Summary

What does the word ‘art’ mean to you? Does it conjure up images of paintings and sculptures in galleries, or orchestras playing Beethoven and Mozart? Does it express works by great geniuses or pretentious bores? Does it suggest to you pictures by John Constable and Claude Monet, or ‘installations’ by Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst? Does it make you think of enjoyable evenings out, or nights of interminable boredom? Does art excite you or turn you off? Do you prefer Schwarzenegger films to ballet performances, or Bridget Jones to Jane Austen? Does the word ‘art’ connote things you feel you could not live without, or things you have no interest in at all?

Your answers to those questions and others like them reveal a lot about you, not just about your personal tastes and dispositions, but also about your position in society. As we will see throughout this book, the ways in which each of us thinks about ‘art’ are expressive of some of the most important aspects of our social existence. Even those who have no interest in art, or actively dislike it, inadvertently reveal a lot about themselves when they make their opinions known.

In the same vein, a whole society’s attitudes towards art can tell us a lot about that society. We can begin to get a handle on how a society ‘works’ if we consider the role played by art within it. Are the arts accorded important roles in a particular society, or do they operate merely at the sidelines? Do a wide variety of people in that society actively participate in making art or not? Are the audiences for particular arts drawn from a wide range of social backgrounds or do they come from particular groups? Are the arts open to all or are they the preserve of privileged elites? Answering questions like that allows us to get to grips with important aspects of the nature of a particular society as a whole. In other words, looking at art is an excellent way of looking at society.

By the same token, we can understand a lot about art by looking at society. To be more precise, we can come to understand art in more interesting and sophisticated ways than otherwise we might, if we consider the relations between art and society. This is the central contention of the sociological study of art. Its claim is to provide ways of thinking about art that other academic disciplines downplay or ignore altogether. By examining the social contexts in which art is produced by certain people (artists), managed by certain people (e.g. concert hall managers, art gallery owners), and engaged with by other people (audiences), we can begin to see what ‘art’ really is, how it functions in our society, and what implications it has for how we live.

Introduction: 'Art' and Sociology — David Inglis and John Hughson
- Key questions
- Structure and purposes
- Ways of seeing
Part I: Theory Past, Present and Future
- 1. Thinking 'Art' Sociologically — David Inglis
  - Introduction
  - Taking issue with 'art'
  - Taking issue with the 'artist'
  - 'Art' and 'society'
  - The 'art world'
  - Conclusion
- 2. When Does Art Become Art? Assessing Pierre Bourdieu's Theory of Artistic Fields — Jeremy F. Lane
  - Introduction
  - The social conditions of artistic reception
  - The social conditions of artistic production
  - The historical genesis of an autonomous field of production
  - Conclusion
- 3. The Female Body in Women's Artistic Practice: Developing a Feminist Sociological Approach — Alexandra Howson
  - Introduction
  - Making women's art
  - The politics of the female body in women's art
  - Psychoanalysis, postmodernism and visual culture
  - Poststructuralism, philosophy and psychoanalysis (again)
  - Feminism and art today
  - Conclusion
- 4. A 'New' Paradigm for a Sociology of Aesthetics — Robert W. Witkin
  - Introduction
  - Abstraction
  - Semiotic systems
  - Social systems
  - Perceptual systems
  - Haptic systems
  - Optic systems
  - Somatic systems
  - Conclusion
  - Acknowledgments
- 5. Invisible Aesthetics and the Social Work of Commodity Culture — Paul Willis
  - Introduction
  - Everyday meanings
  - Commodity culture and informal meaning-making
  - Cultural commodities
  - Making the invisible visible
  - Representing the invisible
  - Private and public 'art worlds'
  - Conclusion
  - Acknowledgement
- 6. Cultural Studies and the Sociology of Culture — Janet Wolff
  - Introduction
  - Between 'social life' and 'texts'
  - Sociology and 'culture'
  - Conclusion: Towards rapprochement
- 7. The Sociology of Art: Between Cynicism and Reflexivity — David Inglis
  - Introduction
  - Tacit assumptions
  - The ubiquity of power
  - Sociological imperialism
  - Bourdieu against himself
  - Conclusion
Part II: From Theory to Practice: Case Studies in the Sociology of Art
- 8. Framing Old Age: Sociological Perspectives on Ageing in Victorian Painting — Mike Hepworth
  - Introduction
  - Old age and Victorian art history
  - Frederick Walker and The Harbour of Refuge
  - Hubert von Herkomer and The Last Muster
  - Hubert von Herkomer and Eventide: A Scene in the Westminster Union
  - Complexities of response
  - Conclusion

Extract

Throughout The Sociology of Art, the central questions the sociology of art addresses will be apparent. These include:

What is 'art'? What counts as 'art' and what does not? Who decides what is 'art' and what is not?

In what ways are 'art' and 'society' related? How does the nature of society impact upon the nature of art? How does art influence social relations? In what ways are the arts and forms of social power connected?

How are the arts dealt with in different types of society?

How are artworks made? What is an 'artist'?

How are artworks distributed to audiences? What are the ways in which audiences make sense of artworks?

Why do some people like certain types of art and not others? What does a person's taste tell us about them?

The various contributions to this book illustrate the different sorts of answers that have been put forward by sociologists and others in their attempts to understand the social significance of art.

Author

Mike Hepworth is Reader Emeritus in Sociology, University of Aberdeen. His publications in the sociology of ageing and the sociology of culture include Surviving Middle Age (Blackwell, 1982, with Mike Featherstone), Confession: Studies in Deviance and Religion (Routledge, 1982, with Bryan S. Turner) and Stories of Ageing (Open University Press, 2000).

