Herbert J. Gans

Author of Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste

18+ Works 729 Members 9 Reviews

About the Author

Herbert Gans is a German-born American sociologist who was educated at the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania. Active in urban planning and housing at the beginning of his career, he taught planning and sociology at Columbia Teachers College and subsequently at Columbia show more University. He is best known for his work on American communities, including The Urban Villagers (1962), a study of Boston's West End and The Levittowners (1967). He has focused much of his research on the American middle class. (Bowker Author Biography) show less

Includes the names: Herbert Gans, Herbert Gans -, Herbert Jq Gans, Herbert J. Gans

Works by Herbert J. Gans

Popular Recent

Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste (1975) 163 copies, 8 reviews

The Urban Villagers: Group and Class in the Life of Italian-Americans (1962) 142 copies, 1 review

Deciding What's News: A Study of CBS Evening News, NBC Nightly News, Newsweek and Time (1979) — Author — 97 copies

The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community (1967) 86 copies

The War Against The Poor: The Underclass And Antipoverty Policy (1995) 78 copies

Democracy and the News (2003) 47 copies

People and plans; essays on urban problems and solutions (1968) 33 copies

More equality (1973) 25 copies

Middle American Individualism: The Future of Liberal Democracy (1988) 18 copies

People, Plans, and Policies: Essays on Poverty, Racism, and Other National Urban Problems (1991) 15 copies

Imagining America in 2033: How the Country Put Itself Together after Bush (2008) 8 copies

On the Making of Americans: Essays in Honor of David Riesman (1979) — Editor — 7 copies

Making Sense of America (1999) 4 copies

Sociology in America (American Sociological Association Presidential Series) (1990) 2 copies

The uses of television and their educational implications: Preliminary findings from a survey of adult and adolescent… 1 copy

Sociology and Social Policy: Essays on Community, Economy, and Society (2017) 1 copy

People, Plans, and Politics: Essays on Poverty, Racism, and Other National Urban Problems 1 copy

Populer Kultur ve Yuksek Kultur (2005) 1 copy

Work Explorer

Associated Works

Race, Class, and Gender in the United States: An Integrated Study (1992) — Contributor, some editions — 524 copies

Urban renewal; the record and the controversy (1966) — Contributor — 23 copies

Conflict Issues in Sociology: Introductory Readings (1990) — Contributor — 1 copy

Tagged

20th century (4) American culture (5) anthropology (5) art (4) Boston (10) cities (4) class (4) cultural studies (10) culture (8) economics (4) Geography/Urban Studies (3) history (9) home (4) Italian Americans (8) journalism (14) media (14) MIT OCW (6) news (5) non-fiction (23) own (4) planning (3) political science (8) politics (9) pop culture (12) poverty (14) read (3) School of Architecture and Planning (school) (6) sociology (80) suburbs (4) theory (7) to-read (13) unread (4) urban (11) urban planning (9) urban sociology (6) urban studies (5) urban-studies-and-planning (subject) (6) urbanism (5) USA (6) West End (5)

Common Knowledge

Canonical name: Gans, Herbert J.
Birthdate: 1927
Gender: male
Nationality: USA
Germany (birth)
Places of residence: Cologne, Germany
New York, New York, USA
Education: University of Pennsylvania
Occupations: sociologist
university professor
Organizations: Columbia University

Members

Reviews

2/26/22

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laplantelibrary | 7 other reviews | Feb 26, 2022 |

I won't be able to finish. I knew he was blowing it out of his ass when he said that popular culture should be taxed to support high culture. Culture exists because of the financial support of its patrons, not at the whim of a central cultural authority. If it doesn't pay, it doesn't play. Shakespeare knew that. So did Johnson. Joyce didn't know and we got that grad student doorstop 'Ulysses'. Really, just an aggravating book and typical of the sanctimonious editorializing that passes for academic discussion where nicely parsed models are fobbed off as insight. Read Warshow's 'The Immediate Experience' instead, top it off with Chesterton's essay 'In Praise of Penny Dreadfuls' and you've left Gans far behind.… (more)

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SomeGuyInVirginia | 7 other reviews | May 8, 2012 |

Gans does a nice job of debunking certain elitist assumptions about the effects of popular culture that too often go unchallenged.

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deanmachine | 7 other reviews | Feb 26, 2010 |

I found his analysis of different taste cultures to be helpful, but pretty much flat-out disagree with a lot of what he implies. Would have been much better to do a full update of this book, rather than a postscript that allows the writer to dodge inconsistencies between old text and current reality.

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alissamarie | 7 other reviews | Oct 25, 2009 |

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