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Rodríguez Morató
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SOCIOLOGY OF THE ARTS
Sociology of the Arts

in Action
New Perspectives
on Creation, Production,
and Reception
Edited by
Arturo Rodríguez Morató
Álvaro Santana-Acuña
Series Editors
Katherine Appleford
Kingston University
London, UK
Anna Goulding
University of Newcastle
Newcastle, UK
Dave O’Brien
University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, UK
Mark Taylor
University of Sheffield
Sheffield, UK
This series brings together academic work which considers the production
and consumption of the arts, the social value of the arts, and analyses and
critiques the impact and role of cultural policy and arts management. By
exploring the ways in which the arts are produced and consumed, the
series offers further understandings of social inequalities, power relation-
ships and opportunities for social resistance and agency. It highlights the
important relationship between individual, social and political attitudes,
and offers significant insights into the ways in which the arts are develop-
ing and changing. Moreover, in a globalised society, the nature of arts
production, consumption and policy making is increasingly cosmopolitan,
and arts are an important means for building social networks, challenging
political regimes, and reaffirming and subverting social values across
the globe.
Alvaro Santana-Acuña
Editors

in Action
New Perspectives on Creation, Production,
and Reception
Editors
Arturo Rodríguez Morató Alvaro Santana-Acuña
Departamento de Sociología Department of Sociology
University of Barcelona Whitman College
Barcelona, Spain Walla Walla, WA, USA
ISSN 2569-1414 ISSN 2569-1406 (electronic)

ISBN 978-3-031-11304-8 ISBN 978-3-031-11305-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11305-5
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Praise for Sociology of the Arts in Action
“A well-designed collection of essays by a new generation of social scientists that

highlights the ubiquity and considerable diversity of artistic productions, emotions
and appreciations.”
—Pierre-Michel Menger, Collège de France, author of The Economics
of Creativity. Art and Achievement under Uncertainty
“With a treasure trove of studies ranging from food, dance and architecture, to
opera, literature, and soccer, this collection provides the most wide-ranging and
up-to-date overview of the vibrant and diverse new sociology of the arts. The edi-
tors’ decision to focus on Spanish-speaking authors is a much-welcomed interven-
tion to open-up narratives, traditions and empirical cases that have been forced to
live in the margins of the dominant Anglophone academic discourse. All in all, a
must read for any scholar working in cultural sociology and the sociology of
the arts.”
—Fernando Domínguez Rubio, University of California, San Diego, author
of Still Life. Ecologies of the Modern Imagination at the Art Museum
“This book arrives at the perfect moment in the evolution of research on culture.
Our predecessors carved out the field of inquiry, built theories and methods, and
expanded our definition of the arts; the moment to globalize the canon has arrived,
and this book is an accelerant for that process. The twelve scholars authoring this
volume work on topics both of enduring importance and recent popularity; use
many methods of inquiry to explore their topic matter; and form part of a cohort
of multi-lingual scholars who are essential to our future vibrancy as a discipline.
Published first in Spanish, the book also poses a challenge to scholars: to find and
share the strongest research with as many readers as possible. I rejoice in their
accomplishments, and will be eager to teach this book to all students of culture.”
—Jennifer C. Lena, Associate Professor and Program Director of Arts
Administration at Columbia University, USA.
Contents
1 New
Perspectives for the Sociology of the Arts 1
Part I Reconsidering the Frames of Artistic Production 45
2 Heteronomy
and Necessity: How Architects Design for
Architectural Competitions 47
Ignacio Farías
3 Creative
Settings: The Influence of Place on Urban
Cultural Creativity Processes 69
Matías I. Zarlenga
4 Cultural
Creation in Culinary Fields: The Cases of New
York and San Francisco 93
Vanina Leschziner
Part II New Visions on Creative Practices 115
5 The
Jolie Môme Theatre Company: A Sociology of
Artistic Work in Political Theater117
Marisol Facuse
vii
viii Contents
6 Habitus
in Dance: The Social and Artistic Skills of a
Rehearsal143
Dafne Muntanyola-Saura
7 Representations
of the Uncertain: Art, Astronomy, and
Dark Matter165
Paola Castaño
Part III The Artwork: Expanding the Analysis of Its

Materiality and Meaning(s) 189
8 With the Beatles: Generating the Recorded Rock Album

Formula191
Cristián Martín Pérez-Colman
9 Concrete
Materialities: Architectural Surfaces and the
Cultural Sociology of Modernity213
Eduardo de la Fuente
10 The
Literary Classic and the Underappreciated
Significance of Indexical Expressions239
Alvaro Santana-Acuña
Part IV Deepening Reception Analysis: Aesthetic Experience,

Evaluation and Critique 269
11 Objects,
Emotion and Biography or How to Love Opera
and Football Jerseys Again271
Claudio E. Benzecry
12 How
Contemporary Art Is Evaluated: The Artistic
Quality Criteria of the Quebec Arts and Letters Council295
Marian Misdrahi
Contents ix
13 A
Sociology of Art, Protest and Emotions: Disrupting the
Institutionalisation of Corporate Sponsorship at Tate
Galleries319
Marta Herrero
Index341
Notes on Contributors
Claudio E. Benzecry is Professor of Communication Studies and

Sociology at Northwestern University, USA. His book The Opera Fanatic:
Ethnography of an Obsession (2011) received the Mary Douglas Award for
best book in the Sociology of Culture (2012) and honorable mention for
the ASA Distinguished Book award (2014).His new book, The Perfect Fit:
Creative Work in the Global Shoe Industry, is based on a five-year ethno-
graphic research on fashion, creativity and globalization, following how a
shoe is imagined, sketched, designed, developed and produced in between
the US, Europe, Brazil and China.
Paola Castaño is Sociologist of Science and a research fellow at the
Egenis Centre for the Study of Life Sciences, the University of Exeter,
UK. Her main subject of research is science on the International Space
Station, with a focus on experiments in plant biology, biomedicine and
particle astrophysics and assessments of value about the station. She holds
a PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago, and her work has
been funded by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, the
Free University of Berlin and the British Academy with a Newton
International Fellowship held at Cardiff University.
Marisol Facuse received her Doctor of Sociology of Art & Culture and
Master of Sociology of Art and the Imaginary from the University of
Grenoble, and Master of Philosophy and Sociology from the University of
Concepción, Chile. She is also an associate professor in the Department of
Sociology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Chile and
the Coordinator of the Sociology of Art and Cultural Practices Study
xi
xii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Group. Her main research work is on political theater, popular culture,

immigrant music, cultural hybridization, museums and museology.
Ignacio Farías is Professor of Urban Anthropology in the Department of
European Ethnology at Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany. His
research interests concern current ecological and infrastructural transfor-
mations of cities and the associated epistemo-political challenges to the
democratization of city-making. His most recent work explores the poli-
tics of environmental disruptions, from tsunamis over heat to noise. He is
also interested in doing urban ethnography as a mode of city-making per-
formed with others (designers, initiatives, concerned groups, policy mak-
ers) and by other means (moving from textual to material productions).
Eduardo de la Fuente is an adjunct senior lecturer at the University of
South Australia and a fellow of the Manchester University Institute for
Place Management. He has served as a treasurer, secretary and acting pres-
ident of the ISA Research Committee for the Sociology of the Arts.
Eduardo has written on art and aesthetics, music and sound, space and
place, landscape and the built environment, and on the past and future of
a cultural sociology. He coined and promoted the concept of a “new soci-
ology of art” and, in recent and current work, has been focusing on mate-
rial and aesthetic textures.
Marta Herrero is Lecturer in Business of the Creative and Cultural
Industries in the Department of Theatre, Film, Television, and Interactive
Media at the University of York, UK. Her background is interdisciplinary,
working across sociology, management and organizational studies and art
history. After completing a PhD in Sociology of Modern Art Collections
at the University of Dublin, Trinity College, she gained a postdoctoral fel-
lowship from the Irish Research Council. Since then she has held academic
posts at the University of Plymouth and The University of Sheffield,
Management School.
Vanina Leschziner is an associate professor in the Department of
Sociology at the University of Toronto, Canada. Her primary areas of
interest are social theory, cognition, culture, social action, organizations,
evaluation and creativity. Research on these topics has been published in
the book At the Chef’s Table: Culinary Creativity in Elite Restaurants
(2015), as well as in Annual Review of Sociology, Sociological Theory, Theory
and Society, Social Psychology Quarterly and Sociological Forum, among
other publications. Leschziner is currently working on a book titled
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xiii
Culture and Creativity (with Claudio Benzecry, under contract with

Polity Press).
Marián Misdrahi holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of
Montréal, Canada. As a specialist in cultural sociology, her research has
focused on contemporary arts evaluation, thematic in which she has pro-
duced several specialized articles, in addition to having coordinated a spe-
cial issue in the journal Sociologie et Sociétés (47(2), 2015). On the other
hand, she has worked as a researcher on homelessness and mental health,
the racial profiling of young offenders and violent extremism. She taught
sociology at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and the
University of Montréal. Currently, she teaches at Dawson College in
Montréal, Canada.
Dafne Muntanyola-Saura is Professor of Sociology at Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain. She has been a postdoctoral scholar at
Université de Nice and a Fulbright Scholar in the Department of Cognitive
Science at University de California, San Diego (UCSD). Her research
crosses over the disciplinary boundaries of cognitive science and sociology
of the arts and covers interactions in professional and artistic settings with
a strong theoretical component. Her methods include video-aided eth-
nography and social network analysis. She has worked in hospitals, visual
arts, dance, Olympic synchronized swimming and filmmaking. She is the
co-coordinator of the Sociology of the Arts Board at the European
Sociological Association (ESA).
Cristián Martín Pérez-Colman was born in Buenos Aires but lives in
Madrid. He holds a PhD in Sociology and is Professor of “Ethnomusicology”
at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. He also teaches “Sociology of
Music” at the Universidad Alfonso X el Sabio.
Arturo Rodríguez Morató is Professor of Sociology and Director of the
Center for the Study of Culture, Politics and Society at the University of
Barcelona, Spain. He has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University,
former vice president for Research of the International Sociological
Association (2006–2010) and former president of its Research Committee
on Sociology of the Arts (1998–2002). He is the co-editor of a special
issue of Cultural Trends and has previously co-edited other issues of the
International Journal of Cultural Policy and City, Culture and Society. He
coordinates a major research project on the values of culture in Europe.
xiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS
Alvaro Santana-Acuña is Associate Professor of Sociology at Whitman

College, United States. He is the author of Ascent to Glory: How One
Hundred Years of Solitude Was Written and Became a Global Classic (2020)
and the co-editor of La nueva sociología de las artes: una perspectiva his-
panohablante y global (Gedisa, 2017). His next book is titled The Nation
of Triangles. He is the recipient of research awards from the American
Sociological Association.
Matías I. Zarlenga holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of
Barcelona, Spain, and graduated in sociology from the University of
Buenos Aires, Argentina. He holds a position as an associate researcher at
the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET),
Argentina, and a professor at the National University of Tres de Febrero,
Argentina. He is a member of the Centre for Studies on Culture, Politics,
and Society (CECUPS) at the University of Barcelona. He has partici-
pated in several funded projects at the national and European levels. His
research interests include sociology of art and culture, cultural policy and
urban sociology.
List of Figures
Fig. 2.1 Design work on models of the environment. Source: Author 55

Fig. 2.2 Revision of the project presentation sheets. Source: Author 58
Fig. 6.1 Instruction of a trio (London, 2012). Source: Author 153
Fig. 11.1 Two Boca Juniors’ players posing during the 1983 National
Championship. To the right, the Boca Juniors jersey for the
2012/3 season 282
Fig. 11.2 Counterfeit jerseys of Boca Juniors for sale during the team’s
2012 tour to Mendoza 285
xv
List of Tables
Table 3.1 Typology of creative settings 73

Table 5.1 Division of Jolie Môme company work 125
Table 12.1 The evaluation process according to the quality profile
of the candidates 302
xvii
CHAPTER 1
New Perspectives for the Sociology

of the Arts
A prominent characteristic of the arts in contemporary society is their

complex delineation and fuzzy contours, and therefore their ubiquity. The
arts—their values, characteristic practices and works of art—are found
everywhere today, not only in well-defined art institutions but also in the
most diverse places, some relatively unsuspected, such as in the kitchens of
famous chefs, the workshops of fashion designers or the urban spaces used
by the creators of street art. The expansion and diversification of the social
sphere of art has been constant for decades. As is known, this expansion
was produced by the successive avant-garde movements, which gave way
to a postmodern dynamic that removed the barriers between high and
popular culture, and their worlds and symbolic repertoires. Thus, street
art came to be regularly present in galleries and at art auctions, like other
forms of outsider art (Zolberg & Cherbo, 1997), while design and other
creations previously devalued due to their supposedly decorative or arti-
sanal character, such as ceramics or textile art, gained prominence in those
same spaces and in art museums. And thus, artistic events of all kinds,
A. Rodríguez Morató (*)

