Sociology of Art
Pierre Bourdieu (1980,207) noted that sociology and the arts are uneasy companions. This unease pervades American sociology more than he could have imagined. Remember that two decades have passed since the American Sociological Association’s members signed the petition to establish a new Section. Even those who were initially supporters of the Culture Section must be surprised at the Section’s rapid growth.
Cultural and artistic aspects have been more prominently highlighted in sociological publications (Peterson, 1982; Becker, 1982; Crane 1987 and Balfe 1993), disciplinary recognitions (Griswold 2000), as well as professional organizations in the United States (Zolberg 1991). It seems that American sociologists still pay little attention to the arts despite their richness and potential for social science disciplines. Culture’s reentry into American sociological research has been a success. This is an opportunity to examine the status of the arts in this discipline. This paper examines the inability of sociologists to recognize the arts’ centrality rather than its peripherality in the field of social science, despite all the promise that the last century has offered. The idea is that American sociology seems to have lost its place in culture despite its increasing prominence.
STAGE: The Sociology of the Arts, America
A survey on the sociology art would have been launched and concluded less than a century ago with contentious statements about the relations between society and the arts. Many scholars agreed that art can mirror society in certain ways, but consensus would soon end. Some asserted that art reflects social production relationships and is used primarily to preserve dominant groups in favorable circumstances. The Marxist-materialist view of art, which Arnold Hauser (1951), based upon, provides the foundation for his massive analysis of artistic creativity across the ages. This analysis, The Social History of Art, is an extensive analysis of the subject. Similar convictions were shared by other scholars who believed great art should belong to an independent sphere that can transcend material constraints and still reflect the spirit of its age. Some reflection analyses see art reaching higher values and foretelling societal tendencies. Pitirim Sorokin’s (1937) anti-Marxist version of this idea was almost as large as Hauser’s.
These understandings of relations between society and arts, however divergent they may seem in their foundations are meant to reveal hidden postulates concerning art and social structural processes. These universalizing conceptions are not Marxist-based or antiMarxist ideas. Sorokin covered 2,500 years worth of civilization. Hauser began at prehistoric cave painting, and both concluded their analyses by referring to their contemporaries. They are both incompatible with the modern anthropological perspectives which view art as an integral part a cultural system and embedded within that cultural context (Geertz, 1973). Their ambitions are much smaller, regardless of their intellectual or political stance. They are not likely to attempt to cover such a broad range of magisterial knowledge that would require such speculative outlook. This doesn’t necessarily mean that there is a reduction in scope. Contemporary researchers are more able to analyze art than their predecessors. Hauser and Sorokin were not particularly interested in nonWestern cultures, with very little attention paid to folk and primitive forms as well as commercial art and entertainment. Neither saw the question of whether women artists were absent as a worthy subject of inquiry. Both had a generally negative opinion about avantgarde art even within fine art. They were also more artistically-oriented than their peers and accepted changing styles and art forms as accepted.
However, their ambition is not the only thing that is remarkable about Hauser’s and Sorokin’s research. The reason they were so exceptional is that the social scientists who studied art generally didn’t pay much attention to it.
The Sociological Border
1. Sociology of Art: Early work
American sociology was born in America and looked to European theories. Literary and aesthetic scholars also occasionally touched on the cultural history and social contexts of the arts. However, this was only a small part of American sociology in the first half the 20th century. Max Weber’s 1958 work, a single major one, dealt with music as an example of his theory about cultural rationalization in West. He placed what he called “aesthetic sociology”, when he founded Annales, within the sociology he was trying establish, but only under the residual rubric of “divers” (Zolberg 1990, 38). Only Georg Simmel (1968), although he was a social scientist, wrote often about the arts (Coser 1965).
American sociology became one of the most innovative and comprehensive in the world at the close of World War II. This was due to America’s international standing as the champion and defenderof Western humanist values in wartime, and also during the cold war (Guilbaut 1993; Saunders 1998)
American social sciences scholarship was not open to the idea of arts as legitimate objects of study. This stance was almost mirrored in the opposite, equally determined, stance of humanistic scholarship. It included literature, aesthetics and musicology as well as history of culture. Many social scientists adopted the techniques and methods of exact sciences in the aftermath of World War II, which led to a rise in the number of them. This orientation cast a shadow on humanistic subjects like the arts and the qualitative interpretations that art requires. Despite the official emphasis on exact science, university education expanded and all university courses were offered.
