Success and failure of the sociology of culture? Bringing the arts back

Abstract

This articles brings up the most recent, internal discussions among researchers in the field of the sociology of arts, more precisely the thiking of experts who participated in a forum of culture organized in 2001. In her writing, Vera Zolberg accentuates, overall, the need for sociology of art to retain both its humanistic and scientific roots. She reminds that sociology of culture has developed from the sociology of art in recent decades. Next, she summarizes the tendencies and interests of researchers in the forum, by showing the fluidity of its possibilities and creative capacities. She mentions the most recent production in the field, proving that aesthetic elements play a crucial part in the sociological studies about the arts. According to Vera Zolberg, it is time to bring the arts back.

Art at the crossroads: The arts in society and the sociology of art

“…Zolberg has been a particularly leading figure in this area, whose Constructing a Sociology of the Arts (Zolberg, 1990) constitutes a classic text in the discipline. More recently, Zolberg (2005b) has called for "bringing the arts back in," a phrase by which she draws attention to the need for more attention to the arts in cultural sociology, as well as an approach to the study 32 of the art capable of addressing the aesthetic dimension. 32 For many scholars of the arts today, the cultural turn implies a narrowing of the intellectual gulf between positivistic and interpretive approaches as an integral part of what is means to study art sociologically.…”

“…At the same time, and until fairly recently, sociology as a discipline has paid relatively little attention to the study of the arts (Lang 2000;Zolberg, 1990Zolberg, , 2005b. As Lang (2000, p. 172) reports, "As recently as 1968 the term sociology of art was not indexed in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, which sought to sum and assess the thinking and accomplishments in the rapidly expanding social sciences of the post-World War II period."…”

Sociology of art and social network analysis

“…Como lo subrayan Pierre-Michel Menger y Jean-Claude Passeron (1994) la disciplina debe su desarrollo tanto en Francia como en Estados Unidos a la adopción de métodos e instrumentos de encuesta y herramientas conceptuales de otras sociologías regionales.Las investigaciones se multiplican a lo largo de los años 80 lo que ancla la constitución de la especialidad. Prueba de ello es la emergencia de comités de investigación dedicados a la "movilización considerable de los sociólogos implicados" en Estados Unidos como lo recuerda VeraZolberg (2005) y que conducen finalmente a la creación en 1980 de una sección dedicada a la Culture en la American Sociological Association (ASA). En Francia la creación en el seno de la Association Internationale des Sociologues de Langue Française (AISLF) de la sección de Sociologie de l'art en 1979 marca el principio de la institucionalización de la especialidad.Más allá del número creciente de investigadores y del florecimiento de las investigaciones en el ámbito de la sociología de la cultura y del arte -ya sea sobre la producción, la difusión, la recepción y el consumo de las obras, la producción del valor y la reputación o las políticas culturales -este decenio ve la publicación a ambos lados del Atlántico de dos obras fundamentales que estructurarán de forma duradera la producción y los debates científicos en el área de las artes y delconsumo cultural: Art worlds de Howard S. Becker y La distinction de Pierre Bourdieu.…”