Departamento de Sociología, University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
e-mail: rodriguez.morato@ub.edu
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
A. Rodríguez Morató, A. Santana-Acuña (eds.), Sociology of the Arts
in Action, Sociology of the Arts,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11305-5_1
2 A. RODRÍGUEZ MORATÓ
instead of concentrating and isolating themselves, began to spread along

the entire social space, occupying all kinds of places.
The postmodern drift has not been exclusively responsible for this artis-
tic proliferation. In reality, it was due to more complex and far-reaching
social transformations, which have given a peculiar centrality to artistic
activity in contemporary society. Firstly, it was due to the post-industrial
social transformation, which led to a general increase in income, leisure
time and levels of education of the whole population. It was also caused by
the de-structuring of the modern artistic model described by Bourdieu
(1992), with the rapprochement between the artistic and commercial
poles of the artistic field, the fragmentation and the increasing flexibility of
cultural industries and, inversely, the growing commercialism of the insti-
tutions of high culture (Rodríguez Morató, 2012b, pp. 323–324). But
postmodern cultural dynamics, known for being characteristically striking,
have given a particular visibility to art today and have contributed greatly
to disseminating aesthetic sensibilities and patterns of aesthetic work in
multiple fields that were initially far removed from fine arts. The recent
enthronement of creativity—the notion of eminently artistic roots and
meaning—as a leitmotif and paradigm of socioeconomic progress in
advanced societies (Florida, 2002; Reckwitz, 2017) gives an idea of the
gravitational power that the artistic model exercises in today’s society.
The arts, therefore, permeate other social practices and influence their
conformation, they expand and diversify. At the same time, however, and
as a result of the same process, the arts are also desecrated, losing purity
and autonomy. To different degrees, artistic dynamics are intertwined
with those of multiple non-artistic actors whose interests are completely
unrelated to any art logic. And the artistic practices themselves are often
redefined as hybrids or, more generally, are understood in their inherent
institutional hybridity. In this way, the arts have become a paradigm of
social complexity. On the other hand, the field of artistic work constitutes
a laboratory of precariousness and uncertainty that characterises contem-
porary society (Menger, 2009). And beyond its own sphere, the dynamic
of artistic appreciation, founded on originality, as it has been projected in
the increasingly wide and expansive space of the cultural sector, has given
rise to a peculiar form of wealth (Bandelj & Wherry, 2011) and a specific
economic logic (Boltanski & Esquerre, 2017). With all this, it can be said
that the arts have not only greatly increased their importance in twenty-
first-century society (Alexander & Bowler, 2014) but have also acquired a
salient sociological relevance.
1 NEW PERSPECTIVES FOR THE SOCIOLOGY OF THE ARTS 3
In this context, the sociology of the arts is currently experiencing a

significant boom. This academic area has had a long history of heteroge-
neous national developments, throughout which it has suffered multiple
ups and downs, successive disciplinary identity crises and advances and
setbacks in its place within the sociological community. These different
evolutions can be traced through some of the many presentations and
introductions that have been published, with increasing frequency, in dif-
ferent countries: in France (Moulin, 1986; Heinich, 2001; Pequignot,
2013), the USA and the UK (Zolberg, 1990; Inglis & Hughson, 2002),
Germany (Danko, 2012), Brazil (Quemin & Villas Bôas, 2016; Bueno
et al., 2018) and Spain and the Spanish-speaking world (Rodríguez
Morató & Santana Acuña, 2017). But in recent decades the disparate pro-
cesses of national consolidation of the discipline have given way to a
broader and deeper consolidation. Sociology of the arts publications have
diversified, covering the most diverse fields and aspects, from the produc-
tion to the reception of works of art, institutions and policies, as well as all
kinds of artistic forms, not only the traditional fine and popular arts but
also those corresponding to multiple creative practices of less institution-
alised artistic identity, such as fashion or cuisine. These publications have
proliferated, in turn, in all kinds of academic media: in the most reputed
sociological journals of the discipline, in the form of articles and special
issues, in specialised journals such as Poetics, Cultural Sociology or Sociologie
de l’art, and in books published by the most prestigious publishers.
During this time, central paradigms of analysis, such as those by Becker
or Bourdieu, have also been consolidated. In addition, these same para-
digms have exerted an important influence in many other fields of sociol-
ogy, particularly Bourdieu’s paradigm. Besides, other academic areas, such
as the sociology of organisations or economic sociology, have regularly
incorporated artistic themes into the repertoire of their work. On the
other hand, since the creation in 1979 of the research committee on the
sociology of the arts at the International Sociological Association, specific
academic associations have multiplied and strengthened, both in Europe
and the USA. The result of these developments has been a profound trans-
formation of the sociology of the arts, which has operated in two ways. On
the one hand, the specialism has matured, now accumulating its advance-
ments and findings in a less prejudiced way, regardless of schools and ori-
entations. And on the other, the dynamics of exchange between specialists
has become increasingly global, in terms of themes, approaches and, pro-
gressively, influences too.
This book provides a presentation of the discipline, focused on its most

innovative developments. More than a standard presentation, conceived
on the basis of different existing theoretical options (Inglis & Hughson,
2002) or around the various problems and empirical fields of research
(Alexander & Bowler, 2014; Quemin, 2016), this collection of essays is
first and foremost a telling exponent of the effervescent theoretical creativ-
ity and empirical expansion that currently characterises the sociology of
the arts. Such creativity is present in the increasingly predominant approach
to a sociology of the arts in action, one developing an ongoing dialectic of
empirical analysis of cases and theoretical elaboration from them, in an
ever-expanding area of inquiry and from a theoretically open-minded atti-
tude. This is the perspective that is developed here. The book is an adapted
version of a previous Spanish volume on cutting-edge developments in the
discipline authored by a diverse set of early and mid-career Spanish and
Latin American sociologists characterised by their international careers,
and it provides a broad vision of the current potential of this specialism.
In order to properly understand and appreciate the contribution that
the book makes to this vibrant field of study, there are, however, some key
factors to consider in some detail in this introductory chapter. To begin
with, it is important to appreciate how the field of the sociology of the arts
has been shaped in recent decades—through successive renovations, to
reaching full maturity—as the same factors responsible for its evolution
now determine its progress and future. In addition, it is also important to
clarify the nature of the new stage in which the discipline currently finds
itself, as well as to consider the relative prominence that sociologists of
Hispanic origin are acquiring within it, since this book is based precisely
on their contribution. Therefore, the discussion to follow will pay atten-
tion to these two issues. Then, in relation to what has been said, we will
also present the content of the book, explaining its origins, commenting
on its meaning and interpreting its various chapters. Finally, from a pro-
grammatic perspective, we will reflect on the possible and at the same time
desirable horizon of future development for this discipline.
The Overhaul and Maturity of the Sociology

of the Arts
After a long and tortuous history, in recent decades, the sociology of the
arts has reached productive maturity. This stage of development is the
result of two successive overhauls of the discipline that have profoundly
contributed to its transformation, one of them taking place in the 1960s

and the other beginning thirty years later, around the 1990s. In both
cases, the change meant a redefinition of the discipline with respect to
three fundamental parameters: the capacity to focus on the specificity of its
object (artistic creation), the relationship with the humanities and its loca-
tion within sociology.
The first overhaul constituted a radical break with the previously prac-
ticed sociology of the arts. The various traditions of sociology of music,
sociology of art or sociology of literature, which had been developing
since the beginning of the twentieth century, had developed within the
aesthetics and humanities dedicated to these different arts and adopted the
problems and typical assumptions of these disciplinary frameworks. In
these academic settings, the scope and consistency of the sociological per-
spectives applied were very limited. Jean-Claude Passeron, referring criti-
cally to this humanist sociology of the arts, gave the key to understanding
such limitations: “It was always—he would say—knowledge [...] subordi-
nated to a primordial presupposition, kept out of the reach of any empiri-
cal questioning and protected from all impertinent curiosity: that of the
value of works of art that are called to play an aesthetic role in the history
of culture” (Passeron, 1986, p. 450).
In the middle of the last century, the main protagonists of the fragmen-
tary sociology of the arts of the time—Hauser, Antal, Francastel, Lukács,
Goldmann, Adorno—developed their work predominantly within a
humanist framework, far from academic sociology. For this reason, they
focused their attention on the analysis of these privileged works and were
also subjected, at the same time, to a series of important collateral condi-
tions: to the strict separation between a consideration of the artwork from
an internal or an external perspective; to stay within the parameters defined
by the relationship between works of art and global society, thus con-
demning themselves to a weak or null empirical operationalisation of the
social referent; and, ultimately, to form part of the hagiographic discourse
of celebration of the artistic fact.
By the late sixties, however, these approaches were beginning to decline.
A new sociology of the arts, led by professional sociologists, and formu-
lated from very different parameters, linked to empirical social research,
was emerging and would become fully dominant in the following decade.
Thus, a new paradigm of the sociology of the arts was constituted, explic-
itly detached from the humanist perspective, and even opposed to it, in the
seminal formulations of Becker and Bourdieu; a paradigm manifestly
inscribed, on the contrary, within the framework of academic sociology

(substantively linked to other fields of this discipline, such as the sociology
of education or the sociology of occupations). In this paradigm, analytical
primacy shifted from works of art (and from classical works in particular)
to the space of social relations in which they are generated. On the other
hand, the social space under consideration was no longer the abstract
image of society as a whole, but the concrete space of relationships directly
or indirectly involved in artistic production; that was the primary focus of
attention. Due to the above, in addition, the link between the artwork and
society was redefined, so that the artwork was understood to be config-
ured in this case from those same relationships, not disconnected from
them, and the opposition between internal and external analytical perspec-
tive was deactivated. Finally, the aesthetic values would no longer be the
independent variable of the analysis, much less an objective to be achieved
through it, but would form part of the reality to be analysed. Between the
1970s and 1980s, the work of a large number of sociologists, especially
French and American, promoted the new empirical sociology of the arts
developed within this paradigmatic framework (beyond Becker and
Bourdieu, among many others: Richard Peterson, Paul DiMaggio, Robert
Faulkner, Diana Crane, Vera Zolberg, Wendy Griswold, Raymonde
Moulin and Jean-Claude Passeron).
Since the 1990s, a more subtle qualitative transformation of the orien-
tations and predominant parameters in sociological work on the arts has
taken place. This transformation, which crystallised at the beginning of
the new millennium, has represented a second renewal of the sociology of
the arts, which has culminated in its current maturity. The new stage is not
defined by a radical break with the previous stage, institutional or discur-
sive, as was the case of the renewal of the sixties, but rather it represents a
qualitative transformation of the orientations and the predominant param-
eters in the sociological work on the arts. It is a transformation that results
from the interweaving of three trends of change of the discipline, which
has started to appear already in the previous decade, if not before: on the
one hand, a trend of change of a disciplinary nature; on the other, a line of
thematic and analytical evolution; and finally, an evolution of the social
and political context in which it operates.
To begin with, the disciplinary evolution of the sociology of the arts led
to a certain impasse in the institutional development of the discipline. The
relative maturity reached by the new sociology of the arts from the 1970s
onwards resulted in the generation of analytical paradigms that would
reach a large academic projection in the following decade in many areas of

