Culture and the Arts: From Art Worlds to Arts-in-Action

Abstract

Through its embrace of the “cultural turn” and the “practice turn” in cultural sociology, recent work in the subfield of arts sociology has helped to advance our understanding of the role of culture in social life through its focus on arts-in-action. Empirically, this focus grew out of earlier work in the production and consumption of the arts, while, theoretically, it resonates with traditions within ethnomethodology, cognitive sociology, and the sociology of science and technology. The authors describe how new work in arts sociology unearths and develops our understanding of aesthetic consciousness, the tacit and often embodied bases of action, cognition, and engagement with cultural forms. This recent emphasis on materials and actions in turn permits critique of rule-based and more overtly cognitive models of agency structure. It also leads some of its proponents into areas that would not normally be viewed as topics for the field.

Scandal and the Work of Art: The Nude in an Aesthetically Inflected Sociology of the Arts

“…Expanded to art-in-action (Acord and DeNora, 2008), this work shares affinities with Hennion's (2007) theory of attachments, in which taste is considered an activity, an embodied coproduction between situated tasters ("amateurs") and the constructed properties of objects of taste. Both Hennion and DeNora, in different ways, talk about art object as not having "effects" but nevertheless, using DeNora's language, affording some kinds of interactions or uses more than others.…”

Beyond the Head: The Practical Work of Curating Contemporary Art

“…While the sociology of the arts continues to be driven in the main by the "explicit" conceptualization of culture as a recorded product or symbolic good, the specific study of the mediating activities surrounding explicit cultural forms is a window onto broader sociological conceptions of implicit culture (Acord and DeNora 2008). As demonstrated in this brief literature review, the study of knowledge production by mediators in art worlds (i.e., what informs curators' decision-making) sheds light on how culture operates in general (i.e., to inform general patterns of individual and social meaning-making).…”

“…Put otherwise, objects "afford" certain opportunities for use (e.g., a spherical object is easier to roll than a square) (Gibson 1986(Gibson [1979). While objects do not "cause" action, per say, it is through their access and usei.e., through the ways that the opportunities they may afford are made manifest through action-that they can be understood to enable forms of activity (Acord and DeNora 2008). To look at artistic mediation in action, I will use a visual, microethnographic study of elite curators of contemporary art as they engage in exhibition-making (i.e., the making of "explicit culture" in the form of temporary exhibitions) to examine what and how cultural resources are drawn on to establish and communicate its meaning (i.e., the workings of "implicit" culture).…”

“The Spider Is Alive”: Reassessing Becker's Theory of Artistic Conventions through Southern Italian Music

“…Social constructionists emphasize the active, ongoing, processual construction of musical meaning, as opposed to the idea that emotions supposedly reside independently within music itself. We impose meaning on music not only in its creation but also through practices associated with music (such as performance and listening), rather than music imposing its meaning on us (Acord and DeNora 2008; Martin 1995).…”

“…I contend that these neo‐ tarantismo cultural activists assemble new potentialities out of the cultural detritus of southern Italy, as a new generation shapes the region's history to resonate with their present circumstances. Traditional music is thus a historical resource that serves to “anchor” social action (Swidler 2001, in Acord and DeNora 2008), grounding and contextualizing the artistic appropriation of such material.…”