Literatursoziologie als Kunstsoziologie und die Rolle des Ästhetischen. Beobachtungen zur Disziplinentektonik im ersten Drittel des 20. Jahrhunderts, am Beispiel Heinz Sauermanns und René Königs

This paper explores the sociology of art as a subfield of disciplines other than sociology in the first few decades of the 20th century. Special attention is paid to the so-called “allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft” as a conceptional framework for the sociology of art, as described by Heinz Sauermann and René König. It is argued that notions of the artwork’s aesthetic properties, traditionally subject to philosophical aesthetics, co-determine the scope and range of sociological approaches to art. This is also the case with the sociology of literature.

Verhandlungen über eine Soziologie der Literatur auf den Deutschen Soziologentagen 1926 und 1930: Hanna Meuter, Leopold von Wiese und Erich Rothacker

The article examines the relationship between young sociology and the approaches of a sociological contemplation of literature, which is constituted in a movement of delineation motivated not only in terms of content, but also in terms of discipline and institution. This is exemplified by selected contributions to the German Sociologists’ Days (Deutsche Soziologentage) in 1926 and 1930, which present innovative (Hanna Meuter), and central (Leopold von Wiese, Erich Rothacker) positions in the contemporary debate on the sociology of art.

Dichtkunst als Soziologie? Ferdinand Tönnies und Friedrich Schiller

Ferdinand Tönnies’ relationship to the sociology of art and literature was ambivalent and contradictory. On the one hand, the consideration of art and literature plays a role in Tönnies’ theoretical works. On the other hand, in the founding years of sociology, he was opposed to an independent sub-discipline in the sociology of literature because he feared for the unity of the discipline. All the more interesting is the fact that Tönnies repeatedly published on poets and poetry. In addition to articles on Theodor Storm, there are several studies on Friedrich Schiller as a poet and theorist, which show the sociologist as a reader and interpreter of literature. This paper attempts a critical review and classification of these works by Tönnies against the background of the political debate about Schiller in the Schiller anniversary year of 1905.

Ignored works

This essay interrogates ignored works of art as a special kind of object that can shed some light on the nature of contemporary art worlds, as well as on wider social processes regarding our relationship with things and with our past. It provides a materialist perspective focused on discarded objects as an alternative to a mystifying view of the artworld that takes artistic autonomy for granted and obliterates the social conditions of creativity and success. Ignored works are normally outside the reach of art history and the sociology of art, yet the increasingly bigger realm of unrecognized and unvalued art provides, after the failure of the historical avant-garde, a space where critical autonomy can still develop. This essay attempts to illuminate this mostly invisible realm by relating it to other similar categories such as waste and forgetting. Finally, ignored works’ connection to notions of authenticity is pointed out.

Remembered: Zofia Rydet in the Biographically-Oriented Perspective of the Sociology of Art

Zofia Rydet is one of the most outstanding Polish and even European artists of the second half of the 20th century. She left a huge artistic legacy, but her biography still in many respects remains a mystery. The memory of a great artist is often mythologized, and the interpretation of the work after his/her death begins to separate from the original intentions of the creator. These are processes of great interest to art historians and sociologists alike. They can be studied by adopting the methods of the biographically-oriented sociology of art. This article uses some of these methods, namely the analysis of the existing documents, archival research, and interviews. The analysis of the collected material has revealed how Rydet was remembered by those who had the opportunity to meet her, accompanied her during field trips, and talked with her about art and photography. The aim of such research is to try to get to know the artist better, as well as to understand her work and the social functioning in what was a very specific time and environment.

Artwork as Practical Social Action: An Ethnomethodological Study and the New Sociology of Art.

<p>Few studies in the sociology of art observe artists in their work. Of the few, little investigate the phenomenon of social order, and when they do, they research artists at a distance. Hence, there is room to contribute studies and descriptions of the observable actions artists conduct when they find themselves in the midst of doing their work; that work is argued here as a sociological accomplishment, topic of interest, and evidence of the actual and not imagined practical management of social reality. An emergent literature, the new Sociology of Art, has started to pay close attention toward observing artists’ situated and sequential actions as they occur naturally and in real time. Yet neglected in these often overly conceptual studies are detailed descriptions of artists finding ad hoc solutions to their practical workplace problems. In my motivation to observe artists in their work, I ask how artworks are organised in and as practical social action. With video camera in hand and in aid by the sociological attitudes of ethnomethodology and its research praxis, I aim to explicate social phenomena of order, specifically observable within sites consisting of a street corner, an artist’s studio, an urban café, and river terrain. This thesis presents data first collected and then taken from the large video data corpus to form four single-cases. I recognise in this thesis the effort evident within ethnomethodology’s recent scholarship to acknowledge Aron Gurwitsch’s gestalt concept functional significance as partially influencing Harold Garfinkel’s study of endogenous order. I saw functional significance as an opportunity to explore, rather experimentally, how one artistic action relates to another, and how that interdependence was locally managed by the artists themselves during their artistic processes. This thesis contributes written descriptions of artistic action as social action, findings from which the new Sociology of Art may benefit.</p>

Artwork as Practical Social Action: An Ethnomethodological Study and the New Sociology of Art.

<p>Few studies in the sociology of art observe artists in their work. Of the few, little investigate the phenomenon of social order, and when they do, they research artists at a distance. Hence, there is room to contribute studies and descriptions of the observable actions artists conduct when they find themselves in the midst of doing their work; that work is argued here as a sociological accomplishment, topic of interest, and evidence of the actual and not imagined practical management of social reality. An emergent literature, the new Sociology of Art, has started to pay close attention toward observing artists’ situated and sequential actions as they occur naturally and in real time. Yet neglected in these often overly conceptual studies are detailed descriptions of artists finding ad hoc solutions to their practical workplace problems. In my motivation to observe artists in their work, I ask how artworks are organised in and as practical social action. With video camera in hand and in aid by the sociological attitudes of ethnomethodology and its research praxis, I aim to explicate social phenomena of order, specifically observable within sites consisting of a street corner, an artist’s studio, an urban café, and river terrain. This thesis presents data first collected and then taken from the large video data corpus to form four single-cases. I recognise in this thesis the effort evident within ethnomethodology’s recent scholarship to acknowledge Aron Gurwitsch’s gestalt concept functional significance as partially influencing Harold Garfinkel’s study of endogenous order. I saw functional significance as an opportunity to explore, rather experimentally, how one artistic action relates to another, and how that interdependence was locally managed by the artists themselves during their artistic processes. This thesis contributes written descriptions of artistic action as social action, findings from which the new Sociology of Art may benefit.</p>