Constructing a Sociology of the Arts

Constructing a Sociology of the Arts
Author: Vera L. Zolberg
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 1990-02-23
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9780521359597

At a time when a pile of bricks is displayed in a museum, when music is composed for performance underwater, and the boundaries between popular and fine art are fluid, conventional understandings of art are strained in describing what art is, what it includes or excludes, whether and how it should be evaluated, and what importance should be assigned the arts in society. In this book, Vera Zolberg examines diverse theoretical approaches to the study of the arts. Ranging over humanistic and social scientific views representing a variety of scholarly traditions, American and European, she then develops a sociological approach that evaluates the institutional, economic, and political influences on the creation of art, while also affirming the importance of the question of artistic quality. The author examines the arts in the social contexts in which they are created and appreciated, focusing on the ways in which people become artists, the institutions in which their careers develop, the supports and pressures they face, the publics they need to please, and the political forces with which they must contend. Particular subjects covered include the process by which works are created and "re-created" at different times, with changed meanings, and for new social uses; the role of the audience in the realization of artistic experiences; the social consequences of taste preferences; the reasons for change in artistic styles and for the coexistence of many art forms and styles.

Sociology of the Arts

Sociology of the Arts
Author: Victoria D. Alexander
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 358
Release: 2020-10-19
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0470672889

Explains the key concepts, theories, and studies in the sociology of the arts—the fully updated new edition of the classic textbook Sociology of the Arts is a comprehensive yet accessible review of sociological approaches to studying the fine, popular, and folk arts. Integrating scholarly literature, theoretical models, and empirical studies, this authoritative textbook provides balanced coverage of a broad range of essential topics—enabling a deeper understanding of the field as a whole. Throughout the text, numerous real-world case studies reinforce key concepts, stimulate classroom discussion, and encourage students to contemplate abstract theoretical issues central to the relationship between art and society. Now in its second edition, this bestselling volume features fully revised content that reflects the most recent literature and research in the field. New discussion on the production and the consumption of culture are complemented by fresh perspectives on changes in the social world such as the rise of the internet and digital media. Updated chapters offer insights into social boundaries and embodiment in the arts, emplacement, materiality, the social construction of art and aesthetics, and more. Exploring how art is created, distributed, received, and consumed, this textbook: Explores both classic work and new approaches in the sociology of the arts Features case studies and discussion questions on art forms including popular music, film, romance novels, visual arts, and classical music Discusses the meaning of artistic objects and why interpretations of art vary Examines the ways art intersects with race, gender, sexuality, and class Includes photographs, tables and figures, and a comprehensive reference list Written by a leading scholar in the field, Sociology of the Arts: Exploring Fine and Popular Forms, Second Edition is an ideal textbook for advanced undergraduate and graduate courses on sociology of art and culture, media studies, anthropology of art, arts management, and the social history of art, and is a useful reference for established scholars studying any aspect of sociology of the arts.

Sociology as an Art Form

Sociology as an Art Form
Author: Robert Nisbet
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2017-09-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1351488929

""One of our most original social thinkers,"" according to the New York Times, Robert Nisbet offers a new approach to sociology. He shows that sociology is indeed an art form, one that has a strong kinship with literature, painting, Romantic history, and philosophy in the nineteenth century, the age in which sociology came into full stature. Sociology as an Art Form is an introduction for the initiated and the uninitiated in so-ciology.Nisbet explains the degree to which sociology draws from the same creative impulses, themes and styles (rooted in history), and actual modes of representa-tion found in the arts. He shows how the founding sociologists such as Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and Simmel constructed portraits (of the bourgeois, the worker, and the intellectual) and landscapes (of the masses, the poor, the factory system), all reflecting and contribut-ing to identical portraits and landscapes found in the literature and art of the period. In addition to marking the similarities between sociologists' and artists' efforts to depict motion or movement, Nisbet emphasizes the relation of sociology to the fin de siecle in art and literature, with examples such as alienation, anomie, and degeneration. He creates an elegant, brilliantly reasoned appraisal of sociology's contribution to modern culture.This book will be of interest to sociologists, artists, and anyone interested in how the fields relate to one another.

Sociology Looks at the Arts

Sociology Looks at the Arts
Author: Julia Rothenberg
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2014-02-05
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317913280

Sociology Looks at the Arts is intended as a concise yet nuanced introduction to the sociology of art. This book will provide a foundation for teaching and discussing a range of questions and perspectives used by sociologists who study the relationship between the arts – including music, performing arts, visual arts, literature, film and new media – and society.