sociology (particularly those of Becker and Bourdieu). This maturity and
influence encouraged at the same time in its protagonists the ambition to
promote a broader sociology of culture, capable of articulating around the
inquiries about the arts and on the basis of the sociological research param-
eters developed in that field, the set of subspecialties that dealt with the
analysis of symbolic production in contemporary society (from the sociol-
ogy of science to that of communication or religion). Already in the 1970s
important initiatives emerged in this regard. This is the case for the pro-
duction of culture perspective, which Richard Peterson began to promote
during these years through various meetings and publications (Peterson,
1976). And this is also the case of the disciplinary project that Pierre
Bourdieu sponsored at the same time from his Centre de Sociologie de
l’Éducation et de la Culture. This ambition of articulating differing cul-
tural fields was later expressed in the creation in 1986 of the culture sec-
tion of the American Sociological Association (Zolberg, 2005, p. 342),
which over time would become the second largest section of the association.
But the fruits of these efforts of the sociology of the arts were to become
ambiguous. The proliferation of analysis on the cultural dimension in mul-
tiple areas of the sociological discipline (in the sphere of organisations,
social movements or gender, for example) or, in a more general formula-
tion, what has been called the cultural turn in sociology, takes place in the
nineties. But, at the same time, the attempts to articulate a sociology of
culture promoted in previous decades—those of Bourdieu and Peterson,
in particular—seem at this point exhausted or unsuccessful. And in reality,
on the other hand, the position of the sociology of the arts within the
sociological discipline, although already fully consolidated, seems at this
point also stagnant.1
Why does the expected apotheosis of the sociology of the arts not take
place in this circumstance? The culturalisation of sociology that has
occurred has not been due to the push of the sociology of the arts only.
This has acted as a major trigger, but other forces have been even more
decisive. One of the most fundamental was the revival of sociological
1
Zolberg (2005) even registers a certain regression in the United States, but this is offset
by the significant expansion of the discipline in Europe at the same time, with the creation of
the Network on the Sociology of the Arts of the European Sociological Association and with
an important growth in particular in the UK, as well as with the rise of certain specific areas,
such as the sociology of music (Shepherd & Devine, 2015, p. 14).
theory, now centred on the cultural key. The influence exerted by cultural-
ist sociological theory has gone in a direction contrary to that advocated
by the new sociology of the arts: favouring a vision of culture as a general
dimension of social reality, instead of a vision focused on particular insti-
tutional spaces of symbolic elaboration. The most significant case in this
regard is that of Jeffrey Alexander, who carried out an energetic crusade
since the late 1990s against the sociology of culture based on a specialised
vision of culture: against Bourdieu especially but also against the perspec-
tive of the production of culture, neo-institutionalism or interactionism
(Alexander & Smith, 1998); and, more broadly, against specialised soci-
ologies of culture, including the sociology of the arts (Alexander, 2003,
p. 5). Alexander’s questioning, who reproached these perspectives for the
lack of vision of culture as an autonomous instance of determination of the
social, influenced the delegitimisation of the attempt to articulate a pro-
gramme of the sociology of culture from the sociology of the arts, achiev-
ing at that time to consolidate the use of the term “cultural sociology”
(and its associated perspective) instead of “sociology of culture.”
The ambiguous position in which the sociology of the arts found itself
in those years and the interplay of tensions and expectations that this posi-
tion implied pushed the discipline towards a certain re-centring, towards a
deepening of its discursive specificity. This trend was allied to the drift of
its own internal development, which had long been moving towards a
refocusing of the works of art. The issue of artwork, central to the old
humanistic sociology of the arts, had in principle been bordered by the
new empirical sociology of the arts, in order to concentrate on other
dimensions of artistic life that seemed more sociologically relevant at that
time (mainly the audience, the art professions and markets, or the organ-
isational dynamics of production and distribution); also because these
dimensions were more easily operationalised from a classical sociological
approach. But the issue soon re-emerged, conveniently reconceptualised.
Around 1985, it timidly reappeared in an important colloquium held in
Marseille, in the form of a question: “Is the sociology of artwork possi-
ble?” (Moulin, 1986).
The incipient thematisation of artwork in the mid-eighties reflected a
confluence of the various lines of research that were being developed at
that time, to the extent that each one of them, with greater or lesser inten-
sity, was already beginning to inscribe the subject in its own work horizon.
The sociology of art audiences did so by shifting their attention to the
question of reception (Griswold, 1987). The sociology of artistic
production followed a similar process by approaching it as a dynamic of

accommodation to a series of organisational constraints (Peterson, 1985)
or as a process of adjustment between discursive resources, professional
circumstances and public interests (Griswold, 1986; Brain, 1989). The
issue also arose when, from critical structuralism, there was an attempt to
exhaust the explanatory potential of Bourdieu’s model of the field of sym-
bolic production to account for the uniqueness of a specific creative proj-
ect (Bourdieu, 1988), or when the construction of meaning and aesthetic
value was investigated from the paradigm of mediation (Akrich, 1986). In
this way, the significant and evaluative dimension of artwork became com-
mon to the various lines of research and schools of empirical sociology of
the arts in that decade.
Research into artwork continues along these same lines during the fol-
lowing decade, expanding to other constructivist perspectives (Heinich,
1992; DeNora, 1997).2 However, at that time, a very significant change
of dominance takes place when some go from considering works of art as
products to focus on the practical contexts of their use (Acord & DeNora,
2008). This is an approach that had already been pointed out in the Centre
de Sociologie de l’Innovation since the previous decade, in connection
with the models of analysis that Bruno Latour and Michel Callon were
developing for the field of sociology of science and technology. Working
at that Centre, it is Antoine Hennion who mainly applies those models to
the artistic field in these years, in a series of works devoted to musical
mediation in different areas (in the production of pop music, on the radio,
in music schools). When, in the second half of the nineties, his inquiry
focuses on the practices of the music lover and on the simultaneous co-
production of the artwork and their tasters (Gomart & Hennion, 1999),
is when they reach greater projection. This is significantly enhanced, on
the other hand, when associated with the related research that Tia DeNora
begins to publish at approximately the same time in England on the use of
music in different contexts of everyday life (DeNora, 2000). The joint
effort of Hennion and DeNora, both capable academic entrepreneurs and
surrounded by a favourable institutional environment (in the case of
DeNora, effectively supported by her colleague Robert Witkin), will then
make it possible to establish a version of sociology of the arts in the aca-
demic landscape characterised by considering the artistic material from the
2
In France, the research group OPuS (Œuvres, Publics, Société), created in 1999 by Alain
Pessin, has further reinforced the attention to the artwork in subsequent sociology of the arts.
point of view of its capacity for generating the social, a substantial change
with respect to the sociology of the arts until then in place, which focused
its analysis, in an inverse way, on the determination or social organisation
of artistic production. The approach of these authors will equate them in
this sense to some extent to the old humanist sociology of the arts, but
only apparently, since their perspective of analysis will be empirically con-
trasted, not purely theoretical; and it will be, above all, local and situated,
and therefore contingent, not abstract, macro sociological and determin-
istic, as happened in the former.
This was a first preview of the announced change; an advance that was
meant to introduce the possibility of art-sociology together with the
established perspective of the sociology of the arts (De la Fuente, 2007).
This innovation was welcomed by Jeffrey Alexander and his colleagues,
who understood it to be assimilable within the parameters of their cultural
sociology (Eyerman & McCormick, 2006; Alexander, 2008). Their
endorsement will be important for the academic legitimation of this posi-
tion, which is, however, ambiguous with respect to Alexander’s disciplin-
ary project.3 The decisive reinforcement of this change, which means at
the same time its redefinition as a general transformation of the dominant
research orientation within the sociology of the arts, will actually come
from another side: by the incorporation of other positions previously dis-
connected or far removed from Hennion and DeNora’s to the renovation
movement and the approach of the different positions towards each other.
A fundamental incorporation occurs immediately and is that of interac-
tionist orientations. In the book Art From Start to Finish, sociologists
Howard Becker, Robert Faulkner and Pierre-Michel Menger, together
with various other specialists (musicologists, economists, artists), set out
to explore in detail what a work of art consists of as a social product
(Becker et al., 2006). Their analysis, which largely assumes Hennion and
DeNora’s approach to the materiality and agency of artwork, introduces
another parameter of essential importance: the procedural perspective.
Later, other orientations of a structural nature, in principle detached from
these approaches, have also taken these on. The Routledge International
Handbook of the Sociology of Art and Culture (Hanquinet & Savage, 2016)
3
DeNora defends that her work is at the forefront of cultural sociology, but at the same
time she does not hesitate to frame it in continuity with the tradition of empirical sociology
of the arts and, in particular, like Hennion, in direct contiguity with Becker’s interactionist
approach (Acord & DeNora, 2008), both contradictory affiliations, as has been said before,
with Alexander.
does so programmatically, affirming at the same time the relational per-

spective and aesthetics as guiding principles of the analysis. The incorpora-
tion of these two fundamental research orientations has definitively forged
the new dominant formula of the sociology of the arts, but it has also
revealed, at the same time, the essential continuity in the change pro-
duced. The new perspective, in any case, implies important changes,
among others a preeminent attention to the materiality of the artistic
object and its aesthetic character, which brings the sociology of the arts
closer to work in philosophy, psychology, sociology of science and anthro-
pology of material culture, among other disciplines (Acord & DeNora,
2008, p. 227; Born, 2010).
Finally, it must be taken into account that the new focus of interest and
the new predominant orientations that emerge in the thematic and ana-
lytical development of the discipline also result from the new stimuli, both
ideological and practical, that it has received from the social and political
context in which it has developed in recent years. In this regard, changes
in culture and cultural policies have played a significant role in the obso-
lescence of the old perspective and in the consolidation and articulation of
the new one. There are new themes, such as artistic globalisation or digi-
tisation, that have arisen naturally in counterpart to very visible changes in
reality. But the cultural transformation in recent decades has been broad
and profound at the same time (Rodríguez Morató, 2012b) and has come
to favour the paradigm shift in the sociology of the arts in more indirect
ways as well.
The cultural order has become more fluid, its contrasts have been
largely deactivated, the repertoires (high culture, popular culture) have
been unstructured and the correspondences between social strata and life-
styles have been destabilised. All this has eroded the credibility of the clas-
sical, deterministic structural perspective, and has favoured the emergence
of other more complex and dynamic relational perspectives. On the other
hand, for a long time, the artistic paradigm has been projected in many
areas of social life outside of art and the aestheticisation of the most diverse
practices and goods has taken place. These phenomena logically tend to
translate into an extension of the application of the perspectives of the
sociology of the arts to these multiple fields (gastronomy, outsider art,
design, etc.). In addition, the social transformations that have enhanced
the projection of the artistic paradigm and increased the socioeconomic
importance of cultural activity, have changed the social perception of cul-
ture, which has gone from being considered a marginal and irrelevant field
for development to being conceived as a factor of central importance and
dynamising character. It is the outline of a new postmodern cultural order:

that of the culture society (Rodríguez Morató & Zolberg, 2003; Rodríguez
Morató, 2012b). The vision of art as an active and generative element,
which characterises the renewed sociology of art, is fully congruent with
this perception and is, therefore, reinforced by it.
The transformation of the cultural order has its counterpart, moreover,
in the field of cultural policy, which undergoes a change of coordinates of
similar significance (Menger, 2010; Rodríguez Morató, 2012a). In the
eighties, a rethinking of cultural policy already took place, which replaced
its traditional objectives of the redistribution of cultural capital with other
economic ones: these are culture-led urban regeneration policies
(Rodríguez Morató & Zarlenga, 2018). Culture is thus conceived as an
investment that can generate benefits rather than as an expense. In the
following decade, there was a redefinition of the cultural field encom-
passed by politics, incorporating the so-called creative industries (advertis-
ing, design, fashion, etc.). In this context, a vision emerges that emphasises
creation, paradigmatically concentrated in the arts, as the driving force
behind the entire society and economy. By the year 2000, finally, an ideol-
ogy of creativity as a social panacea is developed and to some extent also a
demand for knowledge about the dynamics of creation (although the pre-
vailing economistic vision leaves sociologists aside, paradoxically).
The ideology of creativity, but increasingly also the practical stimuli
derived from it, support the advance of the renewed sociology of the arts.4
Above all, the perspective of creativity provides the legitimising context
that frames the research horizon in which the sociology of the arts cur-
rently works: the horizon of creation.
The Sociology of the Arts in Action

Eduardo de la Fuente (2007) was the first to echo the renewal of the soci-
ology of the arts that took place between the 1990s and the beginning of
the following decade. Under the label of the new sociology of the arts, he
highlighted a number of important disciplinary innovations: “firstly, a
4
These incentives are very diverse, ranging from the funding of research and scholarships,
to the provision of academic positions related to this topic, in which sociologists of the arts
profiles fit well. In this regard, a particularly significant case was the election of Pierre-Michel
Menger as Professor at the Collège de France (2013), occupying a chair whose profile is
Sociologie du travail créateur.
reconsideration of the relationship between sociological and other disci-