Alexandra Howson has lectured at the Universities of Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Abertay, Dundee, and is currently a Visiting Fellow in Women's Studies, University of California, Berkeley. Her publications in the sociology of the body, the sociology of culture, the sociology of health and illness, and feminist theory include The Body in Society: An Introduction (Polity, 2003) and Embodying Gender (Sage, 2005).

John Hughson is Senior Lecturer in Sports Studies, University of Otago. His publications in the sociology of culture, art, leisure and sport include Confronting Culture: Sociological Vistas (Polity, 2003, with David Inglis) and The Uses of Sport: A Critical Study (Routledge, 2004, with David Inglis and Marcus Free).

David Inglis is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Aberdeen. His publications in social theory and the sociology of art and culture include Confronting Culture: Sociological Vistas (Polity, 2003, with John Hughson), Culture and Everyday Life (Routledge, 2005) and Globalization and Social Theory (Open University Press, 2005, with Roland Robertson).

Jeremy F. Lane is Lecturer in French, University of Nottingham. His publications in the areas of contemporary French social theory, and post-war French society, culture and politics, include Pierre Bourdieu: A Critical Introduction (Pluto, 2000) and 'The French Contribution to Contemporary Cultural Analysis', in W. Kidd and S. Reynolds (eds) Contemporary French Cultural Studies (Arnold, 2000).

Roland Robertson is Professor of Sociology, University of Aberdeen. His many publications in social theory, the sociology of religion, the sociology of culture and the study of globalization and global social change, include Talcott Parsons: Theorist of Modernity (Sage, 1991, edited with Bryan S. Turner), Globalization: Social Theory and Global Culture (Sage, 1992), Global Modernities (Sage, 1995, edited with Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash), Globalization: Critical Concepts in Sociology (Routledge, 2002, edited with Kathleen White), and Globalization and Social Theory (Open University Press, 2005, with David Inglis).

Janet Stewart is Lecturer in German, University of Aberdeen. Her publications in the sociology and philosophy of space, architecture and communication, with a particular geographic focus on Berlin and Vienna, include Fashioning Vienna: Adolf Loos's Cultural Criticism (Routledge, 2000) and Blueprints for No-Man's Land: Connections in Contemporary Austrian Culture (Peter Lang, 2004, edited with Simon Ward).

Alan Swingewood is retired from Sociology, London School of Economics. His publications in social theory and the sociology of art and culture include The Myth of Mass Culture (Macmillan, 1977), A Short History of Sociological Thought (Macmillan, 1984), Sociological Poetics and Aesthetic Theory (Macmillan, 1986), and Cultural Theory and the Problem of Modernity (Palgrave, 1998).

Andrew Tudor is Professor of Sociology, University of York. His publications in social theory, the sociology of culture and the sociology of cinema include Beyond Empiricism: Philosophy of Science in Sociology (Routledge, 1982), Monsters and Mad Scientists: Cultural History of the Horror Movie (Blackwell, 1989) and Decoding Culture: Theory and Method in Cultural Studies (Sage, 1999).

Paul Willis is Professor of Social/Cultural Ethnography, Keele University. His publications focus mainly but not exclusively on the ethnographic study of lived cultural forms, 'informal cultural production' and the construction of cultural worlds 'from below'. His books include Learning to Labour (Gower, 1977, reprinted several times), Profane Culture (Routledge, 1978), Common Culture (Open University Press, 1990, with S. Jones, J. Canaan and G. Hurd), The Ethnographic Imagination (Polity, 2000) and Learning to Labour in New Times (Routledge, 2004, edited with Nadine Dolby & Greg Dimitriadis).

Robert W. Witkin is Professor of Sociology, University of Exeter. His publications in the sociology of art and aesthetics include The Intelligence of Feeling (Heinemann Educational Books, 1974), Art and Social Structure (Polity, 1995), Adorno on Music (Routledge, 1998) and Adorno on Popular Culture (Routledge, 2002).

Janet Wolff is Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the School of the Arts, Columbia University. Among her many publications in the sociology of art and culture are Hermeneutic Philosophy and the Sociology of Art (Routledge, 1975), The Social Production of Art (Macmillan, 1981, repr. 1993), Feminine Sentences (Polity, 1990), The Culture of Capital: Art, Power and the Nineteenth Century Middle Class (Manchester University Press, 1990, edited with John Seed), Aesthetics and the Sociology of Art (Macmillan, 1993), Resident Alien: Feminist Cultural Criticism (Polity, 1995), AngloModern: Painting and Modernity in Britain and the United States (Cornell University Press, 2003).

Helena Wulff is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Stockholm. Her publications include Twenty Girls: Growing Up, Ethnicity and Excitement in a South London Microculture (Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1988), Youth Cultures: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (Routledge, 1995, edited with Vered Amit-Talai), Ballet across Borders: Career and Culture in the World of Dancers (Berg, 1998), and New Technologies at Work: People, Screens and Social Virtuality (Berg, 2003, edited with Christina Garsten).

Book Details

Sociology of Art. Ways of Seeing book cover

Title	The Sociology of Art
Subtitle	Ways of Seeing
Author	David Inglis and John Hughson
Publisher	PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
Year	2005
Pages	238
Country	England
ISBN	9780333962664
Format	PDF
Filesize	2.7 MB
URL	David Inglis and John Hughson The Sociology of Art PDF