Attached by the Product: A Socio-Material Direction in the Sociology of Art

Abstract

The sociology of art tends to reduce the cultural product to an outcome of social causality. As an alternative, this article pursues the aim of developing a cultural sociological approach which includes both sociality and materiality. The article builds on an empirical analysis of a case about the development of a film project, which ends in a devastating quarrel and consequently no film. In the analysis, the evolving product is portrayed as a mediator of the social relations around it. The article suggests that the human participants are attached or detached to the project based on their experiences of the evolving product. Thus the argument proposes that the product and the social relations are being co-produced, and that this is overlooked if the product is not included in the socialogical analysis.