Readers in reading groups: An online survey of face-to-face and virtual book clubs

Convergence

Volumn 9, Issue 1, 2003, Pages 66-90

  Sedo, DeNel Rehberg ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 61049476259     PISSN: 13548565     EISSN: 17487382     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/135485650300900105     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. Jenny Hartley, Reading Groups (Oxford, England: Oxford University Press, 2001)
2. Lindsey Howie, Speaking Subjects: A Reading of Women's Book Groups, Dissertation (La Trobe University, 1998)
3. Elizabeth Long, 'Women, reading and cultural authority: Some implications of the audience perspective in cultural studies,' American Quarterly, 38 (1986), pp. 591-612
4. Elizabeth Long, 'The book as mass commodity: The audience perspective,' Book Research Quarterly, 3, no. 1 (1987), pp. 9-27
5. Elizabeth Long, 'Textual interpretation as collective action,' in The Ethnography of Reading,,' ed. Jonathan Boyarin (Berkley: University of California Press, 1992), pp. 180-212
6. See above
7. Long, 1986, p. 59
8. Long, 1992, p. 199
9. Howie
10. Nessim Watson, 'Why we argue about virtual community: A case study of the Phish.net fan community', in Virtual Culture: Identity and Communication in Cybersociety, ed. Steve Jones (Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1997), pp. 102-132
11. Nancy K. Baym, Tune in, Log on: Soaps, Fandon, and Online Community (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 2000)
12. Earl Babbie, 'We am a virtual community,' American Sociologist, 27, no. 1 (1999), pp. 65-71
13. Steve Jones, Doing Internet Research: Critical Issues and Methods for Examining the Net (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999), p. xxii
14. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, trans. Richard Nice, 1979 edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984)
15. Paul DiMaggio, 'Classification in art,' American Sociological Review, 52 (1987), pp. 440-55
16. Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983)
17. Stuart Hall, Dorothy Hobson, Andrew Low, and Paul Willis (eds), Culture, Media, Language (London: Hutchison University Library, 1980)
18. Frank Parkin, Class Inequality and Political Order: Social Stratification in Capitalist and Communist Societies (St. Albans: Paladin, 1972)
19. See Karen Blair, The Clubwoman as Feminist: True Womanhood Redefined, 1868-1914 (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers Inc, 1980)
20. Ann Firor Scott, Natural Allies: Women's Associations in American History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991)
21. Jenny Hartley, Lindsey Howie, Elizabeth Long, 'Women, reading and cultural authority: Some implications of the audience perspective in cultural studies,' American Quarterly, 38 (1986), pp. 591-612
22. Elizabeth Long, (1986, 1987, 1992)
23. Heather Murray, 'Great works and good works: The Toronto Women's Literary Club 1877-1883,' Historical Studies in Education/Revue d'histoire de l'education, 11, no. 1 (1999), pp. 75-95
24. Ann Ruggles Gere, Intimate Practices: Literacy and Cultural Work in U.S. Women's Clubs, 1880-1920 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1997)
25. Sandra Christensen, 'Virtuality, conversation, and morality,' Technology Studies, 3, no. 2 (Fall 1996), pp. 199-214
26. Jonathan Rose, 'Rereading the English common reader: A preface to a history of audiences,' Journal of the History of Ideas, 53 (1992), pp. 42-70
27. See 'Yahoo.com Reading Group Forums' at http://dir.clubs.yahoo.com/ Entertainment_Arts/Humanitites/Books_and_Writing/ Reading_Groups/ (2 November 2001)
28. 'iVillage.com' at http://www.ivillage.com/books/bookclubs/welcome/ (2 November 2001)
29. 'New York Times Reading Group Forum' at http://www.nytimes.com/books/ forums/index.html (2 November 2001)
30. 'Radio 4 Book Club' at http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/bookcase/bookclub/ (2 November 2001)
31. 'Chatelaine's Book Group Forum' at http://www.chatelaine.com/bookclub/ TakeYourPick.jsp (2 November 2001)
32. Diane Witmer, Robert W. Colman, and Sandra Lee Katzman, 'From paper-and-pencil to screen-and-keyboard: Toward a methodology for survey research on the Internet,' in Doing Internet Research: Critical Issues and Methods for Examining the Net, ed. Steve Jones (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999), pp. 145-161
33. Janice Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991)
34. Nancy Chodorow, The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (Berkley: University of California Press, 1978)
35. Joanne Naiman, How Societies Work: Class, Power and Change in a Canadian Context (Concord, Ontario: Irwin Publishing, 1997), p. 268
36. Long began this exploration in her 1992 essay 'Textual interpretation as collective action.'
37. Tony Bennett, Michael Emmison, John Frow, Accounting for Tastes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
38. Paul DiMaggio, 'Cultural entrepreneurship in nineteenth-century Boston: The creation of an organizational base for high culture in America,' in Media, Culture and Society: A Critical Reader, ed. Richard Collins, James Curran, Nicholas Garnham, Paddy Scannell, Philip Schlesinger and Colin Sparks (London: SAGE Publications, 1986), pp. 194-211
39. Elihu Katz, Paul Felix Lazarsfeld, and Columbia University Bureau of Applied Social Research, Personal Influence: The Part Played by People in the Flow of Mass_Communications (New York, NY: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964)
