scholarly journals Of Sound and Flavour – Revisiting the Notion of Material for the Cultural Sociological Analysis of Art Domains

2020 ◽  
pp. 174997552096960
Author(s):  
Isabelle Darmon
Keyword(s):  
Joint Attention ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Sociology Of Art ◽  
Domains Of Life ◽  
Modes Of Engagement

This article proposes a possible path for a materialist cultural sociology of art, focusing on the dynamics of art(s) domains and harnessing Adorno’s dialectical notion of material anew. I seek to establish links between dynamics of the arts domains and the fostering of specific modes of engagement with them – and, potentially, stances in other domains of life. I argue that a return to Adorno’s notion of (musical) material allows for such connections to be made: the ‘material’ is where the dynamics of the specific arts domains are inscribed; but it is also what is engaged with – by composers and artists as well as by interpreters, performers and publics. A dialectical material lens seems well suited for the critical study of the dynamic of arts domains in the 20th and 21st centuries, given the multiple artistic ‘breaks’ proclaimed. Focusing on some well-known movements in music and cuisine which sought to ‘emancipate’, ‘democratise’, and ‘diversify’ sounds and flavours, I analyse the processes through which they produced sound and flavour anew. I suggest that sounds and flavours themselves have become the carriers of logics relevant to music and cuisine, and that they have come to imperiously command modes of commitment (from composers and chefs, performers, listeners and diners alike) that evince specific stances. Through this necessarily sketchy survey, I provide indications that broader, cross-cutting cultural dynamics may be at stake. Overall, I seek to make clear what theoretical steps are afforded by the joint attention to materiality and the dynamic of art domains.

Continuity in Discontinuity: The Recurrent Motif of Cultural Autonomy in the Development of Czech Sociology of Culture

2021 ◽  
pp. 174997552199963
Author(s):  
Marek Skovajsa
Keyword(s):  
Critical Mass ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Sociology Of Culture ◽  
Relative Autonomy ◽  
Cultural Autonomy ◽  
Heterogeneous Landscape ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Prague School ◽  
Art And Society ◽  
Recurrent Motif

This article analyses the development of the sociology of culture in Czechia. Its focus is on the sociology of the arts and cultural sociology, which, it is argued, are connected through the notion of the relative autonomy of cultural structures. While the Czech sociology of culture may have been rendered less dynamic by the lack of a critical mass of sociologists specialising in this area and by the country’s frequent political upheavals and its isolation from the international circulation of ideas, it has experienced moments of considerable vitality. Three periods in the development of the field are identified here, each of them marked by a movement toward a stronger and more sociologically adequate conceptualisation of cultural autonomy: (1) from the diffuse culturalism of the field’s founding figures to the functionalist theory of the interwar sociologist Inocenc Arnošt Bláha, whose view of the relationship between art and society was influenced by the work of the Prague School of Structuralism; (2) from the cultural reductionism of Marxist-Leninist theory after 1948 to the eclectic sociology of culture and the arts of the late socialist period; (3) from the demise of this transitional form of a sociology of culture in the 1990s to the increasingly internationalised but also heterogeneous landscape of the 2010s, which is constituted by a semi-institutionalised centre of cultural sociology at Brno and small groups or individuals in Prague and other academic locales. The thread of continuity in an otherwise discontinuous historical development is found in the recurrent motif of the relative autonomy of culture which the Czech sociology of culture absorbed through its exposure to art and literary theory.

Sociological analysis on the discourse of crisis in art

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
İnan Keser ◽  
Nimet Keser
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
The State ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Historical Continuity ◽  
Sociology Of Art ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
In The Beginning

For about a hundred and fifty years, it has been continuously expressed that art has been facing a deadly crisis and this crisis roots itself from the reality that there exists no concrete answer to the question of ‘what is art’. However related with the non-existence of consensus on what art is, it’s nothing more than a weak understanding to claim that it is impossible to talk about art. Thus, it can be acknowledged that the continuous repetition of the question of ‘what is art’ and non-existence of consensus on this subject is a clear proof of existence of a sharp struggle in art; and the state of non-consensus and historical continuity of the struggle can be acknowledged as the main source of dynamism of art. For this reason, in this study, it is acknowledged that non-existence of a concrete definition of art is a historical incident; and this controversial state about what art is and calling it the crisis of art itself was made the subject of a sociological analysis. In this analysis, it is concluded that; the actual crisis is not the crisis of art but that of aesthetics’; and that this crisis roots itself from the replacement of aesthetics regime (which dominated art for a very long time) with the non-aesthetic ‘artist regime’ in the beginning of 20th century and the nonfunctioning of aesthetics by this new regime. Keywords: art, sociology of art, aesthetics, art regime, artistic change.

Toward a Cultural Sociology of the Consumption of “Fantasy Football Hooliganism”

2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Poulton
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Conceptual Framework ◽  
Digital Games ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Entertainment Industry ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Related Disorder ◽  
Fantasy Football

Football hooliganism has a wide appeal within popular culture. Numerous books, films, documentaries, digital games, and even stage plays have featured representations of the phenomenon. All are presentations of what could be termed “fantasy football hooliganism” in that they are attempts by the entertainment industry to represent, reproduce, or simulate football-related disorder for our leisure consumption. This article offers a conceptual framework (underpinned by the work of Blackshaw & Crabbe) for the sociological analysis of the consumption and production of these fantasy football hooliganism texts.

scholarly journals The Changing Role of Tourism Policy in Singapore's Cultural Development: From Explicit to Insidious

2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 231-242
Author(s):  
Can-Seng Ooi
Keyword(s):  
Social Engineering ◽  
Tourism Industry ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Economic Support ◽  
The Government ◽  
City State ◽  
Changing Role