2. Sociology at the End of the 20th Century is a New Era
The United States did not have any social studies of arts scholars before the post-World War II years. These were mostly emigres and members of The Frankfurt School like Theodor Adorno ( 1976), escaping persecution from totalitarian states. These exiles were often marginalized from mainstream intellectual life and treated as outsiders. Their marginality was exacerbated by their Marxist orientation, which they also held, along with their criticism of American sociology’s “scientistic empiricalism” and, in some cases, disdain for its intellectual shallowness (Zolberg 90:72). They were critical of the rise of “mass society” as well as its effects on individual autonomy. They refused to accept a scientific objectivity and insisted on an evaluative approach in their social analysis. This led to them being excluded from American sociology’s academic mainstream. Some of their inquiries in high culture and the critique of culture industries attracted an American following. While the misgivings of old persist, they have become much less prevalent due to changes in the orientations of both sets of disciplines (Zolberg 1990).
The basis for a fresh social examination of the arts has been established.
While aesthetics was the focus of much scholarship in Europe, there was no independent field of sociology that was created apart from history, philosophy, and criticism. France was no exception. Raymonde Moulin ( 1987, 1991) and Pierre Bourdieu ( 1984), were both sociologists who led the field and provided support to institutions. German musicological and artistic scholarship continued to be influenced by the social domain, as the Frankfurt School tradition’s successors.
Raymond Williams’s analysis of the hegemonic position of the arts, based on historical and literary scholarship from England, was infused with English cultural studies. Williams pioneered the introduction of popular forms like jazz, radio, movies and other popular forms to the social study arts. Students and professors considered the university an agent in government policy in the United States.
Parallel to these developments, the art market itself was experiencing a transformative transformation. This trend, which had been evident in the earlier years of New York becoming the center for the international art market, was realized during the post-World War II period. Marcel Duchamp collected “found objects” (bathroom plumbing and snow shovels) to challenge the arts. He then “assisted” them to art status by providing signatures and titles from purported artists. In the 1950s, the arts “exploded.” Artists created new media, broke down traditional barriers and challenged hierarchies.
Crane 1987. The conditions that enabled large numbers to become avant-garde artists were growing government, corporate and foundation support. American advocates for government support for the arts played a significant role in creating a favorable environment for artistic originality as evidence of the freedom of creative expression that was prohibited under authoritarian regimes. Indirectly, it created an opportunity structure for artists. However, it also opened up the way for social scientists to study culture.
Based on the “normal sociology” of 1950s and 60s, it was hard to predict the coming effervescence in sociology of arts. A few articles were the only sociological works to have increased the bookshelf from pre-1950s. Robert Wilson (1964), a pioneering sociological writer, published a number of essays in The Arts in Society. Wilson also solicited new essays. His choices were justified by his orthodox belief that artists “often perceive what is happening in society or the soul a bit earlier than men” (p. vi). Wilson was openly concerned with high-culture producers and their products. A second collection of essays was published a few years later. It outlined an “institutional” approach to the arts’ role in sustaining social stability and meeting human needs. The editors examined the relationships between forms and different social institutions; artist careers and their interactions with a variety art milieus; distribution systems and reward system; and the roles played by critics, dealers, public and media in recognizing artists.
They were open and willing to accept divergent views. This included Marxian analysts. These essays also showed the early days of sociology. Only one-fourth of the authors were sociologists. The rest were either in history, comparative literature or art history. Albrecht and coauthors had a happy result: they helped create an American field which integrated European approaches. The American field also included folk arts, literature, music and dance.
Current Trends in Sociological Art
Four trends could emerge from the sociology for art in the third century, due to changes in sociology, and other developments. The first is to continue from existing frameworks and examine the role of institutions that enable or inhibit the creation of artworks. They analyze the artistic practice and patterns of appreciation as well as acquisition by collectors and patrons. They examine access to the arts for different audiences and their role in reproduction of status.
Fourth, scholars have made a fundamental shift and are now questioning the very nature “Art”. They believe that “art”, while selfevident, should be understood more as a social construction. Many see the rapid succession in art styles that characterized the United States and Europe of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries as a symbol of the modernity of modernity. Others view this as a sign for cultural decadence, over-ripeness and anomie. Some believe that the West’s decline has been reflected in the increased presence of nonwestern music in both commercial and serious musical areas. Many wonder if these new music genres are worthy to be called “Art” (Zolberg, 1990).
