Sociology and Mass Culture: Durkheim, Mills, and Baudrillard

Franзois Boudreau is a professor of sociology at Laurentian University.

This book is presented as an investigation into the broad cultural
relevance of sociology and its relationship with modernity and mass
culture. According to the author, sociological thinkers have formulated
sociological knowledge as embedded in issues that arise in modern
literary theory (the representation of reality in language). Following a
recent trend in sociological theory, she suggests that sociological
knowledge should be studied as a part of  mass and popular cultures,
and she approaches her studies of Durkheim, Mills, and Baudrillard from
that perspective.

Unfortunately, Cormack discusses the three sociologists and their
thought without contextualizing them. Her book contains many
inappropriate statements, such as the assertions that sociology seeks to
influence mass culture instead of trying to explain social relations,
that sociology is a collective representation and not a scientific
discipline in its own right, and that sociologists dispute the
ideological control of the masses by the media instead of showing how
the ideology works within society. Although Comstock presents some
interesting ideas, her book as a whole is representative of the
sociology а la mode that Mills, for one, denounced.