plinary approaches to art; secondly, the possibility of an art-sociology as
against a sociology of art; thirdly, the application of insights from the soci-
ology of art to non-art ‘stuff’; and, fourthly, the sociology of the artwork
conceived as a contingent social fact” (De la Fuente, 2007: 409).
These new predominant approaches in the sociology of the arts from
the turn of the century, which de la Fuente identified in his early balance,
undoubtedly constituted some of the most characteristic features of the
new configuration of the discipline. The longer historical perspective that
we now have and the broader analysis of this transformation that we have
outlined here allow us to highlight the refocusing of the discipline on its
discursive specificity as a structural key to the new stage.
The new attention given to artwork and artistic creation from the
1980s reintroduces an aesthetic perspective in the discipline, as we have
seen. This new interest in the formal aspects, values and meaning of art-
work leads, for its part, naturally to focus on the agency of artistic objects,
their own materiality and the practical and procedural nature of their cre-
ation. Through these routes, sociological work on the arts, which finds
stimulus and inspiration in particular in the sociology of science and tech-
nology, meets and interweaves with other multiple disciplines that also
work in this field, such as aesthetics, history of art, anthropology and the
psychology of art, cultural studies or semiotics. In this way, a dynamic
interdisciplinary exchange is constituted as a distinctive feature of the new
stage of the sociology of the arts.
On the other hand, the interest in artwork and artistic creation, insofar
as it is relocated in the broader frame of the creativity perspective and the
culture society, favours a systematic thematic enlargement of the field of
study. Among the new topics addressed are, for example, outsider art
(Zolberg & Cherbo, 1997) or self-taught art (Fine, 2004). Diverse expres-
sive practices are increasingly investigated from the perspective of artifica-
tion (Heinich & Shapiro, 2012; Shapiro, 2019). All kinds of functional
productions endowed with aesthetic value are also studied from other per-
spectives (Molotch, 1996, 2003; De Nora, 2000). These works add to the
continuing tradition of popular art studies, many of which have grown at
the confluence of the British tradition of cultural studies and sociology
(Willis, 1990). In addition, the connection to other multiple fields of soci-
ological research on culture is also expanded in parallel. In this sense, there
is a proliferation of work that comparatively analyses the domain of art and
other diverse domains: artistic objects and scientific objects (Hennion &
Latour, 1993), music fans and drug users (Gomart & Hennion, 1999),
artistic evaluation repertoires and other repertoires of cultural evaluation
(Lamont & Thevenot, 2000), aesthetic discourse and political discourse
(Mukerji, 1997; Ikegami, 2005; Zubrzycki, 2013), architects and philoso-
phers (Collins & Guillén, 2012) or iconic meanings in art and other more
mundane areas of social life (Alexander, 2008).
The proliferation of objects of inquiry is further enhanced by the grow-
ing and increasingly global expansion of the community of practitioners of
the discipline. The greater diversity of cultural and institutional contexts
from which sociological work on the arts arises, the variable distances from
which it is linked with the established disciplinary discourse and the
increasingly intense connection of the international sociological commu-
nity favour a new dynamic of exchange, in which shared theoretical
assumptions are less important. The confluence of a common interest in
creation also facilitates the opposition and dialogue between work that
address very different aspects and perspectives, favouring their mutual fer-
tilisation. In this way, eclecticism crystallises as a new predominant atti-
tude in disciplinary dialogue and the result is that a new dynamic of
progress in the discipline emerges: that of the sociology of the arts in action.
It is a dynamic that is far from the traditional pattern prevailing in other
stages of development of the discipline, in which disciplinary progress
operated fundamentally within the margins of different schools and tradi-
tions, a pattern of progressive accumulation of evidence that was allowing
for the refinement and development of theories of paradigmatic vocation,
by their successive contrast with new empirical fields of inquiry. On the
contrary, the characteristic formula of the sociology of the arts in action
consists of the constant and creative rearticulation of concepts, models
and analytical approaches coming from different theoretical frameworks
and disciplinary fields, all of them configured in contrast to novel prob-
lems and new fields of empirical study. These constant and varied analytical
trade-offs, theoretically motivated at times but also instigated in other
cases by social or political causes, produce a particular theoretical efferves-
cence, which is characteristic of the discipline in its present stage.
The current stage of the sociology of the arts, which we have just char-
acterised as the sociology of the arts in action, is directly linked to the inno-
vations introduced in the discipline around the turn of the century, which
de la Fuente identified and called with the label new sociology of the arts
(De la Fuente, 2007). The new disciplinary dynamic that has emerged
since then also results from other factors, such as the increasing
globalisation of the discipline or the predominant theoretical eclecticism

that currently prevails in it. In this way, a productive empirical-theoretical
dialectic has been consolidated, open to all kinds of influences and far
from any form of doctrinal rigidity. This is the hallmark of the new stage,
in which the potential of previous advances reaches its culmination.
The maturity reached by the sociology of the arts in recent times has
also translated into a significant increase in its disciplinary standing within
the broader scope of the sociology of culture/cultural sociology. At the
height of 2005, Vera Zolberg registered an incipient enhancement of
interest in artistic themes within that universe. Commenting on the
Blackwell Companion for the Sociology of Culture (Jacobs & Hanrahan,
2005), she stated: “there is a ‘new’ cultural sociology with the aesthetic
dimension at its core” (Zolberg, 2005: 342). Fifteen years later, the pres-
ence and influence of the perspectives coming from the sociology of the
arts has only strengthened in this disciplinary context, favoured by the
boom it has experienced in its current key. A new militant eclecticism has
also made its way into cultural sociology on both sides of the Atlantic,
which has facilitated the prominence of the sociology of the arts within it.
This prominence and the new eclecticism that fosters it can be seen both
in the SAGE Handbook of Cultural Sociology (Inglis & Almila, 2016) and
in the recent manual published by Lyn Spillman, What is Cultural
Sociology? (Spillman, 2020).
But this higher profile goes beyond a mere question of amount of
attention given. Vera Zolberg (2005) advocated “re-aestheticizing the
culture concept” as a key strategy for advancing the study of culture. In
this regard, she noted: “Working through the issue of agency and struc-
ture, for example, has been stalemated by its overdetermined nature.
Recasting that issue as one of artistic creativity suggests an exciting possi-
bility of resolving the stalemate” (Zolberg, 2005: 347). Similarly, Tia
DeNora and Sophie Kryzs Accord (2008) proclaimed that the sociology
of art was in a position to show the way to solve a fundamental challenge
of cultural sociology: the articulation between the analysis of explicit cul-
ture and implicit culture (Accord & DeNora, 2008, p. 224). A step fur-
ther in the same direction, Hanquinet and Savage (2016) have advocated
developing a relational and aesthetic cultural sociology that places the
sociological analysis of artwork and cultural production and consumption
in its own centre, from the assumption that in the culturalised current
societies this area, intrinsically protean, is a privileged terrain for shaping
the social. In this way, it can be said that in recent years the sociology of
the arts has not only come to occupy a central place in an increasingly
ductile and open cultural sociology but has also become a primordial vec-
tor of innovation overlooking its future development.
The current dynamism of the sociology of the arts is also verified
through the renewal of its themes and areas of interest, a renewal that, as
we have said, responds to both internal and external stimuli. Some of these
are characteristic. One of them is the theme of artistic globalisation and
cosmopolitanism. This phenomenon, so prominent today, has been stud-
ied in depth by various sociologists of the arts in recent years. With respect
to other generic and usually inaccurate analyses of cultural globalisation,
produced in the last decades of the twentieth century in other academic
areas, sociological and non-sociological, the sociologists of the arts who
have subsequently dedicated themselves to the subject, especially since the
turn of the century, have provided a much clearer view of the phenome-
non. They have investigated in different fields and in relation to varying
aspects: on the proliferation of related genres within the global framework
of contemporary popular music (Regev, 1997, 2013), the interrelation
between markets and policies in the global expansion of film and audio-
visual creation (Crane et al., 2002; Crane, 2014), that same interrelation
and its effects on the hierarchisation of visual artists and art galleries
(Crane, 2009; Quemin, 2002, 2013, 2021), as well as on the articulation
between local and global markets in the same field (Velthuis & Baia
Curioni, 2015; Velthuis & Brandellero, 2018), and on editorial globalisa-
tion (Sapiro, 2009, 2010). Through the growing number and diversity of
their studies, these and other sociologists dedicated to these issues have
provided an extensive body of empirical evidence and have been able to
develop increasingly penetrating analysis of the phenomenon of artistic
globalisation in all its aspects. In recent times, moreover, some of these
works have developed an ambition of theoretical elaboration, particularly
in connection with Bourdieu’s legacy (Sapiro, 2013, 2015; Buchholz,
2016, 2018; Regev, 2019).
Responding to an internal logic of development, other topics of current
interest for the discipline revolve around artistic works. One is the issue of
their resonance and meaning, as artistic icons or literary classics (Alexander,
2008; Santana-Acuña, 2020). Another is that of agency, an aspect that has
been considered for some time now and whose investigation has pro-
gressed through a permanent counterpoint of analysis of artistic works and
diverse cultural objects. In these analyses, the art work or cultural object is
conceived dynamically, as mediations that contribute to shaping the iden-
tities of the subjects linked to them in the very process through which
these subjects define and experience them (Hennion, 1993; Zubrzycki,
2013), or as models that guide and legitimise action and social order
(Mukerji, 1997, DeNora, 2000; Molotch, 2003; Wagner-Pacifici, 2005).
In connection with the work on artistic and cultural agency, evolving on
relatively equivalent parameters, of interdisciplinary dialogue and between
cases of different nature, the theme of materiality also appears promi-
nently, a theme that deepens the disciplinary decentring of sociological
work on the arts (Griswold et al., 2013; Zubrzycki, 2017; Domínguez
Rubio, 2014, 2020). Finally, an important additional perspective is that of
the cycle of creation and existence of the work (Becker et al., 2006;
Childress, 2017).
Another focus of interest in the current sociology of the arts is that of
(e)valuation. This is a topic that has been intensely developed from
Bourdieusian parameters and also in opposition to them. The Bourdieusian
problem par excellence is that of distinction, which has a double face: that
of cultural consumption and that of cultural production. Both are part of
a model of cultural dynamics that is conceived in an integrated manner,
based on the idea of a homology between the functioning of both spheres
(Hesmondhalgh, 2006). The Bourdieusian problematic of cultural con-
sumption started from the analysis of artistic reception (Bourdieu &
Darbel, 1969) but ended up taking shape in the broader framework of a
general sociology of cultural practices (Bourdieu, 1979). Later, the most
influential questioning also arose in a restricted area, that of the analysis of
musical tastes, with the idea of “omnivourness,” enunciated by Richard
Peterson (Peterson & Simkus, 1992). Since then and up to the present,
the contrast between the models of distinction and omnivourness has gen-
erated a continuous debate, which is still open and has served to promote
multiple investigations and analyses. Most of these developments, how-
ever, are located beyond the artistic field, in the broader space of lifestyle,
which is why we are not going to pay attention to them here.5
5
Hanquinet and Savage (2016) provide an up-to-date overview of those discussions and
contributions.
On the side of cultural production, on the contrary, the works focus

mainly on the arts, understood in a broad sense, so they are unequivocally
located in the field of the sociology of the arts. In their review of the post-
Bourdieusian sociology of valuation and evaluation for the field of cultural
production, Beljean et al. (2016) refer to a wide body of work on artistic
evaluation that is situated at various distances from Bourdieu’s classical
model. Some empirically deepen and nuance the orthodox perspective
(Friedman, 2014). Others problematise it more clearly by pointing out its
anomalies regarding the supposed radical contrasts between the poles of
restricted production and large production (Craig & Dubois, 2010;
Kersten & Verboord, 2013). And others distance themselves even more
widely by focusing their attention on some of their most significant blind
spots, such as the subjective dimension of the evaluation, linked to the
identity of the evaluators (Chong, 2013; Leschziner, 2015), the evalua-
tion practice itself, its devices and dynamics (Heinich, 1999, 2005;
Velthuis, 2005; Anand & Jones, 2008; Moeran & Pedersen, 2011; Moeran
& Christensen, 2013; Gerber, 2017), or the agency of artistic objects and
materials in evaluation (Hennion, 2001, 2015; Benzecry, 2011;
Sgourev, 2021a).
In the areas furthest from the gravitational field exerted by the classic
Bourdieusian problem, a series of issues linked to the appreciation of the
arts are currently constituted as privileged objects of analysis, grouping
around them, eclectically, a diversity of contributions from different
approaches, including the Bourdieusian approach, as well as from other
sociological subfields, in particular, from economic sociology and the soci-
ology of organisations. These include topics such as categorisation pro-
cesses (Bielby & Bielby, 1994; Zuckerman et al., 2003; Rao et al., 2003,
2005; Slavich et al., 2020; Sgourev, 2021b), the constitution of artistic
genres and disciplines (Peterson, 1997; Lopes, 2002; Lena, 2012, 2019;
Heinich & Shapiro, 2012; Shapiro, 2019) and, very particularly, the topic
of consecration and legitimation, on which numerous articles and mono-
graphs have been published in recent times (Baumann, 2007; Peist, 2012;
Lizé & Misdrahi, 2015; Lizé & Renard, 2016; Childress et al., 2017;
Coman & Opazo, 2020; Alexander & Bowler, 2021; Schmutz &
Dowd, 2021).
In connection with evaluation, another issue that has become impor-
tant lately, in the context of the rise of the ideology of creativity, to which
we have alluded earlier, is that of innovation and artistic creativity. It is not
an issue that has traditionally attracted attention in this field. The most
accredited sociological models of the social space of creation, those of