These developments offer sociologists of culture the opportunity to research and theorize that will, according to many analysts, help understand the nature of social transformations. It is a concern that certain groups and political interests may misuse aesthetic creation (Gans 1994, 1999; Goldfarb 1992; Halle93). However, artists and publics alike still seem to be unable to accept the idea that art can exist in a realm without material purpose.
The methodological approach can be described as empiricism which uses quantitative tools to analyze large quantities of data such as access to cultural resources (Blau 1988), audience studies (Gans 1975), or an empirical view that is based on qualitative observation of cultural practices (Gans 1974). Howard S. Becker’s (1982), Artworlds ethnography, which is empirically based on microscopic analysis and qualitative analysis, is similar. Social studies has been given semiotic and historical perspectives through literary analysis. More striking, however, is the fact that the study of various art forms has grown to include the commercial sector-culture industry (Peterson 1997). Following Gans (1974), sociologists are becoming more aware that the arts can exclude and include. Certain classes of artists are no longer considered to be the best, including women and minorities.
American sociology is a unique approach to culture. It combines approaches to science, religion, and culture under the title of “production” (Peterson, 1976). Richard Peterson’s associates suggested that culture is defined in a pragmatic manner that ties it with anthropology. It can include popular culture, science, religion and symbols. The production approach to culture considers how cultural products were formed, and emphasizes the effect of institutional, structural, and other arrangements, as either facilitators or impeders to creation. They prefer to do microscopic and middle-range analysis because it reveals more about the effects of laws and culture industry practices on the form and content and artworks.
1. Institutions & Processes
Artists and critics have decried since the establishment of official academies as well as ministries and agencies that are supposed support artistic creation. Harrison White and Cynthia White (1965), the pioneers of sociological studies, examined the changing opportunity structure for French artists during the nineteenth century. Gladys Engel Lang, Kurt Lang (1990) studied the selection of academies that were excluded. They focus on the revival and limitations of etching in nineteenth-century art. A lot of women artists found other media that were more accessible, like watercolor or etching. These mediums were easier to work in and helped them to gain some recognition and status.
Raymonde Moulin’s work on the interaction between art museums and the art market has helped to sustain research on French art institutions (1992).
Under the direction of Paul DiMaggio (1986a-1986b) and Judith Balfe(93), American institutions are subject to a more limited and declining support from the federal government.
2. Artistic Practices & Worlds of Art
Howard S. Becker’s 1982 book Artworlds was the most important contribution to understanding how arts are made. Becker uses a “sociologyofwork” approach to understand what is commonly regarded as the work of one genius. However, making art is not qualitatively distinct from other social activities. Becker believes that artmaking isn’t an individual act. It must be understood collectively, with interactions among the participants. The support personnel – assistants, servants or managers, agents, buyers, critics, and others – can be any number of people. Becker is not content to reduce the arts down to one art world because of the complexity and size modern societies. Becker argues instead that art is composed in four major art worlds. Each art world has its own style and conventions. The conventions of the art form are followed by the professional artist, who is either high-culture or commercial. Although the Maverick is trained in these conventions, he refuses to adhere to them. He prefers to be independent and to not have to follow established guidelines. Folk artists work within the conventions of his local lore. The naive artist is untrained and does not have the same ties to the actual art worlds. He or she creates works that reflect idiosyncratic ideas or experiences about religion, personal remembrances or other bizarre or maddening phenomena. While most art worlds have connections to other art practitioners or institutions, the naive artist is not.
3. Art and its Publics: Status Reproduction, Taste
The most misleading adage is that there’s no way to argue about taste. Taste is constantly being debated. Thorstein Veblen (1934), a social scientist, was the first to understand the symbolic meanings behind taste. He studied the Gilded Age’s leisure class behavior. Russell Lynes ( 1980 ) published his classification for high-, mid- and low-brow taste preferences. He used fashion and artwork as status indicators. Many sociologists, drawing on the writings of these and other highly skilled analysts, have found that fashion, art, and design can be used to determine a person’s social standing. Bourdieu isn’t arguing that taste should be considered trivial and purely personal. He believes that taste has social implications for individuals and social institutions. Bourdieu analyzes taste at a deeper level, and he goes beyond the notion that consumerism is a “right”. Bourdieu is able to see the links between taste and symbolic status. He also shows how they can reproduce social hierarchies that have been established from generation one to another. Bourdieu considers taste to be a part and parcel of one’s cultural baggage. A structured and durable behavioral orientation that is rooted in early childhood experience and schooling, Bourdieu employs many quantitative and ethnographic methods in order to illustrate how taste can function as capital to accentuate inequalities in economic and socio-economic disadvantages. As such, taste can be a badge or a mark of social honour, or vice versa, it can also be a sign that certain groups are more acceptable than other (Bourdieu 1985, 1995).