Constructing a Sociology of Translation

Constructing a Sociology of Translation
Author: Michaela Wolf
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2007
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 9789027216823

The view of translation as a socially regulated activity has opened up a broad field of research in the last few years. This volume deals with central questions of the new domain and aims to contribute to the conceptualisation of a general sociology of translation. Interdisciplinary in approach, it discusses the role of major representatives of sociology like Pierre Bourdieu, Bruno Latour, Bernard Lahire, Anthony Giddens or Niklas Luhmann in establishing a theoretical framework for a sociology of translation. Drawing on methodologies from sociology and integrating them into translation studies, the book questions some of the established categories in this discipline and calls for a redefinition of long-assumed principles. The contributions show the social involvement of translation in various fields and focus especially on the translator s position in an emerging sociology of translation, Bourdieu s influence in conceptualising this new sub-discipline, methodological questions and a sociologically oriented meta-discussion of translation studies.

Aesthetics and the Sociology of Art

Aesthetics and the Sociology of Art
Author: Janet Wolff
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 121
Release: 2021-04-29
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1000376745

First published in 1983, Aesthetics and the Sociology of Art provides a lucid account of two divergent tendencies in the study of aesthetics. At the one extreme, traditional aestheticians have assumed that art and literature are wholly independent, following only the laws and inspirations of artists and artistic movements, and that the question of aesthetic value is accordingly unproblematic. At the other extreme, some sociologists have treated works of art as no more than manifestations of the socio-economic circumstances which produce them, arguing that aesthetic value is therefore entirely relative matter. Janet Wolff shows how both the extreme positions are untenable, and argues convincingly that we must accept that the conceptions and criteria of aesthetic value are socially constructed and inevitably ideological, while stopping short of the reductionist alternative which fails to recognise the irreducible questions of pleasure and of aesthetic discourse. This book provides an invaluably clear guide both to old debates and to otherwise obscure modern controversies, which will be welcomed both by students and scholars in the sociology of art, in aesthetics, in art history, and in literary criticism.

The Sociology of Art

The Sociology of Art
Author: Arnold Hauser
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 776
Release: 1982
Genre: Arts and society
ISBN: 9780710092311

Sociology of Art

Sociology of Art
Author: Jeremy Tanner
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2004-06-02
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1134393296

Introducing the fundamental theories and debates in the sociology of art, this broad ranging book, the only edited reader of the sociology of art available, uses extracts from the core foundational and most influential contemporary writers in the field. As such it is essential reading both for students of the sociology of art, and of art history. Divided into five sections, it explores the following key themes: * classical sociological theory and the sociology of art * the social production of art * the sociology of the artist * museums and the social construction of high culture * sociology aesthetic form and the specificity of art. With the addition of an introductory essay that contextualizes the readings within the traditions of sociology and art history, and draws fascinating parallels between the origins and development of these two disciplines, this book opens up a productive interdisciplinary dialogue between sociology and art history as well as providing a fascinating introduction to the subject.

Myth, Meaning and Performance

Myth, Meaning and Performance
Author: Ronald Eyerman
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 173
Release: 2015-12-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1317255755

The cultural and performative turns in social theory have enlivened sociology. For the first time these new developments are fully integrated into new approaches to the sociology of the arts in this important new book. Building on the established research into art worlds, what is interesting for the new sociology of the arts, understood in the broad sense to include popular culture as well the classical focus on music, painting, and literature, is the relationship between art works and meaning, myth, and performance. Also reflected in these rich essays, which range from Beethoven to John Lennon to Chinese avant garde artists, is the lived experience of the artist and its impact on the process of creation and innovation.

The Sociology of Arts and Markets

The Sociology of Arts and Markets
Author: Andrea Glauser
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages:
Release: 2020-05-28
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9783030390129

This edited collection offers an in-depth analysis of the complex and changing relationship between the arts and their markets. Highly relevant to almost any sociological exploration of the arts, this interaction has long been approached and studied. However, rapid and far-reaching economic changes have recently occurred. Through a number of new empirical case studies across multiple artistic, historic and geographical settings, this volume illuminates the developments of various art markets, and their sociological analyses. The contributions include chapters on artistic recognition and exclusion, integration and self-representation in the art market, sociocultural changes, the role of the gallery owner, and collectives, rankings, and constraints across the cultural industries. Drawing on research from Japan, Switzerland, France, Italy, China, the US, UK, and more, this rich and global perspective challenges current debates surrounding art and markets, and will be an important reference point for scholars and students across the sociology of arts, cultural sociology and culture economy.