Becker (1982) and Bourdieu (1992), did not focus precisely on innova-
tion.6 Until the 1990s, there were hardly any significant contributions on
this subject, apart from the classic work on the Impressionists and other
subsequent movements by White and White (1965). From that date,
however, valuable papers on the subject began to appear (Peterson, 1990;
Sarfatti Larson, 1993; Rachlin, 1993; DeNora, 1995; Sussman, 1997;
Guillén, 2006). These first works dealt with very diverse and specific cases
of artistic movements or famous creators. Since then, works on particular
figures or movements have not stopped being published (e.g. Sgourev,
2013; Opazo, 2016). But what characterises the new dominant way of
approaching this topic is the growing theoretical ambition of the new
analyses, which are often based on the comparison of cases and are occa-
sionally oriented towards the integration of disparate theoretical frame-
works. Once again, Harrison White (1993) and Richard Peterson
(Peterson & Anand, 2004) have been pioneers in this regard.
Since the year 2000, but especially in the last decade, there has been an
explosion of work in this field and many have adopted the new key. The
new impetus comes largely from contributions originating in the field of
sociology of organisations, where the subject of creativity has aroused
great interest, associated in particular with the study of creative industries
(Godart et al., 2020). In this field, where artistic innovation appears as a
general paradigm of innovation, numerous meetings have recently been
promoted and multiple publications have been generated. In them, analy-
sis on different aspects of artistic innovation are compared with others
referring to different areas of cultural industries (Jones & Maoret, 2018;
Strangaard Pedersen et al., 2020; Cattani et al., 2022). But beyond these
circles, most of the authors of the works on artistic themes that participate
in them also publish in traditional forums of the international sociology of
arts, such as the journals Poetics or Cultural Sociology. Their work is articu-
lated to the mainstream sociological literature on the arts, although they
make other connections too. Their integration in the discourse of the soci-
ology of the arts is, in this regard, growing.
6
Bourdieu, however, made the concept of the creative project and the innovative figure of
Baudelaire his leitmotif in his first theorisation of the field of symbolic production (Bourdieu,
1966). The symbolic revolution led by Manet would later be his last analytical challenge
(Bourdieu, 2017). But between one moment and another, there is no doubt that his model
did not favour the analysis of artistic innovation.
The sociological works on artistic innovation that have proliferated in

recent times are of various types, without being grouped especially by their
academic territory of origin. Patriotta and Hirsch (2016) distinguish two
major orientations between them: a structural orientation, of studies that
pay fundamental attention to the social boundaries that are crossed to
achieve the success of innovation, and another institutionalist orientation
of work that predominantly takes into account the change in symbolic
boundaries (Lamont & Molnar, 2002). Those of the latter coincide with
those previously presented in relation to the subject of consecration and
legitimacy, because innovation necessarily incorporates this element, and
they also partially overlap those cited in relation to the categorisation and
constitution of genres or, to another scale, with the literature on evalua-
tion mechanisms and valuation processes.
Work with a structural orientation, which Patriotta and Hirsch (2016)
link to Becker (1982), conceives innovation in relation to the interaction
patterns of the creator and in particular as a change in their position within
the space defined by the current chains of cooperation, for which it
acquires centrality and its practice and projection are altered. Among soci-
ologists who adopt a structural prism, network analysis specialists pay par-
ticular attention to the position of the actors within a core/periphery
structure and the way in which changes in these positions are shaped
(Cattani & Ferriani, 2008; Bottero & Crossley, 2011; Sgourev, 2013;
Jones et al., 2016), or they are interested in the position within groups
(Accominotti, 2009) or in the configuration of groups of collaborators
(De Vaan et al., 2014). Others attend preferably to the dynamics of inno-
vative groups, underlining the importance of certain types of interactions,
such as apprenticeship (Collins & Guillén, 2012), or that of the evolution-
ary processes of groups (Farrell, 2001; Parker & Corte, 2017).
The sociology of the arts has become strongly globalised in recent
times, as mentioned above. The origin of its practitioners has been diver-
sifying more and more. One of the dimensions of this diversification is due
to the growing participation of sociologists of Hispanic origin in the dis-
ciplinary progress, including many of the authors of this book. The pres-
ence of this Hispanic component in the current panorama of the discipline
is a surprise, because traditionally it had been almost completely absent.
For many decades, a whole series of political and academic circumstances
strongly impeded or weakened the development of this academic specialty
in Latin America and Spain, which severely limited the Hispanic contribu-
tion to the discipline and its impact on the international scene (Rodríguez
Morató, 2017). In recent years, however, there has been a rapid expansion
in the number of specialists from these countries. This is a peculiar genera-
tional boom. A new generation of sociologists of Hispanic origin specialis-
ing in this field has emerged. Educated in many cases outside their
countries of origin, in renowned centres of excellence, and today mostly
established abroad, in the United States, United Kingdom, Germany or
Australia, where several of its members develop successful academic
careers, this generation is gaining considerable prominence. Young soci-
ologists of Argentine, Chilean, Spanish or Uruguayan origin, such as
Claudio Benzecry, Vanina Leschziner, M. Pilar Opazo, Fernando
Domínguez Rubio, Marta Herrero and Eduardo de la Fuente, are playing
a significant role at this juncture of the discipline.
The leading role of these early and mid-career sociologists is explained
by their particular affinity with the new approach to the sociology of the
arts in action, which places them at the forefront of current disciplinary
development. It is an affinity that is largely sustained by their status as
migrant scholars. As is well known, academic migration tends to foster
scholarly creativity, giving rise to unusual combinations (Kupferberg,
1998). This condition creates a productive distance from established
knowledge frameworks, linked to specific national traditions and charac-
teristic objects of analysis, while also posing a stimulating contrast to past
experience. The peculiar estrangement of the new generation of Hispanic
sociologists of the arts predisposes them, in this sense, to theoretical eclec-
ticism, interdisciplinarity, the search for new objects of study, and it also
stimulates them to creative innovation, precisely the features that charac-
terise the sociology of the arts in action. This affinity between the
approaches that are currently predominant in the discipline and the intrin-
sic dispositions of these sociologists contributes to giving them the visibil-
ity that they currently enjoy. That same affinity, moreover, also makes
them the most suitable exponents of the new orientation that we present
in this book.
Broadening the Sociological View of the Arts

Through the contributions of a select group of sociologists of Hispanic
origin who are currently working on the frontiers of the discipline, this
book seeks to provide a vivid portrayal of the effervescent dynamic of
theoretical creativity and empirical expansion that characterises the
discipline today, rather than offer an analytical synthesis of their best-

established findings.
The panorama that the book offers is extremely rich and diverse, both
in terms of the fields of artistic practice covered (opera, rock, visual arts,
dance, theatre, literature, architecture, high cuisine), and of thematic areas
addressed (universes of creators, reception and taste, artistic institutions
and organisations, creative practices and professional practices, evaluation
and assessment practices). A peculiar hallmark in most of the work pre-
sented is the global vision they provide. It is indeed very significant that in
most cases the objects of study chosen are far from the cultural coordi-
nates of origin of the authors (restaurants in San Francisco and New York,
the Beatles, a French theatre group, a London dance company, some pro-
test actions at the Tate). When this does not fully occur, it is a question of
a crossed gaze (such as that of Matías Zarlenga, when studying centres of
artistic production in Barcelona) or of gazes deployed from a distance
(such as that of Ignacio Farías, based in Germany, when he studies some
Chilean architecture offices or that of Claudio Benzecry, established in the
United States, when he analyses cultural objects in Buenos Aires). In one
case—that of Alvaro Santana-Acuña’s chapter on One Hundred Years of
Solitude—the global perspective is even more defined as it is a study on the
international career of an artistic work, even though it is precisely an
archetypally Hispanic one.
The various studies presented here are structured in four parts, cover-
ing the sociology of arts’ most characteristic thematic areas: production,
creation, artwork and reception. In them, the entire arsenal of resources of
the discipline is mobilised, but not with the aim of reproducing or consoli-
dating the discipline but to make it advance. In this sense, the range of
theoretical paradigms evoked is rich and wide. It contains analyses that
take as their key reference several of the most important theoretical frame-
works currently handled in the discipline (Bourdieu, Becker, Peterson,
ANT), combining them in innovative ways in connection with the work of
many other influential contemporary specialists (De Nora, Hennion,
Lamont, Menger and Born, among others), and also establishing links to
less frequent theoretical frameworks (such as Collins’) and others from
different fields (economic sociology, microsociology, ethnomethodology,
semiotics and cultural history).
In the first part, dedicated to artistic production, Ignacio Farías starts
by considering a disciplinary concurrence device to analyse the process of
architectural production. This angle of vision allows him to reveal the
peculiar creative logic that operates within this characteristically heterono-

mous sector of artistic practice. Taking the actor-network theory and its
reference authors (Callon, Latour, Hennion) as a fundamental analytical
framework of reference, Farías recreates the dynamics of adjustment
between the architectural imagination, the devices of the professional
practice, the representations of the characteristics of the environment and
the rules of architectural competitions. In doing so, he unveils the artificial
heteronomy that architects actively recreate when faced with the challenge
of a competition. In this way, revealing the paradoxical creative heteron-
omy of architectural practice, Farías implicitly calls on the reader to ques-
tion the limitations of a Bourdieusian scheme that establishes a simple
opposition between an autonomous logic of artistic creation and a heter-
onomous one.
In the second chapter, Matías Zarlenga outlines a theory on the role of
place in processes of urban cultural creativity, developed from an observa-
tional analysis of the predominant practices in a series of spaces for artistic
creation of different types, located in a Barcelona neighbourhood charac-
teristically oriented to innovation. It is an effort to cover an existing gap in
the sociological analysis of artistic production, which has paid very little
attention until now to the spatial dimension in which it takes place.
Reworking notions borrowed from Goffman and Randall Collins, in par-
ticular, Zarlenga develops a comprehensive taxonomy of analytical catego-
ries to understand how the spatial arrangements of places where artistic
creation takes place condition interactions, practices and outcomes of cre-
ation. The articulation and further specification of these various categories
(rituals of creativity, creative scenarios, creative frameworks) shows their
analytical potential, helping to interpret the connection between the dif-
ferent configurations of spatial parameters and the different dynamics of
creation that occur in the different cases.
In the following chapter, Vanina Leschziner addresses the study of the
social space of high cuisine, a field that has some important structural par-
allels with the case of architecture presented above. As was the case in the
former, the case of high cuisine is characterised by its eccentricity with
regards to the parameters of the spaces of artistic creation most commonly
analysed in the discipline: those of the classical arts. And just as happened
to Farías, this eccentricity of her object serves Leschziner to critically con-
trast Bourdieu’s standard theory on the field of symbolic production and
to advance a different analytical framework. In her case, however, the
point of reference is Bourdieu’s theory, which she initially endorses. But
the evidence of its anomalies, with regards to the structuring of the field
and its innovation dynamics, gives Leschziner the opportunity to incorpo-
rate multiple other perspectives, some of them from the sociology of
organisations and others from interactionism and pragmatism, in addition
to some important Marxist notions. With their help, Leschziner develops
a fully original theorisation, introducing new concepts such as “mode of
cultural production” and “self-concept,” which profoundly transform the
initial Bourdieusian analytical framework. This supplementary elabora-
tion, somewhat similar to the one carried out by Zarlenga in the previous
chapter, thus allows her to account for how the different patterns of cre-
ation correspond to different configurations in the field of artistic
production.
The second part is dedicated to creative practices. In Chap. 5, Marisol
Facuse proposes to analyse the singularity of artistic-militant practices,
understanding as such those oriented to the struggles for social transfor-
mation. Taking Jolie Môme, a French militant theatre company, as a case
study, Facuse explores, with the help of Becker and Foucault, how the
interrelationship between the artistic and the political is concretised. Once
again, the focus on an eccentric object for the traditional sociology of the
arts, located in a border territory of the social space, allows to outline and
test a hybrid and original analytical device. Considering, in particular, how
the internal division of labour is established, as well as the modes of opera-
tion and decision-making within the group, and the distribution of power
and authority, Facuse gives an account of the way in which the domains of
art and politics are interconnected in this case. She shows how their social
spaces and their characteristic logics are intertwined, to what extent con-
tradictions emerge between them or are subordinated to each other, and
on the contrary, cooperation and convergence dynamics are produced.
In the following chapter, Dafne Muntanyola deals with the study of a
collective artistic practice, but her analysis does not address the general
organisation of the group and its relations with the environment, as in the
case analysed by Facuse. Instead she focuses on the act of creation: in her
case, of a collective choreographic work. She conducts a micro-sociological
inquiry into these practices, seeking to reveal the underlying order of
interaction and decision-making dynamics in the creative process. This
deals with a level of social reality rarely studied in relation to creation,
which Muntanyola takes from a methodological approach of cognitive
ethnography. Multiple perspectives are articulated in her theoretical
approach, especially Goffman’s interactionism and Schütz’s sociology of
intersubjectivity, the main perspective being that of habitus, in an interpre-