English sociologists have long pursued cultural reproduction in a parallel way. Many have done extensive taste surveys but they still analyze the content of high and popular aesthetic cultures. Raymond Williams (1981), whose Marxian perspective began with literary or film criticism, but moved to academic life and culture studies was a major influence.
Beyond the Marxism’s simple base-superstructure correspondence, which views culture as only an epiphenomenal aspect of existing production relationships and Williams, Stuart Hall (1980), Janet Wolff, (1984), among others, they view culture as a constitutive method of constructing social meanings. They sought to challenge the dominant, decontextualized and literary-critical mode for analysis by explaining the relations between cultural images and objects, as well as social institutions and processes. Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies was home to scholars who studied many aspects British youth subcultures.
It would not be honest to say that sociologists all agree about the relationship of taste and status. Bourdieu attributes his ability to manipulate symbolic capital using complex codes found in the lores of dominant class fractions. However, others prefer to focus on observable changes and conditions for their expression. David Halle (1993), a researcher who studies the display and collection of art in people’s homes, is one of those who questions Bourdieu’s analysis. Bourdieu’s assumption that collectors are not knowledgeable about the works they own is incorrect, according to Halle’s interviews. These collectors are almost as knowledgeable about abstract art as the rest of us. Halle notes that there is a widespread appreciation for landscapes across different social classes. In contrast to the public space questionnaires, which respondents to Halle 1993, their answers to are not given in public places, they have to consider ethnicity and race when choosing works for their home.
Simkus (and Peterson) found unexpectedly that high-status occupational group members still prefer classical music, but Simkus also discovered that their preferences for other music are much more varied. A third of respondents in high-status occupations said they preferred classical music but a larger percentage prefer Western and country music. It is more distinctive that people of high status are more involved in cultural activities and have a wider selection of music tastes than those with lower status. Peterson & Simkus describe them as “omnivores” in contrast to lower-status groups, who are more selective about music and are therefore called “univores.” (Peterson, Simkus 1993, 152-86).
The omnivore’s behavior is strongly reminiscent of Norbert Elias’ (1978) early figurative analysis of Renaissance behavior. The period when Europe had more options for travel and feudalism was declining, centralized states and monarchical systems began to emerge. Young men and women of promise from isolated areas were attracted to places that offered new opportunities. They had to be able to act differently in court and before new audiences than they were in the traditional worlds where they were secure. The ideal of behavior was established by Cosmopolitanism and its idea of Renaissance Man. This industry spawned a number of books on etiquette and epic poetry as well as literature from authorities like Chaucer, Chaucer and Erasmus (Elias, 1978). After the Renaissance idea of fame, it was a disaster to be called a country bumpkin. Bourdieu points to these characteristics in secondary and higher education. This cultural structure survived despite the fact that science and technology have been lauded more heavily in the twentieth century (Bourdieu 1985).
4. But what is art?
In contrast to the past, art historians have assumed the categories of art accepted by the art community as the norm. But sociologists are now studying how art classifications are built. Some sociologists see more plausible reasons to question the establishment of artistic canons, like Bruno Latour (1987), a sociologist of science.
Bourdieu claims that Art is a stake at the competitive arena that pervades much social life. Bourdieu also contends that it is important for artists’ supporters, patrons collectors dealers and writers, as well as for those who support them. Current times have seen art museums including those in the arts are showing works previously not considered Art, due to market pressures (collectors included), political action, and pressure from potential publics. African carvings for example were previously consigned mostly to ethnological museums; their admission into art museums is now a downward spiral in prestige (Anne E. Bowler as quoted in Zolberg und Cherbo 1977:11-36); and women are getting recognition they would otherwise be denied (Zolberg 1997:1-8). The worlds of culture and the arts have seen new forms of music such as Rap and Rock-n-roll emerge from the combination of technological advances and business developments. In order to allow works to become public, statutes were enacted in areas such as copyright laws.
It took more than a century for high art to be constructed. However, it has been broken many times since then (Circle 1993;12). Over the past 30 years, the wall that separated commercial art from “disinterested”, has been thrown into disarray. In Western culture, Latin American, Asian, African, and other visual and musical motifs have gained greater legitimacy and increased audiences (Zolberg 1997 :53-72). Furthermore, any type of art, whether commercially successful or not, can be distributed through commercial distribution channels. This helps to understand the processes of democraticization.
