Sociology of the Arts. Victoria D. Alexander

      Preface and Acknowledgements

      Since the first edition of Sociology of the Arts, the literature in the field has grown vibrantly, as more sociologists recognize the value of studying the fine and popular arts. As an arts sociologist, I am delighted. This has provided a challenge in updating this book, however. There is simply more literature out there and more wonderful studies than can be addressed here.

      As with the first edition, my goal with this version is to provide an overview of the field, and as such, I present studies with an eye to their contribution to the literature. Overall, I aim for a synthesis across approaches and rarely provide detailed critical analysis of individual studies, as this would make the book impossibly long. I describe many individual studies with enough detail that readers can understand the main ideas without consulting the original (although further reading is always encouraged!); consequently, I do not provide long lists of bracketed citations, even though, as always, there is more good material that could be cited.

      Changes in the social world, as well as changes in the field, have necessitated changes in the structure of the book. I have retained the main structure, using the cultural diamond as the main framing device. A key change in the world has been the rise of the Internet, especially the interactive web 2.0. When the book was first published in 2003, YouTube (for instance) had not been invented. It would not be launched until 2005, but now has had profound impact on both the production and consumption of the arts. The Internet changes everything (though sometimes not as much as people think), and this is reflected in new research covered throughout this edition. Globalization was treated in a separate chapter in the first edition, but this aspect of art worlds, like the digital revolution, is now addressed, inter alia, in multiple chapters in this second edition. This makes room for an extra chapter in the consumption of culture. In this way, the second edition has four chapters each in the production and the consumption of culture.

The reweighting of the chapters reflects developments in the field. The (American) Production of Culture school, while still important, has waned, with declining major citations after 2004. Becker’s notion of art worlds remains enormously influential, as does Bourdieu’s idea of artistic fields. This revised edition addresses Bourdieu much earlier (in Chapter 5) than in the previous edition, to reflect his place as one of the two dominant sociologists of art worldwide. All chapters have been updated, though the structure of chapters covering reflection, shaping, and the production of culture (broadly stated) remains the same as in the first edition (see the book outline in Chapter 1). The chapters covering the consumption of culture have been significantly reorganized, to include chapters on sites and experiences, and identities. There has been an explosion of sociological work on distinction and the omnivore model, meaning that the chapter on social boundaries in art has been updated to focus on these developments and debates. The final section of the book, on Art in Society, retains the same chapter titles, but the content of these two chapters has shifted significantly, as developments in studies of materiality, emplacement, and embodiment in the arts, along with new sociological research on the work of art itself are addressed.

      The book continues to define “art” inclusively to encompass fine, popular, and folk forms, from Rembrandt to Rap as it were. The book also recognizes that sociologists do not all approach the sociology of the arts with the same types of questions, and that what constitutes an answer varies from scholar to scholar. My belief is that examining the range of questions and answers allows one to develop a richer understanding of the field as a whole. In mapping out the currents of thought in the field, I have attempted to balance the requirements of a comprehensive overview (as in a review article of particular interest to scholars) with the need for enough detail on individual studies to make the book useful to readers new to the field. At the same time, I have worked within my publisher’s parameters on the length of the book. (I have removed epigraphs from the chapters at their request, as well, to fit with a revised house style.) I hope that I have struck a balance that will make this edition of use and interest to both students and scholars. Inevitably, however, scholars will spot omissions, only some of which will have been intentional on my part.

      Victoria D. Alexander

      London, 10 December 2019

Acknowledgements (Second Edition)

      I have completed this second edition in my new role as Professor of Sociology and Arts Management at Goldsmiths, University of London. I am grateful to my colleagues in the Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship (ICCE) and the pleasant and stimulating environment it provides, as well as to my arts management students, who have read my chapter drafts and discussed them in class. I particularly thank my co‐author (on other work), Anne E. Bowler, for ongoing conversations about the sociology of art. Jim Benson once again read every word. In these acknowledgements, I wish to remember the late Richard A. (Pete) Peterson and the late Vera L. Zolberg. Their passing marks a loss to the field and those of us working in it will miss them greatly.

      I remain grateful to all whom I mentioned in the acknowledgments for the first edition. I would like to thank the editorial and production teams at Wiley, including Justin Vaughan, Richard Samson, Merryl Le Roux, and Rajalakshmi Nadarajan, as well as Jacky Mucklow for their support on the second edition.

Preface to the First Edition

      I have taught courses on the Sociology of the Arts for quite some time now. Every year, students ask me to recommend a single text that will provide an overview of the materials I cover. I have been unable to accommodate them, despite the existence of a number of excellent books on sociological aspects of the arts, on popular culture, and on culture more broadly speaking. Their constant requests for a single source which draws across different intellectual approaches to the subject while focusing specifically on the fine and popular arts inspired me to write this book.

      In setting out the intellectual topography of the field of study, I have drawn on a large body of theory and research. Scholarship is a search for truth, and it also constructs an arena in which combatants from different perspectives battle over each other’s claims. My description the sociology of the arts, then, considers its various theories and empirical studies which cluster around central debates that colleagues will find familiar. Nevertheless, this work (inevitably) contains my personal vision of the field. I hope that my presentation is close enough to my colleagues’ own understandings of the field to allow them to teach from the book, should they wish, but that it also provides an original argument they will find stimulating. The goal I set for myself in writing the book was to produce a work that would be helpful to undergraduates new to the field, useful to graduate students wishing to launch their research in it, and interesting to colleagues well established in it. How successfully this one modest book has met such a broad goal will be decided by you, its reader.

      I have also taught courses on the Sociology of Organizations. One pedagogic lesson I have learned from that field concerns