40. Paul Felix Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet, The People's Choice; How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign, 3rd edition (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968)
41. Naiman, p. 252
42. This idea demonstrates how Bourdieu's earlier absence of women in his analysis is problematic. If we are to accept that the lower (or marginalised) classes distinguish themselves by denouncing higher class cultural products and practices as I will, then it is important to bring questions of gender into the equation
43. Ellen Slezak (ed), The Book Group Book: A Thoughtful Guide to Forming and Enjoying a Stimulating Book Discussion Group, 2nd edition (Chicago: Plume/Penguin Reference, 1995), cited in Hartley, p. 114. Emphasis in original
44. DeNel Rehberg Sedo, Badges of Wisdom, Spaces for Being: A Social History of Women's Reading Groups, Dissertation (Simon Fraser University, in progress)
45. In the past five years, there have been numerous newspaper articles about book clubs. One in particular that the reader might be interested in is Glen Schaefer, 'Read All About It,' The Province (15 September 1999), pp. B1-B3, in which the reporter outlines the composition of a book club and attempts to understand why so many women enjoy them. He also highlights that a book club would be a perfect place for a man to find a mate preciously because they are mainly comprised of women members
46. David Macfarlane, 'Of Men and Clubs - Books, that it, Not Cudgels' at http://www.ChaptersGLOBE.com (unavailable as at 20 November 2001)
47. See Judith Williamson, 'Woman is an island: Feminity and colonization,' in Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture., ed. Tania Modleski (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), pp. 99-109
48. and also Angela McRobbie, 'Working class girls and the culture of femininity,' in Women Take Issue: Aspects of Women's Subordination., ed. Women's Studies Group-Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies of the University of Birmingham (London: Hutchinson in association with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies of the University of Birmingham, 1978), pp. 96-109, for discussions of the 'value' attributed to women's spaces
49. The Philosopher's Café is a newly formed series of debates held in locales around the Greater Vancouver Regional District that is meant to stimulate ideas exchange among citizens. In 1999 none of sponsored guests were women
50. Bridget Fowler, Pierre Bourdieu and Cultural Theory: Critical Investigations (London: SAGE Publications, 1997), p. 137
51. Dorothy Smith, 'A peculiar eclipsing: Women's exclusion from man's culture,' in Sociology: An Introduction, From the Classics to Contemporary Feminism, ed. Gordon Baily and Noga Gayle (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1993), pp. 347-370
52. Martyn Lyons and Lucy Taksa, 'If Mother caught us reading,' Australian Cultural History, 11 (1992), pp. 39-50
53. Cited in Bennett et al, p. 148
54. Jon Shapiro, 'Home literacy environment and meta-literate awareness,' in Literate Apprenticeships: The Emergence of Language, ed. Jon Shapiro, Kenneth Reeder, Hillel Goelman and Rita Watson (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1996)
55. Jon Shapiro and P. Whitney, 'Factors in the leisure reading of upper elementary school students,' Reading Psychology, 18 (1997), pp. 343-370
56. Jon Shapiro, J. Anderson and A. Anderson, 'Diversity in parental storybook reading,' Early Child Development & Care, 127-128 (1997), pp. 47-59
57. Bennett et al; Nancy Duxbury, The Reading and Purchasing Public: The Market for Trade Books in English Canada 1991 (Toronto: The Association of Canadian Publishers, 1995)
58. James Lorimer and Susan Shaw,Book Reading in Canada: The Audience, the Marketplace, and the Distribution System for Trade Books in English Canada (Toronto: The Association of Canadian Publishers, 1983)
59. Bennett et al; Bourdieu (1984)
60. DiMaggio (1987), pp. 440-55
61. Darren K. Carlson, 'Poll Shows Continuing Strong American Reading Habits, Nonfiction More Popular than Fiction; Book Discussion groups not a Large Factor Yet' (Princeton, NJ: Gallup News Service, 1999). These percentages reflect the number of respondents who report having read six or more books during the year
62. 'Canadians' Reading Habits, 1998' at http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/ People/Culture/arts13b.htm (25 April 2002)
63. Hartley, p. 154
64. Bennett, p. 169
65. Canada, Statistics Canada, 'General Social Survey: Overview of the Time Use of Canadians in 1998' (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 1999), pp. 5-6. These findings should be considered with caution because the participation rate in this portion of the Statistics Canada study was 32 per cent. Duxbury found that 85 per cent of Canadian book readers report reading books for an hour or more during the previous week, and that 13 per cent of Canadian men who read and 20 per cent of the women readers read 11 hours or more per week
66. Bennett et al; Lorimer and Shaw
67. Rehberg Sedo
68. Joanna Smith Rakoff, personal communication (10 July 2001)
69. Lori Kendall, 'Recontextualizing "Cyberspace": Methodological considerations for on-line research,' in Doing Internet Research: Critical Issues and Methods for Examining the Net, ed. Steve Jones (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1999)
70. Larry Grossberg, Bringing it all Back Home (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997)