21st Century Prospects for the Arts and American Sociology
The sociological study of culture, arts and society has evolved into a major part of sociologists’ serious business. The arts, if not central, are legitimately scholarly and not a frivolous topic. This flowering took place despite American social science’s anti-aesthetic approach and general unease between the arts and social science. The arts’ place in social science disciplines is still tenuous. It needs to be defended as an intellectual enterprise every so often. This can partly be explained by the fact that since the Renaissance, the artist as an actor has been the center of arts. A tradition that spans many centuries emphasizes his (rarely, her) uniqueness and the work he/she created. The notion of an individual agency is compatible in part with psychology but not so well with sociology’s collective understanding of behavior. This perception is the basis of the collective view of art (Becker 1982) as well as the emphasis by sociologists on creating culture rather than producing it. In a discipline where art can be reduced to a product of general structures or processes, it is important to retain and reinsert the individual artist as an artistic agent. This has both ethical and intellectual significance. The place of traditional fine arts is not being given the same importance as science and theory.
This observation is confirmed by two edited books published under ASA Culture Section. The edited collection by Diana Crane (1994), contains an essay on arts. Elizabeth Long’s second volume (Long 1997) does not contain any chapters on the fine arts. On the contrary, the third and last collection of Culture Section sponsored essays indicates that the arts are now a prominent part of sociological research (Mark D. Jacobs Hanrahan 2005). The coeditors are rehearsing the past decades of American sociology, which was marked by “the cultural change,” the shift in the way culture is viewed. This refers to the abandonment of the functionalist emphasis that culture must bring about homogeneous consensus. Instead, cultural turn supporters sought out diversity and heterogeneity as they attempted to introduce pluralism in society and tolerance for differences. The goal is not uniformity but more diversity.
The concept of organic” (as Durkheim described it) is to provide the basis for social solidarity. However, it does not promote conformity. Instead, it encourages individual human agency.
The cultural change had challenged the elite status that high culture enjoyed by recognising talent and striving within all social groups. Cultural openness was attractive, but it was often reduced back to endless debates over ideology, functionalism, essentialism, and constructivism. Jacobs, Hanrahan (2005) introduced a new way of looking at cultural sociology. They refer “this new conception of culture to as. . . “An aesthetic one, which allows possibilities to intensify and reimagine the experience civic life” (p.12). Their new approaches to societal existence are a departure from a static, if not rapidly changing, view. They emphasize the dynamicity of human intervention and the impact they have on existing structures. The new aesthetic concept helps, rather than these important changes in the more that two dozen essays from American, Canadian and European sociologists to turn towards normative commitments to the revival civic discourse in relation legality and justice, the politics and recognition and “the possibilities of ordinary experience” Jacobs & Hanrahan (2005).
Democratization and Diversity
Peterson’s innovation and others’ efforts in creating culture school will be driving research in American idea networks. This approach allows scholars the opportunity to expand their questioning and consider the effect of changing ethnicities on the creation and reception of arts. New laws and population movements have changed the sources of immigration. They give us unprecedented access to the cultural interactions that exist with Anglo-centric choices. The demands for elite culture access now extend beyond those from modest socioeconomic backgrounds. Each one of these could have aesthetic implications.
It is imperative that scholarship moves more clearly outside the American academic world into the larger international arena due to the extraordinary transformation in the international arena. This is crucial in a world where many of the issues that were once primarily national are now shared. As with other intellectual disciplines, the arts are difficult to understand in isolation from one society. Even though it might still be possible study issues such a arts censorship from within one society, it’s more likely that global political transformations could open up new conflicts.
Technology innovations in cyberspace as well as computer technology are a significant threat to the preservation of a single society. They allow for new artistic expressions and enhance efforts to evade control of art content. They provide new ways for artistic dissemination and can also replace direct contact to the museum’s art storehouses. This suggests that sociology of arts studies will begin to take shape in this context. Cultural sociologists are able to contribute through theory, practice and theory to the dangerous and vital debates about “identity,” such as ethnicity, gender or race. It is clear that understanding social processes and emerging structures requires more than just asking questions about meaning, identity, or value. American sociologists have begun to challenge the narrow confines of American parochialism, and are now exploring the unknown terrain of global social processes.
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