Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 What is art? What is the sociology of art?
- 2 Why sociologists have neglected the arts and why this is changing
- 3 Studying the art object sociologically
- 4 The art object as social process
- 5 Are artists born or made?
- 6 Structural support, audiences, and social uses of art
- 7 How the arts change and why
- 8 Where does the sociology of art stand, and where is it going?
- References
- Index
1 - What is art? What is the sociology of art?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 January 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 What is art? What is the sociology of art?
- 2 Why sociologists have neglected the arts and why this is changing
- 3 Studying the art object sociologically
- 4 The art object as social process
- 5 Are artists born or made?
- 6 Structural support, audiences, and social uses of art
- 7 How the arts change and why
- 8 Where does the sociology of art stand, and where is it going?
- References
- Index
Summary
I want to talk about the arts in relation to the mystery that surrounds them, not as a problem to be cleared up but as the very condition in which they appear at all. In that sense, mystery is to be acknowledged, not resolved or dispelled.
Denis Donoghue, The Arts Without Mystery (1983): 11What I have said about art worlds can be said about any kind of social world, when put more generally; ways of talking about art, generalized, are ways of talking about society and social process generally.
Howard S. Becker, Art Worlds (1982): 368Sociology and art make an odd couple.
Pierre Bourdieu, Questions de Sociologie (1980): 207Asking what art is may seem at first sight disingenuous, since its meaning is usually taken for granted. But modern Western societies have been witnessing such radical changes in the forms and content of art, and questions about what to include or exclude from the category of art arise so frequently, that they obtrude in any sociological analysis of art. Moreover, even when there seems to be consensus about art forms, new claims for inclusion are made that seem designed to shake the confidence of even seasoned observers.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Constructing a Sociology of the Arts , pp. 1 - 28Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990