ABSTRACT

The Routledge Handbook of the Sociology of Arts and Culture offers a comprehensive overview of sociology of art and culture, focusing especially – though not exclusively – on the visual arts, literature, music, and digital culture. Extending, and critiquing, Bourdieu’s influential analysis of cultural capital, the distinguished international contributors explore the extent to which cultural omnivorousness has eclipsed highbrow culture, the role of age, gender and class on cultural practices, the character of aesthetic preferences, the contemporary significance of screen culture, and the restructuring of popular culture. The Handbook critiques modes of sociological determinism in which cultural engagement is seen as the simple product of the educated middle classes. The contributions explore the critique of Eurocentrism and the global and cosmopolitan dimensions of cultural life. The book focuses particularly on bringing cutting edge ‘relational’ research methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative, to bear on these debates. This handbook not only describes the field, but also proposes an agenda for its development which will command major international interest.

1. Preface – The Handbook  2. Contemporary Challenges for the Sociology of Art and Culture: An Introductory Essay, Laurie Hanquinet and Mike Savage  Part 1: Bourdieu’s Legacy and New Perspectives for the Sociology of Art and Culture  3. Introduction to Part One  4. The Sociology of Cultural Participation In France 30 Years After ‘Distinction,’ Phillipe Coulangeon  5. A Post-Bourdieusian Sociology of Valuation and Evaluation for the Field of Cultural Production, Stefan Beljean, Phillipa Chong, and Michèle Lamont  6. Contesting Culture: Bourdieu & the strong program in cultural sociology, Marco Santoro and Marco Solaroli  7. The Cultural Omnivore Thesis: Methodological aspects of the debate, Irmak Karademir Hazır and Alan Warde  8. After Omnivorousness: Is Bourdieu still relevant?, Omar Lizardo and Sara Skiles  9. A Critique of the Omnivore. From the origin of the idea of omnivorousness to the Latin American experience, Modesto Gayo  10. Age-Period-Cohort and Cultural Engagement, Aaron Reeve  11. A Social Aesthetics as a General Cultural Sociology?, John Levi Martin and Ben Merriman  12. Genre: Relational approaches to the sociology of music, Jennifer C. Lena  13. Networks and Culture, Alix Rule and Peter Bearman  14. Getting Beyond the Surface. Using geometric data analysis in cultural sociology., Henk Roose  Part 2: The Fabric of Aesthetics  15. Introduction to Part Two  16. From Sociology of Culture to Sociology of Artistic Producers: How to Become a Contemporary Artist, Nathalie Heinich  17. Avant-garde Artworks, Artists and Mediators. A State of Relationships, Nuria Peist  18. Learning How to Think, and Feel, About Contemporary Art: An object relational aesthetic for sociology, Sophia Krys Acord  19. Museum Sociology, Volker Kirchberg  20. Adjusting Field Theory: The dynamics of settler-colonial art fields, Tony Bennett  21. The World Market of Translation in the Globalization Era: Symbolic Capital and Cultural Diversity in the Publishing Field, Gisèle Sapiro  22. The Biennalization of Art Worlds: the Culture of Cultural Events, Monica Sassatelli  23. Aesthetic Capital, Sylvia Holla and Giselinde Kuipers Part 3: The Complexity of Cultural Classifications  24. Introduction to Part Three  25. Cultural Dissonances: the Social in the Singular, Bernard Lahire  26. The Multiplicity of Highbrow Culture: Taste Boundaries Among the New Upper Middle Class, Guy Bellavance  27. ‘There’s something fundamental about what makes you laugh’. Comedy as an Aesthetic Experience, Sam Friedman  28. Middlebrow Book Culture, David Carter  29. Digital Sociology in the Field of Devices, Adrian Mackenzie, Richard Mills, Stuart Sharples, Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey  30. Researching Social Analytics: Cultural Sociology in the Face of Algorithmic Power, Nick Couldry  31. The Rising Power of Screens: Changing Cultural Practices in France, from 1973 to 2008, Olivier Donnat  32. The Structuration of Lifestyle in the City of Porto: A Relational Approach, Virgílio Borges Pereira  33. Contesting the Highbrow and Lowbrow Distinction: How Latin American Scholars Engage in Cross-Cultural Debates, María Luisa Méndez  34. When the Artistic Field Meets the Arts Worlds, Chao Zhang  35. Institutionalizing the Neo-Bohemia, Richard Lloyd