Abstract:This article considers affinities between artistic and scientific evaluations. Objectivity has been widely studied, as it is thought the foundation for legitimate judgments of truth. Yet we know comparatively little about subjectivity apart from its characterization as the obstacle to objective knowledge. In this article, I examine how subjectivity operates as an epistemic virtue in artistic evaluation, which is an especially interesting field for study given the accepted relativism of taste. Data are taken fr… Show more
“…What critics describe here confirms what Hanrahan (2013) discovers in her study of music critics and what Chong (2013) finds about literary reviewing: that art criticism is an evidencebased analysis, "a survey" (Dewey 1934, 320). By providing evidence, critics allow their justifications to be tested by peers.…”
Section: Meaning-orientedsupporting
confidence: 84%
“…Art critics employ a variety of customary rules in order to legitimize their judgment (Chong 2013); for example, critics interrogate their artistic experiences by turning their immediate, spontaneous reactions into an object of scrutiny. The strategy in question is relevant not only to the individual judgment but is also part of group reviewing, where self-interrogation is required from a reviewer by her peers, who expect her to translate her emotions into a reasoned argument.…”
Section: Substantive Rules Of Deliberation: the Imperative To Justifymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…De Nooy 1999; Janssen 1997), or music (Dowd et al 2002)-the most recent studies have been engaged in exploring standards and practices of evaluation using an inductive approach. This new work in cultural sociology includes, for example, ethnographic research that concerns how artistic tastes are formed and performed in social interactions (Benzecry 2011;Hennion 2001) or how shared aesthetic judgments tie people together (Wohl 2015), and interview-based analysis of critics' legitimization strategies (Chong 2013). These studies meaningfully contribute to our understanding of how experts and amateurs interact with works of art and how these interactions help them place themselves within larger social groups.…”
Researchers have studied how artistic judgments are made in group interactions, but much remains to be known about artistic evaluations in decision-making settings where agreements need to be reached. This paper analyzes panel evaluations of artistic productions, drawing on interviews with panelists from a Polish theater competition. The article focuses on two aspects of panel decision-making: (1) concepts of artistic value that members of expert panels apply when evaluating art productions; and (2) interpersonal rules of deliberation, that is, norms and patterns of behavior that allow panelists to attach legitimacy to the decision-making process and its outcomes. The authors find that panel evaluations are based on a combination of two different logics (content and context logic) and develop a matrix of values the conceptualizes artistic standards and their applications. Furthermore, the authors find that panelists follow three types of interpersonal rules for decision-making: substantive, procedural, and contextual.
“…What critics describe here confirms what Hanrahan (2013) discovers in her study of music critics and what Chong (2013) finds about literary reviewing: that art criticism is an evidencebased analysis, "a survey" (Dewey 1934, 320). By providing evidence, critics allow their justifications to be tested by peers.…”
Section: Meaning-orientedsupporting
confidence: 84%
“…Art critics employ a variety of customary rules in order to legitimize their judgment (Chong 2013); for example, critics interrogate their artistic experiences by turning their immediate, spontaneous reactions into an object of scrutiny. The strategy in question is relevant not only to the individual judgment but is also part of group reviewing, where self-interrogation is required from a reviewer by her peers, who expect her to translate her emotions into a reasoned argument.…”
Section: Substantive Rules Of Deliberation: the Imperative To Justifymentioning
confidence: 99%
“…De Nooy 1999; Janssen 1997), or music (Dowd et al 2002)-the most recent studies have been engaged in exploring standards and practices of evaluation using an inductive approach. This new work in cultural sociology includes, for example, ethnographic research that concerns how artistic tastes are formed and performed in social interactions (Benzecry 2011;Hennion 2001) or how shared aesthetic judgments tie people together (Wohl 2015), and interview-based analysis of critics' legitimization strategies (Chong 2013). These studies meaningfully contribute to our understanding of how experts and amateurs interact with works of art and how these interactions help them place themselves within larger social groups.…”
Researchers have studied how artistic judgments are made in group interactions, but much remains to be known about artistic evaluations in decision-making settings where agreements need to be reached. This paper analyzes panel evaluations of artistic productions, drawing on interviews with panelists from a Polish theater competition. The article focuses on two aspects of panel decision-making: (1) concepts of artistic value that members of expert panels apply when evaluating art productions; and (2) interpersonal rules of deliberation, that is, norms and patterns of behavior that allow panelists to attach legitimacy to the decision-making process and its outcomes. The authors find that panel evaluations are based on a combination of two different logics (content and context logic) and develop a matrix of values the conceptualizes artistic standards and their applications. Furthermore, the authors find that panelists follow three types of interpersonal rules for decision-making: substantive, procedural, and contextual.
“…In addition, they may be influenced by factors other than the quality of the work reviewed, such as publisher status and author actions ( Van Rees, 1987;Janssen, 1998). In order to reduce the chance of introducing biases, reviewers may avoid others' reviews of the same book, provide a rational explanation for their decision, and check their work for fairness (Chong, 2013(Chong, , 2015.…”
There are known gender differences in book preferences in terms of both genre and author gender but their extent and causes are not well understood. It is unclear whether reader preferences for author genders occur within any or all genres and whether readers evaluate books differently based on author genders within specific genres. This article exploits a major source of informal book reviews, the Goodreads.com website, to assess the influence of reader and author genders on book evaluations within genres. It uses a quantitative analysis of 201,560 books and their reviews, focusing on the top 50 user-specified genres. The results show strong gender differences in the ratings given by reviewers to books within genres, such as female reviewers rating contemporary romance more highly, with males preferring short stories. For most common book genres, reviewers give higher ratings to books authored by their own gender, confirming that gender bias is not confined to the literary elite. The main exception is the comic book, for which male reviewers prefer female authors, despite their scarcity. A word frequency analysis suggested that authors wrote, and reviewers valued, gendered aspects of books within a genre. For example, relationships and romance were disproportionately mentioned by women in mystery and fantasy novels. These results show that, perhaps for the first time, it is possible to get large scale evidence about the reception of books by typical readers, if they post reviews online.
“…Finally, I suspect that the ability to switch between systems of valuation—and knowing how and when this is acceptable—is a valuable symbolic resource for cultural intermediaries. Peer reviewers make separate judgments of taste and expertise (Lamont ) and book critics evaluate works based on distinct “civilian” and “critical” readings (Chong ). Although the latter types of evaluation are considered intellectually “pure” because they are distanced from personal preferences, they are also a product of social experience.…”
Section: The Social Determinants Of Aesthetic Dispositionsmentioning
Scholars argue that cultural intermediaries-that is, people that sell popular cultureaccomplish their work through an affinity between their personal taste and that of their consumers. Yet, studies have not examined the social origins of such taste. To address this gap, I use qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze data collected from a probability sample of U.S. advertising practitioners. I find that although the tastes of cultural intermediaries are socially stratified, they are not consistently the "middlebrow" taste long associated with such industries. Additionally, by incorporating a two-dimensional model of class and focusing on how cultural goods are consumed, I extend knowledge on taste more generally.
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