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Summary Art in critical sociology first half
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- Rijksuniversiteit Groningen (RuG)
Summary of art in critical sociology first half, the literature of week 40.
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Literature week 40. CHAPTER 2. Art in Critical SociologyMarxists focus on the material circumstances of labourers and they see history as determined by
technological and economic developments rather than by ideas or ideals. Marx indicated that the
material relationships between people determine history. He called his approach historic-
materialism. From Marx’s perspective one cannot understand society without understanding how
the base, or the dominated class, develops. Critical art sociologists tend to focus on the
superstructure rather than the base of society.
Well-known thinkers (Walter Benjamin and others) continued Marx’s tradition of critical social
theory, they gathered a following with their Frankfurt School, which originated in the Institute for
Social Research at the University of Frankfurt. One important difference with classical Marxism is that
all these descendants were more occupied with the superstructure in attempting to explain social
relationships. According to them, after all, politics, law making and culture had an influence on how a
society was shaped. Benjamin saw a direct link between cultural mass production (especially film)
and the rise of fascism. Their analyses of film, but also jazz music, contrasts art forms that are
reproduced technologically to ‘real’ or ‘authentic’ artistic expressions. This line of thinking led to a
distinction between ‘low’ and ‘high’ culture. Low culture being mechanically produced in large
quantities, i.e. for the masses, being formulaic in its aesthetic appearance. While of the surface such
art works may seem individual, their basic aesthetics are a repetition of a standard. In contrast, high
culture denotes art works that are individual, authentic and innovative. The analyses of the Frankfurt
School indicate that the repetitive nature of low culture is intentional: by producing and distributing
low culture in mass quantities to mass audiences, the masses are deprived of opportunities for self-
betterment and intellectual stimulation. They claim that the cultural industries indeed ‘produce’ the
ideal factory workers who are not critical and do what they are being told. This is how the
superstructure uses arts as a means of oppression.
Pierre Bourdieu is the most influential sociologists in art sociology from the second half of the 20th
century, at least in a European context. He made two main theories that are relevant for art
sociologists: distinction theory, a theory on taste differences between social classes, and field
theory, a theory on art production and dissemination. Jean Paul Sartre explained society mainly from
the life of the individual. What happens in life is the fruit of one’s personal drives and actions. As a
result, society at large is chaotic and cannot be explained easily. 4 Man was seen as totally free from
his social constraints, terms such as class and power were deemed irrelevant. Lévi-Strauss, posited
that all societies have underlying patterns that streamline the actions of their individual members. All
societies are characterized by deeper contrast or binary oppositions that regulate social interaction
on a basic level. Such binary oppositions run parallel with other contrasts, forming a chain. Lévi-
Strauss calls this a dichotomous chain. Bourdieu’s personal disposition was ill-fitted to the
intellectualism of Sartre but also to Lévi-Strauss’s vision on ethnography based in ‘a vision from afar’.
In Bourdieu’s view people develop strategies within social structures, strategies that in turn can
change these structures. When people change their strategies, social structure also may change. This
is how Bourdieu balances the opposite views of existentialism and structuralism.
Distinction theory, a theory describing how cultural tastes are not only personal but rather class
related. Distinction theory extends way beyond the arts as it includes any form of taste, be it for a
particular type of painting, music, food, clothing, or sports. Distinction theory therefore is a theory of
cultural sociology that analyses how cultural tastes can be used as an instrument of power. His field
theory also is concerned with questions of power, in particular how power results from social
structures and how individuals take up these powerful and less powerful positions based on their
personal dispositions. It best reflects his position as genetic structuralist that argues the actions of
individuals are determined both by their personal dispositions and the possibilities that are allowed
by the structures of the social fields in which they participate. Bourdieu developed field theory as a
, truly ‘grand theory’, i.e. a theory that can be applied to any domain of society. Although it is a grand
theory, Bourdieu has developed it based on empirical observations, in particular on observations of
how literary production and dissemination worked in France. The combination of extensive empirical
observations and rigorous theoretical conceptualization makes it into such a strong body of work.
Bourdieu argues that theories and concepts, and graphical representations of such concepts are not
reality itself. They are representations of reality.
Bourdieu developed his most important cultural-sociological insights in the book Distinction: a Social
Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1979). As its title suggests, Bourdieu regards culture as a play of
signification in which social differences or distinctions are created and maintained. The cultural
products that we acquire and the activities in which we participate therefore position us within a
social hierarchy. So, like Marx, Bourdieu sees society as a hierarchy of social classes. Bourdieu points
out the cultural aspects that help maintain this distinction in classes. When Marx speaks of capital, he
means the possession of the means of production. This resembles the way we use the word in
vernacular language: the possession of money and goods. Bourdieu insists on the plural: there are
several types of capital, not just economic capital but also cultural forms of capital. Each class
possesses a specific mix of the types of capital available. Bourdieu regards society as a pyramid with a
broad base, and with a small elite at the top. Climbing from the bottom to the top runs parallel with
consuming low to high culture in which the elite sets itself apart precisely because it is able to
participate in the most exclusive cultural activities. Marx’s argument: high culture is elitist because
only the elites can afford it. Bourdieu argues that, more importantly, the cultural tastes of the elite
are based in their upbringing and education. Bourdieu posits that social classes are not only
distinguished by their possession of economic capital but by their possession of cultural forms of
capital as well. Just as one can invest in economic capital, one can invest in cultural capital.
Moreover, he argues that cultural tastes are “both means and end in competitive struggles for social
position”, the clarity with which he presents this argument and empirically demonstrates how
cultural struggles point to social stratifications is one of his greatest achievements, adding an
important cultural dimension to the question of social mobility.
Marx indicated that capital is not a thing (that can be bought and sold) but “a social relation between
individuals, a relation which is settled by things. Neveu relates Bourdieu’s use of the term to human
capital, defining it as: A collection of goods and skills, of knowledge and acknowledgements
belonging to an individual or a group that he or she can mobilize to develop influence, gain power, or
bargain other elements of this collection. There is a distinct social characteristic to capital: if it is not
recognized as important by others, it is useless.
Economic capital: consists of income, material possessions, inheritances and so on. One can invest in
economic capital to gain more capital. -> money, stock, real estate markets
Cultural capital
Objectified cultural capital, or cultural capital in institutionalized state: Education seems to be the
primary way to acquire in cultural capital by. This represents cultural capital in an objectified form:
you receive an official diploma, a document you can show to others to demonstrate you have
acquired the capital, i.e. the capital exists in objectified state. The argument is not just that a higher
education level leads to higher cultural capital, because there are still differences between types of
university programs one has followed. The point is that the lower classes do not possess the right
kind of knowledge and skills, i.e. the kind that provides you with social recognition.
Cultural capital in the state of objects. The type and style of furniture someone buys, depends not
only on the money they are willing (and able) to spend but also on their taste. If the types of books
you read or style of paintings on your walls are not recognized as sophisticated or important, they
will earn you a different type of cultural capital than when you own (and have read) important novels
and innovative paintings.
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