tation of a notion that goes back not only to Bourdieu but also to Mauss.
Based on this theoretical-methodological background, the analysis of the
collective choreographic practice carried out by Muntanyola allows her to
identify an order of interaction that questions the common individualistic
vision of creativity and the dominant individualistic phenomenological
theorisation in dance studies.
In the last chapter of this second part, Paola Castaño explores a space
of contact between artistic and scientific practices. In this sense, it is an
inquiry similar to the one undertaken by Facuse in Chap. 5, with respect
to politics. But this parallelism is only partial, because in this case the aim
is not to properly understand the structural parameters of the interrelation
between the two spheres, but rather to understand the logic and possibili-
ties of their intertwining. Another reason for this is that the case studied
and the approach used are very different. The case that Castaño studies is
that of a collaborative process between an artist, a scientist and an art his-
torian, faced with the common challenge of understanding and represent-
ing a characteristically uncertain object, dark matter. This process gave rise
to multiple results, ranging from the production of specific artistic work
and an exhibition to a variety of intellectual and academic contributions.
It is an extraordinary case of collaboration due to the very theme around
which it develops: uncertainty. This peculiar focal object causes the desta-
bilisation of the different discourses and disciplinary habitus of the actors,
which equalises their positions in the exchange and encourages their open-
ness to exploration and transformation, thus giving rise to an innovative
type of collaboration. Regarding the focus of the study, it uses an ethno-
graphic approach of the sociology of science, with its contingent and pro-
cessual vision of practice and its emphasis on following the actors. Thus,
the inquiry into the process of interdisciplinary collaboration considered
did not focus, as usual, on identifying the range of rationalities that are
confronted or on analysing the negotiations and compromises that take
place, but rather on registering the similarities and converging reflections
that are raised. It is the process of translation and tuning which takes place
that has been interesting to analyse, insofar as it revealed the peculiar heu-
ristic and transformative potential of collaboration.
The third part of the book is dedicated to the analysis of the artwork.
In Chap. 8, Cristián Martín Pérez-Colman studies the musical work of the
Beatles in the crucial transformation that it undergoes in the mid-1960s.
This case gives him the opportunity to test the Bourdieusian concept of
generative formula and ultimately allows him to reframe it, relocating it

within a broader analytical context. The purely structural and strategic
conception of artistic proposals that Bourdieu develops, with his notion of
a generative formula, quickly reveals its analytical limitations when con-
fronted with a terrain such as that of popular music of the twentieth cen-
tury, in which the change of the technological environment where the
artwork is created decisively affects its shaping. In his detailed analysis of
the transformation that crystallises in the most transcendental innovation
carried out by the Beatles, which consists in having turned musical records
into works of art, Pérez-Colman focuses on the double dimension, organ-
isational and technological, through which their practice is restructured to
give rise to a new creative paradigm. The expansion and reconfiguration of
the Bourdieusian concept that Pérez-Colman intends to achieve, when
considering this exemplary case, thus passes through the displacement of
the analysis to the field of creative practice and by considering it in dynamic
connection with the organisational, material and technological environ-
ment within which it takes place. This rethinking is carried out thanks to
the incorporation into the analytical approach of the parameters of
Peterson’s production of culture perspective and actor-network theory.
This produces a novel and promising theoretical synthesis, presented here
in the form of a concrete analysis paradigm.
In the following chapter, Eduardo de la Fuente also seeks to broaden
the vision of the artwork from its materiality. But in his case, not so much
from its genesis as from its impact on the structures of human existence.
This change of perspective also corresponds to a different analytical objec-
tive. De la Fuente addresses the analysis of the materiality of the artwork
as a prism from which to interpret its deepest meanings, those that link it
to its contexts of existence, spatial and temporal, then serving as revealing
keys to those same contexts. It is not the actual meaning of the artwork
that fundamentally worries him, but rather its symbolic potential with
respect to the broader material and social realities to which it is linked,
such as the time or the place in which it is located. For the rest, his elabo-
ration also passes through carrying out a theoretical synthesis, but this is
conducted through a radically different analytical strategy, exploratory
rather than systematic, and incorporating very different ingredients.
The central object that De la Fuente scrutinises is the modern architec-
tural surface and concrete in particular. The theoretical perspective that he
builds to analyse this results from assembling the new “materialist sensibil-
ity” present in recent cultural sociologies of art inspired by action-network
theory and the Yale Strong Program’s emphasis on “iconicity” as involv-

ing both aesthetic power and symbolic depth. For him, however, this per-
spective is not so much an a priori of the analysis, a category to be
mechanically contrasted in its application to the object, but rather a start-
ing point and a stimulus to carry it out. In his analytical strategy, the object
acquires a decisive role. De la Fuente methodically applies himself to
“thinking with the object,” not “about it.” Therefore, the originality of
his approach does not lie exclusively in the theoretical device built for the
analysis; the choice of the object is equally decisive. In this case, it is the
materiality of the architectural surface, a microscopic dimension of the
artwork, which opens a peculiar analytical horizon by itself. His originality
is encrypted, thus, to begin with, in the articulation between the con-
structed theoretical angle and the strategically chosen object. But neither
exclusively, since the analysis carried out by De la Fuente does not auto-
matically follow from this articulation. The analytic development that he
carries out is profoundly idiosyncratic. It consists of a heuristic spiral elab-
oration, arising from the first ingredients already mentioned, but progress-
ing by successive reflections on a selection of heterogeneous analytical
contributions from different fields (differing branches of cultural history,
urban sociology, anthropology or semiology). Through their successive
appropriation, De la Fuente builds an itinerary that illuminates his own
vision of the object and its ultimate meaning. As a whole, therefore, what
De la Fuente offers is an original methodology for analysing the social
world through the materiality of the artwork, a methodology whose analy-
sis clearly shows its potential.
Alvaro Santana-Acuña also chooses a strategic object for his analysis. In
his case, the legendary novel by Gabriel García Márquez One Hundred
Years of Solitude. As a contemporary archetype of classic literary work, the
analysis of the universal projection of this novel allows us to face a crucial
limitation of the most established approaches of the sociology of the arts
(Peterson, Becker, Bourdieu), which restrict their consideration of works
to the context of their production. In doing so, they appear relatively inca-
pable of explaining the extraordinary spatial and temporal scope of the
classics. Addressing this blind spot of the sociological analysis of art,
through the case of García Márquez’s novel, gives Santana-Acuña the
opportunity to go beyond the traditional paradigms of the discipline. He
aims to analyse the uprooting and transcendence of the artistic work.
The theoretical framework that Santana-Acuña builds to address the
analysis of the peculiar issues that the classical work raises is situated in the
context of the new sociology of the arts (Hennion, Witkin, DeNora, Born,
Benzecry, De la Fuente or Domínguez Rubio), which, when considering
the work, are interested in many ways in their disconnections, not solely in
their roots. The key to his approach, however, comes from semantics and
semiotics. It is from there that Santana-Acuña extracts the central category
of his analysis: indexical expressions, which allude to a layer of meaning
that transcends the original contexts of the object’s existence. Its main
originality lies in this amalgam of the sociologically constructed issue of
the uprooting of the cultural object and the analytical prism adopted bor-
rowed from linguistics, a characteristically interdisciplinary amalgam.
The immediate objective of Santana-Acuña’s analysis of One Hundred
Years of Solitude is to identify the patterns of significance shared by a mul-
tiplicity of audiences, in different cultural and national contexts. However,
the ultimate goals of his work are more ambitious and go beyond the case
of the classical novel. The robust evidence that Santana-Acuña is able to
present on the universal significance of One Hundred Years of Solitude
serves as a powerful basis for advocating the adoption of a new model for
analysing the meaning of cultural objects in general, capable of distin-
guishing multiple layers of meaning with diverse degrees of universality
and permanence. This evidence also allows him to claim to have overcome
the dichotomy between the internal and external analysis of the literary
work, which the category of significance intrinsically questions.
In the fourth part of the book, devoted to the study of reception, the
focus shifts to illuminate the realm of actors connecting with and reacting
to art objects. Claudio Benzecry, in its first chapter, takes two exemplary
cases, very different from each other, one of an artistic nature and the
other not, in which the cultural objects to which the actors are linked
experience substantive changes. Firstly, the case of an audience of opera
fans accustomed to high quality standards, who, due to a radical decrease
in economic resources, are confronted with a totally disfigured offer with
respect to their previous experience. Secondly, an audience of football fans
who go through a similar situation. These are cases in which, having bro-
ken the link previously built between audiences and their objects of devo-
tion, a new link has to be built. In reality, as in the previous study by
Santana-Acuña, it is about studying cases of cultural uprooting, in this case
not because of the cultural and temporal distance that separates audiences
and objects, but because of the deconfiguration of the object itself, which
problematises the link and forces a new local reconfiguration of it.
However, the analytical approach changes, shifting from focusing on the
configuration of layers of meaning of the object to focusing on the dialec-

tic of co-production between actor and object and on the procedural
dynamics of destabilisation-stabilisation.
The contrast between these two cases helps Benzecry analyse the
dynamics of this relationship: the procedural logic that leads from the
destabilisation of the link to its new stabilisation and the role that pre-
existing cultural structures play in the process. This methodical contrast
between both cases, representative of two universes of differing cultural
legitimacy and characteristics, allows Benzecry to identify uniform pat-
terns and different courses of evolution, thereby outlining a general model
of procedural dynamics, in principle applicable to all the processes of rup-
ture and transformation of the fundamental bond of cultural reception.
But this analysis does not restrict its relevance to the understanding of
these processes. Benzecry conceives it above all as an opportunity to test
the applicability of the different cultural sociology theories on the object.
He distinguishes, in this regard, two great traditions. First, he identifies an
structuralist tradition, whose origin dates back to Durkheim, and encom-
passes a multiplicity of contemporary conceptions, from Bourdieu to
Collins or Alexander, in which the meanings of the object and the links
with its receivers are stable. He then distinguishes a second tradition, to
which he adheres. It is an interactionist tradition, represented by Becker,
Hennion or DeNora, in which meanings and relationships between actors
and objects are intrinsically precarious, subject to a permanent working
and reworking.
In the analysis of the cases, Benzecry predominately mobilises the con-
ceptual resources provided by this second tradition (strategy, assemblage,
attachment, stabilisation), while also appealing to others that refer in some
way to the first one (self-narratives, chains of equivalences, partial objects).
In doing so he tests its diverse applicability, and above all explores the pos-
sibility of its integration. In this way, his study aims to advance an ambi-
tious theoretical synthesis between both traditions, which understand the
different conceptualisations as gradients of cases. This is his ultimate goal.
An essential facet of reception is evaluation, which has multiple dimen-
sions (private and public) and is structured through a multiplicity of pro-
cesses (formal and informal). Not in all areas of artistic creation the
dynamics of evaluation operate equally, being those that most depend on
public subsidy those in which more formal mechanisms predominate and
where they acquire greater relevance. In Chap. 12, Marian Misdrahi
addresses the analysis of a competitive public grant-making mechanism in
the visual arts field, where this form of public support is often decisive for
the survival of creators and their ranking.
Her study is part of the sociology of the arts as well as the sociology of
evaluation. Therefore, its theoretical frameworks, methodology and objec-
tives are marked for this particular hybrid character. The fundamental
theoretical perspective from which Misdrahi conceives his analysis is pro-
vided by Boltanski and Thevenot’s sociology of critical capacity. This
vision is articulated to Becker’s art world theory and is complemented by
the model provided by Nathalie Heinich on the value regimes of contem-
porary art. Her analysis combines, among other minor ingredients, a typo-
logical construction inspired by Becker, an examination of the dynamics of
justification developed within the framework of the evaluation and the
value regimes evoked. Regarding the objectives, interests relating to the
sociology of evaluation, such as those linked to the study of peer evalua-
tion, are combined with others framed within a sociology of the arts per-
spective, as the most immediate to understand the functioning of the
evaluation mechanisms of contemporary art and the broadest to help
identify the notion of excellence that currently governs the field of con-
temporary art. Beyond the understanding it brings to a topic of crucial
importance which has hardly been studied, Misdrahi’s study, even though
exploratory in nature, shows the potential of theoretical and methodologi-
cal hybridisation as a way of advancing the sociological analysis of the arts.
The final chapter by Marta Herrero is somewhat unique. She studies the
case of an activist group whose acts of protest forced the Tate Galleries to
forgo the important funding they received from BP (formerly British
Petroleum). As acts of protest and rejection against an artistic institution,
these performances constituted a peculiar form of negative reception and
their analysis therefore fits within this section; although in a special way,
since the criticism in this case is to the institution, not to specific artistic
work. Nevertheless, the case has a complexity that makes its analysis serve as
an appropriate end to the book, since the protest of the group in question,
Liberate Tate’s, constitutes an artistic action, related to the work of concep-
tual art proliferated since the late sixties under the label of institutional cri-
tique. From this point of view, the analysis carried out is also about the
frames of artistic production, the artistic practice itself and its meanings. In
this sense, the chapter also refers to the other parts of the book.
The complexity of the case also corresponds to its analysis, in which
various perspectives and theoretical frameworks intersect. Herrero appeals,
first, to the organisational perspective on institutional disruption, a notion
Another random document with
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MA PREMIÈRE MACHINE A ÉCRIRE
(Extrait de mon «Autobiographie inédite».)

