Professor (Ph.D. University of Toronto)

Research Interests

Ethnicity, Sociology of culture, Mass media and public opinion, Material culture studies, Sociology of families

Contact Information

Ph: N/A
Em: sriggins@mun.ca
Office: N/A

Personal Profile

Dr. Riggins' early publications were about the sociology of classical music and government policies for democratizing the fine arts, especially in France. His current interests involve symbolic interactionist approaches to the symbolism of material artifacts and the application of critical discourse analysis to news stories. His research on mass media includes studies of journalism by First Nations peoples, the role of mass media in preserving minority identities, discourses of Chineseness, and the rhetoric of implicit racism. He is presently writing a history of the MUN sociology department as well as investigating the sociological value of anecdotal evidence in ethnographies and life narratives. His book The Pleasures of Time: Two Men, a Life is a first-person account of artistic and intellectual movements in France in the second half of the twentieth century. He has been practicing Taoist Tai Chi for over a dozen years.

Research

The Pleasures of Time: Two Men, a Life. Toronto: Insomniac Press. (Author)
The Language and Politics of Exclusion: Others in Discourse. Thousands Oaks, CA: Sage. (Editor)

The Socialness of Things: Essays on the Socio-semiotics of Objects. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. (Editor)

Ethnic Minority Media: An International Perspective. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. (Editor)

Beyond Goffman: Studies on Communication, Institution and Social Interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. (Editor)

http://www.semioticon.com/people/riggins.htm