Reviews, Critics, and Cultural Gatekeepers

Abstract

Traditionally, the expertise of critics, reviewers and cultural gatekeepers is supposed to pertain to the intrinsic properties that account for the nature and quality of cultural products. However, since the 1970s, there has been an increased awareness of the group-specific nature of norms, values, and classifications of social and cultural phenomena. Furthermore, the idea that critics are able to identify characteristics which are constitutive of the nature and value of cultural products has been challenged. Both developments have cleared the way for empirical research on how gatekeepers assign symbolic value to cultural products. In many studies, this process is assumed to be reproductive in nature: gatekeepers essentially follow their previous decisions and those made by their counterparts. This assumption, and the emphasis of researchers on the adjudication of symbolic value to cultural products, entail a strong focus on factors that are held to be specific to cultural institutions. Other factors, then, are easily seen as endogenous to the cultural sector. However, the research questions that are posed always determine the framework for developing views on the nature of the factors affecting gatekeepers' behavior. No strict distinction between factors that are taken to be endogenous or exogenous to the cultural sector can be upheld. This the lesson to be learned from research taking a ‘production of culture’ perspective. Here, legal, organizational, and technological factors are held to be constitutive of the content of cultural products, and of the ways gatekeepers deal with them. There are very varied and changing interactions between the cultural sector and other realms of society. Gatekeepers classify and judge individual cultural products using heterogeneous information about them; they act in a dynamic context where the supply of cultural goods, the preferences of audiences, and the available information on cultural products constantly change. Future research has to look closer into the use of heterogeneous information in characterizing and appraising cultural products; it is also urgent to devise models which capture the timebound impact of social and institutional factors on gatekeepers' behavior. Finally, the problem of how gatekeepers adjudicate symbolic value to cultural objects is so complex, that interdisciplinary research is called for. Economists should cooperate with sociologists to provide sophisticated analyses of the types of ‘utility’, or value, that are assigned to cultural products.