1. Note: Week 4 cancelled due to snowstorm.
Week 5 : Who Belongs in Art Worlds? Arts Occupations, Institutions, Networks (continued) & Mediation (Gatekeepers, Facilitators)
Source: V. Alexander Sociology of the Arts…(2003), p. 63.
Note: Week 4 cancelled due to snowstorm.

2. Plan for Class Today Lecture :
Review : Artists as a Social “Category”, Types of Art Worlds
‘production of culture’ theory of art worlds
Mediation and recognition processes
Presentations of First Short Case Studies
IF TIME: Videoclip from “Off the Canvas. A documentary Profilng 9 Maverick New York Women Art Dealers:

3. Last Lecture: Participants in art worlds --
Creators/artists
art
Mediators
Audiences/publics/consumers

4. Relation to Communication Theories

5. Unique artists, unique art works (individual) vs
Unique artists, unique art works (individual) vs. social construction of art/artists (Zolberg)
Example: Problem of Multiples
negotiating artistic values in context of new technologies
new ways of thinking about connections between the artwork and the “aura” of the artist
Walter Benjamin-- “work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction”

6. Changing views about values of art can lead to changes in the status of the artist, artwork & the social institutions & publics that support them
Beaune Altarpiece
PBS jazz series by Ken Burns
Examples of establishing “cannons” through testimony of “experts” (ex. critics, “stars”, fans) and changing shape of artforms

7. Recall: Ways of Studying Artists & Arts professionals
“Are Artists Born or made?”
Theories about artists’ motives for career choice
1.labor of love (art for art’s sake) argument (Elliot Freidson)
de-emphasizes income
Arendt’s notions of labour (alienating but necessary) vs. work (creative vocation)
2.artists & arts professionals as risk-lovers, gamblers
satisfaction proportionate to degree of uncertainty of success
3. Dual reward system
monetary & non-monetary (psychic) gratification
4. Other—couldn’t do anything else

8. Review : Different types of artists (Becker)
Integrated professionals (ex. concert violinist)
Mavericks
Folk artists
Naïve artists
Classification according to how they fit in art worlds (degree of integration, consensus about the ‘rules of the game’, degree of standardization)

9. Van Laar and Diepeveen on “The function of Artists in Society”
Another typology
Five roles:
Skilled worker
Intellectual
Entrepreneur
Social critic
Social healer
Other dimensions
Ex. Wittkower “Under the Sign of Saturn”
Transformation from craftsperson to brooding geniuss
Later to status of intellectual in humanistic profession
F. De Goya. Saturn devouring his son, c. 1821

10. Formal training Issues
qualifications—non-routine activities depend on skills not easily transmitted or certified by a training system
impact of schooling on earnings smaller than other professional groups
mentoring/apprenticeships
job matching (leaning-by-doing process)
occupational risk diversification

11. Irregular incomes, seasonal variations, self-emploment
Problems using “income” as a way of identifying for artists & arts professionals
Irregular incomes, seasonal variations, self-emploment
public sources (subsidies, commissions, sponsorship)
“privatization” (sales of services or works)
transfer income from other employment (multiple job holding)
personal (family, friends)

12. Recall: Multiple roles--paintmakers who were collectors and painters
Life Drawing Class, Bocour Paintmaking Studio NYC, c. 1942

13. Careers in the arts and rationality of risk management (Menger)
“rational behaviour model”
but artistic careers are risky
high level of income inequality
high chance of “failure”
impermanence of artistic work, self-employment
amibiguity of transition from training to work (skills)
careers advance through recurrent & nonrecurrent work (non-routine work)

14. Criteria used in classifying art & artists
“aura” of the artist 
Characteristics of
the art form and genre
audience/public (notion of consecration)
Publics or audiences “highbrow/lowbrow” tastes
arts organizations, networks associated with different art worlds

15. Mediation & “Support Structures” & Publics as factors in recognition & art-making
Recall: Howard Becker’s Art Worlds
Arts worlds include all the people involved in art-making
Cooperative links through shared conventions
Study how participants “draw lines” and what art worlds do
Mobilize resources (material resources, training personnel, networks, organizations)
Develop Distribution Systems

16. Production of Culture Perspective (Peterson, Anand)
How culture “shaped by systems in which it is created, distributed, evaluated, taught, preserved”
Culture not a mirror of society
Focus on
Expressive aspects of culture
Processes of symbol production
Analysis of organizations, occupations, networks, communities
Comparisons
In situated studies of specific cultural forms and changes in them

17. Six Facet Model of Production
Technology
Law and regulation
Industry structure or field
Organizational structure of dominating organizatins
Occupational careers
Markets

18. Uses of the “Production Perspective”
Organizational Research
theories of management
institutional decision-making processes/logics
Networks of production
Resource partitioning patterns
Studies of Informal Relations
Links between Class and Culture (ex. univore/omnivore)
Resistance & appropriation
Fabricating authenticity

19. Critiques of Peterson’s Production of Culture Perspective
Ignores or de-emphasizes
“uniqueness” of art to research constructed nature of collective representations, values
roles of fans and consumers in shaping cultural products
meanings of cultural production
power relations

20. Participants in Mediation Processes
Gatekeepers vs. facilitators : types vary with art form and genres
Ex. Diana Crane on proponents of Avant-Garde Art
Examples of types of “mediators” (between creators and publics): book publishers, record companies, film distribution networks, art gallery owners, booking agents, critics, reviewers for media, museum curators, sometimes even fans or fan clubs, etc…