Il y a quelques jours, je reçus par la poste une vieille lettre jaunie par le
temps, écrite à la machine en caractères anciens et signée de moi. En voici
la copie:
Hartford, le 19 mars 1875.
«Je vous prie de n’user de mon nom d’aucune façon. Veuillez même ne
pas divulguer le fait que je possède une machine à écrire. Je ne m’en sers du
reste plus du tout, car je ne pouvais écrire une seule lettre avec cette
machine sans recevoir par retour du courrier la plus instante prière de
décrire ma machine, de dire quels progrès j’avais fait dans son maniement,
etc, etc. Je n’aime pas à écrire des lettres, par conséquent je ne désire pas
que l’on sache que je possède ce petit objet de curiosité.»
«Mark Twain.»
Avec cette vieille lettre se trouvait une note me demandant si la signature
était authentique et s’il était vrai que j’eusse une machine à écrire en ma
possession en 1875.
... Eh bien, la meilleure réponse que je puisse faire à cette demande se
trouve dans le chapitre que voici de mon autobiographie inédite:
Villa Quarto, Florence, janvier 1904.

Dicter une autobiographie à une dactylographe est chose toute nouvelle
pour moi, mais cela marche très bien, cela épargne du temps et de la peine.
J’avais déjà dicté à une dactylographe, mais ce n’était pas une
autobiographie... et entre cette première expérience et celle que je fais
aujourd’hui, il y a une distance... oh, oui, il y a bien trente ans! Une vie!
Durant cette longue période il est arrivé beaucoup de choses, aussi bien aux
machines à écrire qu’à nous tous. Au début de cette période, une machine à
écrire était une curiosité. La personne qui en possédait une était une
curiosité aussi. Mais maintenant, c’est le contraire, c’est qui n’en a pas qui
est une curiosité. La première fois que je vis une machine à écrire, ce devait
être... voyons... ce devait être en 1873... car Nasby était avec moi et c’était à
Boston. Or nous ne pouvions nous trouver à Boston ensemble que pour une
tournée de conférences et, d’autre part, je sais que je n’ai pas fait de tournée
de conférences après 1873.
Mais n’importe, n’importe! Nasby et moi vîmes la machine dans une
vitrine; nous entrâmes et le marchand nous en expliqua le mécanisme, nous
montra ce qu’elle pouvait faire et nous assura qu’on pouvait arriver à écrire
cinquante-sept mots à la minute. Il me faut confesser franchement que nous
n’en crûmes pas un mot. Mais sa dactylographe se mit à travailler devant
nous et nous nous mîmes en devoir de chronométrer son travail. Or, en fait,
il fallut bien l’avouer: elle fit cinquante-sept mots en soixante secondes.
Notre conviction commençait à être ébranlée, mais nous dîmes qu’elle ne
referait pas le même tour de force. Cependant elle recommença... nous
eûmes beau chronométrer avec soin, le résultat fut toujours le même. Elle
écrivait sur d’étroites bandes de papier et à la fin de l’entrevue nous
emportâmes ces échantillons, pour les montrer à nos amis. La machine
coûtait 125 dollars. J’en achetai une et nous partîmes fort excités.
De retour à l’hôtel, nous examinâmes les feuilles de papier et fûmes un
peu désappointés en nous apercevant que les mêmes mots revenaient
toujours. La jeune dactylographe avait gagné du temps en répétant
constamment une courte phrase qu’elle savait par cœur. Malgré cela, il nous
sembla—avec une certaine apparence de raison—qu’il était possible de
comparer une débutante dactylographe avec un débutant au billard: dans les
deux cas, on ne pouvait s’attendre à ce qu’une personne non exercée fît de
grandes prouesses. Si donc, pour le jeu de billard, il était juste d’abandonner
le tiers ou la moitié des points à un débutant, on pouvait dire qu’à la
machine à écrire—si la pratique s’en répandait—un expert arriverait
forcément à aller deux fois plus vite que notre jeune dactylographe. Nous
pensions qu’on ferait plus tard cent mots à la minute, et je vois que ces
prévisions se sont largement réalisées.
Chez moi, je tapotai la machine et m’amusai à écrire et récrire: «Le
jeune homme resta accroché aux bastingages», jusqu’à ce que je fusse
capable de reproduire ce court récit à raison de douze mots à la minute.
Mais je me servais d’une plume pour les affaires sérieuses, je ne me mettais
à la machine que pour étonner les visiteurs curieux. Je leur fournis
généreusement des rames de papier contenant l’histoire en sept mots du
jeune homme accroché aux bastingages.
Quelque temps après, je pris une jeune dactylographe et essayai de dicter
quelques lettres. La machine ne possédait pas les majuscules et les
minuscules comme celles d’aujourd’hui, mais seulement les majuscules, qui
étaient gothiques et laides. Je me rappelle très bien la première lettre que je
dictai. Elle était adressée à Edward Bok qui était alors un jeune homme et
que je ne connaissais pas encore. Il était aussi entreprenant qu’il l’est
maintenant et faisait une collection d’autographes, mais les simples
signatures ne le satisfaisaient pas et il voulait des lettres autographes. Je lui
envoyai donc la lettre qu’il demandait et la lui fis toute à la machine, en
lettres capitales, la signature aussi. Et la lettre était longue, elle contenait
des conseils et aussi des reproches. Je lui disais qu’écrire était mon
commerce, mon gagne-pain, mon métier; je lui disais qu’il n’était pas
aimable de demander à un homme des échantillons de son travail par pure
curiosité: aurait-il l’idée de demander un fer à cheval à un forgeron ou un
cadavre à un médecin?
Maintenant, j’en arrive à un souvenir plus important. En 1874, ma jeune
employée copia une grande partie d’un de mes livres à la machine. Eh bien,
dans les premiers chapitres de cette «Autobiographie», j’ai émis la
prétention d’avoir été la première personne au monde qui se soit servi du
téléphone installé à domicile; j’ajouterai maintenant que je crois bien être la
première personne qui ait utilisé la machine à écrire à un travail littéraire.
Le livre dont je parle devait être: les Aventures de Tom Sawyer. J’en avais
écrit toute la première partie en 1872 et je ne l’achevai qu’en 1874. Puisque
ma dactylographe me copia ce texte pendant l’année 1874, j’en conclus
qu’il s’agit bien de ce livre-là.
Mais ces premières machines étaient fort capricieuses et pleines de
défauts affreux. Elles avaient plus de vices que celles d’aujourd’hui n’ont
de qualités. Après une ou deux années, je trouvai que cela m’abîmait le
caractère et je décidai de faire cadeau de ma machine à Howells[E]. Il ne
l’accepta pas d’emblée, car il se méfiait des nouveautés alors comme
aujourd’hui. Mais j’arrivai à le persuader. Il avait grande confiance en moi
et je crois bien que je lui fis croire à des qualités que la machine ne
possédait certainement pas. Il la porta chez lui, à Boston, et, dès lors, mon
caractère s’améliora tandis que le sien prit une fâcheuse tournure, dont il ne
se débarrassa jamais.
Il ne la garda pourtant que six mois, puis il me la rendit. J’en fis encore
cadeau à deux ou trois autres personnes, mais elle ne put rester nulle part et
on me la rapportait toujours. En désespoir de cause, je la donnai à mon
cocher, Patrick Mac Aleer qui en fut très reconnaissant, parce qu’il ne
connaissait pas cette sorte d’animal... Il pensa que je voulais essayer de le
rendre plus sage et meilleur... Et aussitôt qu’il se crut plus sage et meilleur,
il la vendit pour acheter une selle de dame dont il ne pouvait pas se servir...
Et là s’arrête ce que je sais de l’histoire de ma première machine à écrire.
UN MONUMENT A ADAM
Quelqu’un vient de raconter dans la Tribune que j’avais autrefois
proposé au Rev. Thomas K. Beecher, de la petite ville d’Elmira, de nous
associer pour élever un monument à Adam et que Mr. Beecher avait bien
accueilli ce projet. Mais ce n’est pas tout. L’affaire n’était qu’une
plaisanterie au début, mais elle ne fut pas très loin d’être réalisée.
Il y a longtemps—trente ans—l’ouvrage de Mr. Darwin, la Descendance
de l’Homme, avait paru depuis quelques années et l’ouragan d’indignation
déchaîné par ce livre sévissait encore dans les chaires et dans les revues. En
étudiant les origines de la race humaine, Mr. Darwin avait laissé Adam
complètement de côté. Nous avions les singes, le «chaînon manquant» et
toutes sortes d’ancêtres divers, mais pas Adam. En plaisantant avec Mr.
Beecher et d’autres amis à Elmira, il m’arriva de dire que très probablement
les hommes oublieraient Adam et reconnaîtraient unanimement le singe
pour ancêtre, et qu’ainsi, dans le cours des siècles, le nom même d’Adam
disparaîtrait de la surface de la terre. J’ajoutai qu’il conviendrait
d’empêcher un pareil sacrilège: un monument sauverait de l’oubli le père du
Genre humain et évidemment la ville d’Elmira devait se garder de perdre
cette occasion d’honorer Adam et de se créer un grand renom...
Alors, l’inattendu arriva. Deux banquiers s’emparèrent de l’affaire, non
par plaisanterie, non par sentiment, mais parce qu’ils voyaient dans ce
monument un grand avantage commercial pour la ville. Le projet n’avait été
au début qu’une douce plaisanterie; il devenait alors du plus haut comique
avec ce côté commercial qui fut gravement et solennellement discuté. Les
banquiers me demandèrent plusieurs rendez-vous. Ils proposèrent un
indestructible monument du coût de cent vingt-cinq mille francs. Ce serait
si extraordinaire de voir un petit village élever un monument à la mémoire
du premier homme que le nom même d’Elmira serait vite connu sur toute la
surface du globe. Il n’existerait pas d’autre édifice consacré à Adam sur la
planète et Elmira ne connaîtrait pas de rivale jusqu’à ce qu’un maire de
hameau ait l’idée d’édifier un monument en l’honneur de la Voie Lactée.
De tous les points du globe on viendrait visiter la merveille, et il n’y
aurait pas de tour du monde complet sans un séjour à Elmira. Cette petite
ville deviendrait une Mecque, elle serait envahie par les touristes, les
guides, les agences, les trains de plaisir... Il y aurait des bibliothèques
spéciales sur le monument, chaque voyageur voudrait le photographier et on
en ferait des modèles réduits qui se vendraient dans le monde entier; sa
forme deviendrait aussi familière que la figure de Napoléon.
Un des banquiers souscrivit pour vingt-cinq mille francs et je crois que
l’autre s’engagea pour la moitié moins, mais je ne me souviens pas très bien
du chiffre. Nous fîmes faire des projets et devis; quelques dessins nous
vinrent même de Paris.
Au début, quand toute l’affaire n’était encore qu’une plaisanterie, j’avais
esquissé une pétition humble et fervente au Congrès en vue d’obtenir que le
Gouvernement favorisât notre initiative. J’y expliquai que ce monument
serait un témoignage de la gratitude de la Grande République pour le père
du Genre humain et d’affectueux attachement à sa mémoire en ces sombres
jours où les plus âgés de ses enfants s’écartaient de leur commun ancêtre. Il
me sembla que cette pétition devait être présentée aux Chambres, car
j’avais l’idée que sa lecture publique suffirait à couvrir le projet de ridicule
et à l’enterrer définitivement. Je l’envoyai donc au général Joseph R.
Hawley qui me promit de la présenter. Mais il n’en fit rien. Je crois me
souvenir qu’il m’expliqua qu’après avoir lu lui-même la pétition, il avait eu
peur: «elle était trop sérieuse, ardente, sentimentale... Les députés auraient
pu la prendre au sérieux».
Nous aurions dû poursuivre notre projet, nous en serions venus à bout
sans trop de difficultés et Elmira serait maintenant une des villes les plus
célèbres du monde.
Il y a peu de jours, je commençai une nouvelle dans laquelle un des
personnages parle occasionnellement d’un monument à Adam et en même
temps la Tribune a retrouvé cette vieille plaisanterie d’il y a trente ans...
Sans doute la télégraphie mentale a fait des siennes en cette circonstance.
C’est curieux, mais les phénomènes de télégraphie mentale sont toujours
curieux.
CONSEILS AUX PETITES FILLES
De bonnes petites filles ne doivent pas faire la moue à leurs supérieurs
toutes les fois que ceux-ci les ennuient; mais elles ont tout avantage à
garder cette vengeance pour les cas particulièrement graves.
Si vous n’avez qu’une informe petite poupée de son, alors que vos
camarades plus fortunées possèdent un coûteux bébé en porcelaine, il vous
faut néanmoins traiter le vôtre avec douceur et bonté. Il ne vous faut pas
essayer de le malmener tant que votre conscience ne vous y contraint pas et
