Materiality, iconic nature, and Albert Bierstadt’s “Great Pictures”

Malczewski, Eric

doi:10.1057/s41290-016-0011-9

Cited by 4 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Deacon, 1997). The constitutive and reproductive importance of the symbolic element in material reality is at the center of recent studies in materiality or what Jeffrey Alexander calls (in a most Durkheimian manner) "iconic consciousness" (2008; 2010; 2012; see also Bartmanski, 2012Bartmanski, , 2014Bartmanski & Alexander, 2012;Malczewski, 2016). The implications for studies of nations and nationalism appear clear (Rose-Greenland, 2013;Verdery, 1999;Zubrzycki, 2011).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Durkheim and the Nation

Malczewski¹

2019

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This article elucidates key elements of the Durkheimian framework that bear specifically on studies of nations and nationalism. Durkheim's theory of collective representations and his general theoretical view of the nature of human experience and the constitutive forces of social life are shown to offer leverage on problems of contemporary general interest to sociology. A Durkheimian approach to the study of nations and nationalism centers on three key elements: i) the definition of the form of collective consciousness characterizing the putative national unit; ii) a focus on the historical or genealogical development of the national unit; and, iii) the analysis of this unit in its theoretical aspect as a set of collective representations. Seeing nations and nationalism from a Durkheimian standpoint affords an understanding of these phenomena in terms of what they suggest about the nature of human social order as such. The contributions of Anthony Smith and Liah Greenfeld are discussed in light of this framework so as to make manifest the enduring significance of Durkheim's thought.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Durkheim and the Nation

Malczewski¹

2019

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“…Binarisms abound in social theory, of course; sociologies of the arts that draw, for example, on structuralist and post-structuralist approaches draw their binarism not from competitive market assumptions but from their semiotic heritage. These analyses, with their emphasis on meaning in cultural fields, show how aesthetic experience is intimately tied to moral life (Malczewski 2016), outline the ways that artistic legitimation taps into affective and meaningful foundations (McKernan 2018), and demonstrate the ways that metaphorical meaningmaking allows actors to navigate local and global markets (Kharchenkova 2018). And contemporary analyses often aim to bring interpretive methods into conversation with field-theoretical and ecological approaches (Alexander and Bowler 2018).…”

Section: Culture Unboundmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black Hole Suns: Binarism and Gravity in Cultural Fields

Gerber

2019

Cult. Unbound

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Sociologicial analyses of artistic practice have long drawn on theoretical traditions grounded in binaries and dualisms. Such analytical strategies, exemplified here by field theoretical approaches, center art objects and their movements in and across markets, where binaristic visions of art worlds do offer significant leverage. But when the analyst moves away from markets for art objects and looks to artistic practices the binaristic lens provides, at best, a blurred image with meaningful blind spots. This article suggests an alternative vision of artistic practice-one based on gravity rather than polarity-that captures the ways individuals and their actions make sense in a specific universe of meaning without forcing them into fundamentally competitive and economistic relationships. It leverages findings enabled by a unique sampling strategy in a four year study of visual artists in the United States to illuminate some limitations of binary theoretical frameworks, and outlines a generative alternative to dualism that promotes new analytical and theoretical directions for sociological analyses of artists and artistic practice. This alternative model provides new leverage on four persistent issues in analyses of artistic work: cultural change in occupational fields; actors' attempts to manage overlapping but incommensurate forms of recognition, reputation, attention, and success; the persistent hegemony of markets for objects in both vernacular and sociological understandings of artistic practice; and questions of visibility and legitimacy central to understanding boundary formation and boundary work in creative fields. The gravitational metaphor promotes a distict set of strategies for the study of artistic work as well as other nontraditional occupations.

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“…These analyses, with their emphasis on meaning in cultural fields, show how aesthetic experience is intimately tied to moral life (Malczewski 2016), outline the ways that artistic legitimation taps into affective and meaningful foundations (McKernan 2018), and demonstrate the ways that metaphorical meaningmaking allows actors to navigate local and global markets (Kharchenkova 2018). And contemporary analyses often aim to bring interpretive methods into conversation with fieldtheoretical and ecological approaches (Alexander and Bowler 2018).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Black Hole Suns: Binarism and Gravity in Cultural Fields

Gerber¹

2017

Preprint

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Materiality, iconic nature, and Albert Bierstadt’s “Great Pictures”

Cited by 4 publications

References 39 publications

Durkheim and the Nation

Durkheim and the Nation

Black Hole Suns: Binarism and Gravity in Cultural Fields

Black Hole Suns: Binarism and Gravity in Cultural Fields

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