In the last three decades, Singapore has transformed from a cultural desert to a global arts city, thanks significantly to tourism. The Singapore Tourism Board was proactively shaping the cultural dynamics and policy of Singapore until 2012. But since then its official role in the country's arts and cultural development almost disappeared. The disappearance of tourism interests in cultural development stems apparently from years of resistance, dialogues, and negotiation. This study argues that the tourism authorities are still maintaining influence in the cultural dynamics and development of Singapore by reframing its involvement. It insidiously asserts its influence by enticing members of the arts community with resources, opportunities, and economic support to participate in the tourism industry. This article provides a dialogical understanding of how tourism has shaped Singapore's cultural dynamics. Cultural dynamics and tourism development in Singapore must be understood within economic and social engineering perimeters defined by the government. The tourism authorities do not only work with other government authorities, they use similar techniques in managing and controlling cultural development in the city-state. The Bakhtinian Dialogic Imagination is the heuristic that organizes and structures the complex and dynamic tourism–culture relations in this study. Three dialogical concepts—carnivalesque, heteroglossia, and polyphony—are used. Besides documenting the ongoing evolution of tourism in the cultural development of Singapore, this study questions the effectiveness of the arm's length approach to managing cultural development. The Singapore case shows that there are subtle economic and political ways to go round that principle.

The Sacred, Profane, Pure, Impure, and Social Energization of Culture

2019 ◽  
pp. 483-506
Author(s):  
Dmitry Kurakin
Keyword(s):  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Action ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Dynamic Features ◽  
Cognitive Sociology ◽  
Human Thought ◽  
Basic Model

In this chapter, I argue that the Durkheimian theory of the sacred is a crucial yet not fully recognized resource for cognitive sociology. It contains not only a theory of culture (which is acknowledged in contemporary sociology), but also a vision of culture-cognition relations. Thus, Durkheimian cultural sociology allows us to understand the crucial role the sacred/profane opposition plays in structuring culture, perception and thought. Based on a number of theories, I also show how another opposition—between the pure and impure modes of the sacred, allows us to explain dynamic features of the sacred and eventually provides a basic model of social change. While explicating this vision and resultant opportunities for sociological analysis I also criticize “cognition apart from culture” approaches established within cognitive sociology. I argue, thus, that culture not only participates in cognition but is an intrinsic ingredient of the human mind. Culture is not a chaotic and fragmented set of elements, as some sociologists imply to a greater or lesser degree, but a system; and as such it is an inner environment for human thought and social action. This system, however, is governed not by formal logic, as some critics of the autonomy of culture presuppose, but by concrete configurations of emotionally-charged categories, created and re-created in social interactions.

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

2005 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera L. Zolberg
Keyword(s):  
Sociology Of Culture ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Sociology Of Art ◽  
Sociological Studies ◽  
Sociology Of Arts ◽  
Crucial Part

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.

Social Interaction as Key to Understanding the Intertwining of Routinized and Culturally Contested Consumption

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 399-416
Author(s):  
Bente Halkier
Keyword(s):  
Social Interaction ◽  
Food Consumption ◽  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
Qualitative Studies ◽  
Sociological Analysis ◽  
Sociological Study ◽  
Food Practices ◽  
Discursive Interaction

A number of concepts and concerns from cultural sociology were thrown out as babies with the bathwater when the sociological study of consumption became dominated by the use of practice theories. The concept of social interaction is one of them, perhaps due to assumptions about its association with symbolic and discursive interaction and reflexivity. In the field of sociological analysis of food conduct, however, there is a need for addressing both more culturally contested parts of food practices as well as more routinized parts. Food consumption and practices of provisioning, cooking and eating are both tacit, recursive, mundane activities, and at the same time discursively questioned through multiple, mediatized, cultural repertories of food. In the article, I will suggest how social interaction can be conceptualized as enabling the understanding of this intermingling of the culturally contested and routinized parts of consumption within a practice theoretical perspective. The conceptual suggestion consists in four analytical suggestions for how the culturally tacit and reflexive in food conduct become linked through social interaction. The four suggestions are about coordination, intersection, hybridity and normative accountability. The four suggestions are exemplified empirically on the basis of a number of qualitative studies of food conduct among Danish consumers.

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

Poetics ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria D. Alexander ◽  
Anne E. Bowler
Keyword(s):  
The Arts ◽  
Sociology Of Art

A cultural sociology of the arts

2014 ◽  
Vol 63 (6) ◽  
pp. 896-915 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vera L Zolberg
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Sociology ◽  
The Arts

scholarly journals Scenekunstens (for)handlingsrom etter 22. juli

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siemke Böhnisch
Keyword(s):  
Public Sphere ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
The Public ◽  
Symbolic Space ◽  
Terror Attacks ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Strongly Connected ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Context Specific

In this article I discuss theatre’s scope of action after the 2011 terror attacks in Norway (“22. July”), with an emphasis on independent theatre, aesthetic heteronomy and the public sphere. A theatre manager’s (Jon Refsdal Moe) retrospect account of and reflections upon a case of self-censoring is the starting point for my (re-)examination of the arguments and dynamics concerning some of the most prominent contentious 22. July performances. I discuss how the controversies can be understood and dealt with, and how they are connected to theatre’s scope of action and place in society today. In my argument, I differentiate between the public sphere as an arena for discussion and debate (which theatre, as an institution, more or less has lost its impact on), and the public, conceived as an imagined community (which theatre still is strongly connected to, as assigned a publics’ symbolic space). I argue that the controversies about the 22. July performances, as well as the usage of marginal spaces, have to be understood as part of a far-reaching cultural dynamics after the terror attacks, concerning not only the arts, but numerous sectors of society, and that the performances aesthetic heteronomy requires a work- and context specific approach.

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