21. Characteristics of the Mediators & Artistic Values
Mediation as a way of conferring status
The role of critics and other gatekeepers in recognition processes, examples:
Shrum– emergence of Fringe Festivals as a performing arts genre when critics begin to review it
Change in status of Graffiti and recognition by artists
Institutional forms & legitimation practices
Status of “Venues”, status of artists
Not-for-profit and for-profit models & differences in socio-cultural status (DiMaggio)
Super Bowl XXXVIII, Halftime show, 2004

22. L. Levine: The emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America
Starting question: why can’t you compare high culture & popular culture?
Why do people distinguish between highbrow and lowbrow audiences & their understanding of the arts?
Art forms not ‘cosmic truths’ but result from ‘peculiarities in the way culture operates

23. Levine’s Case study of the reception of Shakespeare
To study problem of equating notion of culture to idea of hierarchy
Believes primary categories of culture are determined by IDEOLOGIES not grounded in actual observation of cultural practices & tastes
Believes there was less hierarchical divisions in the past
But set in mid 20th c.
Do same hierarchical distinctions apply today? Or have we again entered an era in which high-brow & low-brow distinctions are less meaningful?

24. Mediators &Cultural Hierarchy
social meaning(s) of performance art
control and social “reproduction”
Social origins and established formulas or genres
Hegemony & cultural industries
Cultural things as mirrors of underlying structures (functionalism, Marxism)
New theories– more dynamic
Symbolic exchange, interaction
-”production of culture approach” (Peterson, DiMaggio)

25. Peterson on Country Music
How do mediators (record producers) choose artists to promote?
Authenticity, originality, distinctiveness
Transformation of field of country music from
Process of institutionalization
Identified audience

26. Authenticity Paradox of creating authenticity artificially?
Socially-agreed upon idea (social construction of reality– through shared values & practices)
History of country music (a revolt that became a style)
Artificial notion of the ‘unchanged’ past– hillbilly music (poor rural white Southerners)
Early distain of this type of music because of its association with hillbilly culture
Evolution of terminology (to country and western)

27. Mediation in the Production of Culture Perspective
How law, technology, careers, markets, organizational structure shape culture (in this case a form of cultural expression called ‘country music’)
notion of social production of culture (shared values, practices etc.)
Emergence of differentiated roles in the field of cultural production (manager, talent agent etc.)

28. Next Day: Publics as Participants in Artmaking: Theories of Reception

29. Required Readings (Weeks 3-4)
Zolberg, Vera. “The Art Object as Social Process”. Constructing a Sociology of the Arts. Cambridge University Press, 1990, pp
Becker, H. "Integrated Professionals, Mavericks, Folk Artists and Naive Artists" Art Worlds. Berkley: U. Calif. Press. 1992, pp
Peterson, R. and A. Anand. “The Production of Culture Perspective” Annual Review of Sociology :311–34 (especially pp ).

30. Recommended (Weeks 3-4)
Van Laar, T. and L. Diepeveen, "The Function of Artists in Society: Starving Celebrities and Other Myths", Active Sights. Art as social interaction., London, Mayfield, 1997, pp
Menger, Pierre-Michel, “Artists as Workers: Theoretical and Methodological Challenges” Poetics, Vol. 28 (4) pp
Kasfir, Sidney. “African Art and Authenticity”, in Oguibe, Olu and Okwui Enwezor (editors), Reading the Contemporary. African Art from Theory to the Marketplace. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1999, pp
Levine, Judith. "Art as social service: Theatre for the Forgotten", in Zolberg and Cherbo, Outsider Art, Cambridge U. Press 1997, pp

31. Required Readings (Week 5)
Crane, Diana. “Epilogue” and “Unobtrusive Methods for Researching and Art Form” in The Transformation of the Avant-Garde”, U. Chicago Press1987, pp
Shrum, W. "Cultural Mediation and the Status Bargain" and "Note on the Study of Mediation and Reception" in Fringe and Fortune. The Role of Critics in High and Popular Art. Princeton: Princeton U. Press, 1998, pp and pp
Marontate, J. “Museums and the constitution of collective memory”, book chapter in The Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Culture (ed. Mark Jacobs and Nancy Hanrahan), 2005, pp

32. Recommended (Week 5)
Bennett, Andy. "Music, Media and Urban Mythscapes: A Study of the 'Canterbury Sound',. Media, Culture & Society, vol. 24(1) pp , 2002
Lena, Jennifer.“Meaning and membership: samples in rap music, 1979–1995”, Poetics. Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts. V. 32 (304), pp
Alexander, Victoria. “A Mediated View: The Cultural Diamond”, Sociology of the Arts. Exploring Fine and Popular Forms. Blackwell, 2003, pp
Ostrower, Francie. Trustees of Culture. Power, Wealth and Status on Elite Arts Boards. U. Chicago Press
Peterson, Richard A. Creating Country Music. Fabricating Authenticity. U. Chicago Press 1997.
Zolberg, Vera and Joni Maya Cherbo (ed.) Outsider Art. Cambridge U

33. Note to Users of these Outlines--
not all material covered in class appears on these outlines-- important examples, demonstrations and discussions aren’t written down here.
Classes are efficient ways communicating information and provide you will an opportunity for regular learning. These outlines are provided as a study aid not a replacement for classes.