The Social and the Aesthetic: For a Post-Bourdieuian Theory of Cultural Production

Abstract

This article sets out new methodological principles for the sociology of art, a sub-discipline that it seeks to broaden conceptually by shifting the ground from art to cultural production. This shift suggests the utility of overcoming the boundaries that demarcate the sociology of art from adjacent fields, augmenting the sociological repertoire with reference to anthropology, cultural and media studies, art and cultural history, and the music disciplines. At the same time the article proposes that an explanatory theory of cultural production requires reinvention in relation to five key themes: aesthetics and the cultural object; agency and subjectivity; the place of institutions; history, temporality and change; and problems of value and judgement. The first half of the article approaches these issues through a sustained critique of Bourdieu. It proceeds through an exposition of generative research from contemporary anthropology, including the work of Alfred Gell, Christopher Pinney, Fred Myers and others, which highlights the analysis of mediation, ontology, materiality and genre. The second half develops fur ther an analytics of mediation and of temporalities, exemplifying this and expanding on the five themes through a discussion of two institutional ethnographies of cultural production (of the computer music institute IRCAM in Paris, and of the BBC). In pursuing this programme the paper advocates a novel conception of the relation between theoretical model and empirical research, one that might be termed post-positivist empiricism, while also suggesting that the framework outlined offers the basis for an enriched cultural criticism.