will better understand our culture and we will significantly extend the scope of cultural sociology.