que vous ne vous en sentez pas la force.
Ne vous saisissez jamais par force du sucre d’orge de votre petit frère; il
est préférable de le lui faire donner de bon gré en lui promettant de lui
abandonner la première pièce de cinq francs que vous découvrirez sur une
meule flottant sur la rivière. Dans la candeur de son âme, il trouvera cette
transaction parfaite. Du reste, en tout temps, cette si plausible fiction a
appauvri bien des enfants à l’esprit trop simpliste.
Si, en certaines circonstances, vous trouvez nécessaire de corriger votre
frère, ne le faites pas en lui jetant de la boue... Non, ne vous servez jamais
de boue pour cela, car cela abîmerait ses habits. De toutes façons, il vaut
mieux le corriger légèrement et vous verrez que vous obtiendrez de bons
résultats de cette méthode. Vous attirerez ainsi son attention et si vous ne
vous êtes servies que d’eau au lieu de boue, il est possible que cette eau
serve à enlever les impuretés de sa peau.
Si votre mère vous dit de faire une chose, il est mauvais de répondre que
vous ne voulez pas. Il est meilleur et beaucoup plus avantageux d’expliquer
que vous ferez comme elle vous dit, et puis d’agir selon ce que vous dictera
votre bon jugement.
Il vous faut toujours vous rappeler que vous êtes redevables envers vos
parents de votre nourriture, de votre bon lit, de vos jolies robes et du
privilège de rester chez vous au lieu d’aller à l’école quand on vous croit
malades. Il vous faut donc respecter leurs petits préjugés, rire de leurs petits
caprices et passer par-dessus leurs petits défauts, à moins que cela ne
dépasse la mesure.
De bonnes petites filles doivent toujours marquer de la déférence envers
les personnes âgées. Il ne vous faut jamais «embêter» les vieillards à moins
qu’ils ne vous «embêtent» les premiers.
SAINTE JEANNE D’ARC[F]
I
Les pièces fournies par le procès et la Réhabilitation donnent des détails
minutieux et clairs sur l’histoire étrange et magnifique de Jeanne d’Arc.
Parmi toutes les biographies qui surchargent les rayons des bibliothèques du
monde entier, celle-ci est la seule dont la vérité nous ait été confirmée par
serment. Nous y voyons d’une façon si saisissante les hauts faits et le
caractère de cette extraordinaire personnalité que nous sommes prêts à en
accepter les détails surnaturels. La carrière publique de Jeanne d’Arc ne
dura que deux ans, mais quelles années bien remplies! La plus profonde
analyse ne suffit pas à nous faire comprendre cette âme tout entière, mais,
sans la comprendre toujours, il est bon de l’aimer avec étonnement et de
l’étudier avec révérence.
Dans la Jeanne d’Arc de seize ans, il n’y avait aucune promesse d’avenir
romanesque. Elle vivait dans un morne petit village sur les frontières
mêmes du monde civilisé d’alors. Elle n’avait été nulle part, n’avait rien vu
et ne connaissait que de simples petits bergers. Elle n’avait jamais vu une
personne d’un rang social un peu élevé, elle savait à peine à quoi
ressemblait un soldat, elle n’était jamais montée à cheval et n’avait porté
aucune arme. Elle ne savait ni lire, ni écrire; elle savait coudre et filer, elle
savait son catéchisme et ses prières ainsi que les fabuleuses histoires des
saints. C’était tout.
Telle était Jeanne à seize ans. Que savait-elle de la loi? des avocats? des
procédés légaux? Rien, moins que rien. Ainsi équipée d’ignorance, elle se
rendit devant le tribunal de Toul pour un procès où elle se défendit elle-
même, sans avocat ni conseil d’aucune sorte. Elle ne fit citer aucun témoin,
mais gagna sa cause en parlant nettement et sincèrement selon son cœur. Le
juge étonné parla d’elle hors du tribunal en l’appelant: «Cette merveilleuse
enfant.»
Elle alla trouver le commandant en chef de la garnison de Vaucouleurs et
lui demanda une escorte, disant qu’il lui fallait aller à l’aide du roi de
France, puisque Dieu l’avait désignée pour lui reconquérir son royaume et
lui rendre sa couronne. Le commandant lui dit: «Quoi! Mais vous n’êtes
qu’une enfant!» Et il ajouta: «Il faut la ramener chez elle et la fouetter.»
Mais elle répondit qu’elle devait obéir à Dieu et qu’elle reviendrait de
nouveau, sans se lasser, autant de fois qu’il le faudrait et que finalement elle
obtiendrait l’escorte demandée.
Elle disait vrai. Avec le temps, l’officier fléchit et, après des mois de
délais et de refus, il lui donna des soldats, puis il détacha son épée et la lui
donna en disant: «Allez... et arrive que pourra.»
Elle fit un long et périlleux voyage à travers un pays ennemi, elle parla
au roi et le convainquit. Elle fut alors priée de comparaître devant
l’Université de Poitiers pour prouver qu’elle était bien réellement envoyée
par Dieu et non par le diable. Jour après jour, pendant trois semaines, elle se
présenta, sans timidité, devant la docte assemblée, et, malgré son ignorance,
elle trouva dans son bon sens et dans son cœur simple et droit des réponses
excellentes aux plus profondes questions. De nouveau elle gagna sa cause
ainsi que l’admiration de l’auguste compagnie.
Et puis, à l’âge de dix-sept ans, elle devint Généralissime de l’armée,
ayant sous ses ordres un prince de la famille royale et plusieurs vieux
généraux. A la tête de la première armée qu’elle eut jamais vue, elle marcha
sur Orléans. En trois terribles combats, elle emporta d’assaut les principales
forteresses de l’ennemi, et, en dix jours, elle fit lever un siège qui faisait
échec depuis sept mois aux forces réunies de la France.
Après un stupide et énervant retard causé par les tergiversations du roi et
les conseils traîtres de ses ministres, elle obtint de reprendre les armes. Elle
emporta d’assaut la place de Jargeau, puis la ville de Meung. Elle força
Beaugency à se rendre, puis elle remporta la mémorable victoire de Patay
contre Talbot, «le lion anglais», et par là mit fin à la guerre de Cent Ans.
Cette campagne de sept semaines avait produit des résultats considérables.
Patay fut le Moscou de la domination anglaise en France. Ce fut le
commencement du déclin d’une suprématie gênante qui avait accablé la
France par périodes pendant trois cents ans.
Vint ensuite la fameuse campagne de la Loire, la prise de Troyes, puis,
en prenant partout forteresses et villes, la marche triomphante jusqu’à
Reims où Jeanne couronna le Roi, dans la cathédrale, au milieu des
réjouissances publiques. Un paysan, son père, se trouvait là pour voir ces
choses et essayer d’y croire. Grâce à elle, le roi avait retrouvé sa couronne
et son royaume, et, une fois dans sa vie, il se montra reconnaissant. Il
demanda à Jeanne de désigner elle-même sa récompense. Elle ne demanda
rien pour elle, mais demanda que les impôts de sa ville natale fussent abolis
pour toujours. Cela lui fut accordé et la promesse fut tenue pendant trois
cent soixante ans. Puis on l’oublia, La France était alors très pauvre, elle est
très riche maintenant, mais voilà plus de cent ans qu’elle perçoit cet impôt.
Jeanne demanda encore une autre faveur: maintenant qu’elle avait rempli
sa mission, elle voulait retourner dans son village et reprendre sa vie
humble auprès de sa mère et de ses amies d’enfance, car elle ne prenait
aucun plaisir aux cruautés de la guerre et la vue du sang et de la souffrance
lui brisait le cœur. Quelquefois, au milieu d’une bataille, elle ne tirait pas
son épée, de peur qu’emportée par la splendide folie de l’action, elle ne prît
sans le vouloir la vie d’un ennemi. Une de ses plus jolies paroles à son
procès de Rouen fut la naïve affirmation qu’elle n’avait jamais tué
personne... Mais il ne lui fut pas accordé de retourner à la paix et au repos
de son village. Alors elle demanda à marcher tout de suite sur Paris pour
achever de chasser les Anglais hors de France. Elle fut en butte à tous les
obstacles que pouvaient lui susciter la traîtrise des courtisans et la faiblesse
du roi, mais, à fa fin, elle se força un chemin sur Paris et, à l’assaut d’une de
ses portes, elle tomba grièvement blessée. Évidemment ses hommes
perdirent courage sur-le-champ, car c’était elle qui était tout leur courage, et
ils reculèrent. Elle supplia qu’on la laissât retourner en avant, disant que la
victoire était certaine. «Je prendrai Paris maintenant, ou je mourrai!» dit-
elle. Mais on l’emporta de force du lieu de l’action. Le Roi ordonna la
retraite et alla jusqu’à licencier ses hommes. Selon une vieille et belle
coutume militaire, elle consacra son armure d’argent en la suspendant dans
la cathédrale de Saint-Denis. Les grands jours étaient finis.
Par ordre, elle suivit le Roi et sa cour frivole et endura pour un temps
une captivité dorée. Mais sa fierté d’esprit s’accommodait mal de cet état de
choses et lorsque l’inaction lui devenait trop insupportable, elle rassemblait
quelques hommes et s’élançait à l’assaut de quelque forteresse qui capitulait
toujours.
A la fin, le 24 mai, dans une sortie à Compiègne, elle fut prise elle-même
après une résistance désespérée. Elle venait d’avoir dix-huit ans et ce fut sa
dernière bataille.
Ainsi finit la plus brève et la plus éclatante carrière militaire qu’ait
enregistrée l’histoire. Cette carrière n’avait duré qu’un an et un mois, mais à
son début la France était une province anglaise et à la fin l’état du pays était
tel que l’on comprend que la France soit aujourd’hui la France. Treize
mois! Ce fut vraiment court! Mais dans les siècles qui se sont écoulés
depuis, cinq cents millions de Français ont vécu et sont morts heureux parce
que Jeanne d’Arc batailla pendant ces treize mois.
II
Jeanne était destinée à passer le reste de ses jours derrière des murs et
des écrous. Elle était prisonnière de guerre, mais non pas criminelle et sa
captivité fut en conséquence reconnue comme honorable. D’après les lois
de la guerre, elle devait être mise à rançon et un beau prix ne pouvait être
refusé s’il était offert. Jean de Luxembourg lui fit le juste honneur de
réclamer pour elle une rançon de prince. En ce temps-là cette expression
représentait une somme définie, 61.125 francs. Il était naturellement à
supposer que le Roi ou la France reconnaissante—l’un et l’autre sans doute
—s’empresseraient d’offrir l’argent nécessaire pour libérer leur jeune
bienfaitrice... Mais cela n’eut pas lieu. En cinq mois et demi ni le Roi, ni le
Pays ne surent lever la main ni offrir un sou. Deux fois, Jeanne essaya de
s’échapper. Une fois, elle faillit réussir par stratagème, elle enferma son
geôlier derrière elle, mais elle fut surprise et ramenée. Dans l’autre cas elle
se laissa glisser d’une tour de soixante pieds de haut, mais sa corde étant
trop courte, elle fit une chute, se blessa et ne put s’évader. Enfin, Cauchon,
évêque de Beauvais, paya la rançon demandée et acheta Jeanne pour
l’Église et pour les Anglais; il la fit mettre en jugement sous l’accusation
d’avoir porté des vêtements d’homme et d’avoir proféré des impiétés, mais
en réalité il s’agissait de s’en débarrasser. Elle fut alors enfermée dans les
donjons du château de Rouen et écrouée dans une cage de fer, pieds et
poings liés et le cou attaché à un pilier. Durant tous les mois de son
emprisonnement, et à partir de ce moment jusqu’à la fin, plusieurs grossiers
soldats anglais montèrent nuit et jour la garde autour d’elle, à l’intérieur
même de sa cellule. Ce fut une lugubre et hideuse captivité, mais cela ne
dompta pas son courage. Elle demeura prisonnière pendant une année; elle
passa les trois derniers mois à défendre sa cause devant une formidable
assemblée de juges ecclésiastiques, leur disputant le terrain, lambeau par
lambeau et pied à pied, avec une adresse étonnante et un courage
indomptable. Le spectacle de cette jeune fille abandonnée et solitaire, sans
avocat ni conseiller, ne connaissant pas l’acte d’accusation, n’ayant pas
même pour venir en aide à sa merveilleuse mémoire le compte rendu des
séances journalières du procès, et livrant, calme et sans épouvante, cette
longue bataille contre de si formidables adversaires, est un fait d’une
sublime grandeur. Pareille chose n’a nulle part été vue, ni dans les annales
de l’histoire, ni dans les trouvailles de l’imagination.
Et qu’elles étaient grandes et belles les réponses qu’elle faisait
constamment, qu’elles étaient fraîches et juvéniles! Et il faut se rappeler
qu’elle était fatiguée, harassée de corps autant que d’esprit. Tous les
avantages qu’a la science sur l’ignorance, l’expérience sur l’inexpérience,
l’esprit de chicane sur la candeur, tous les guet-apens que peuvent imaginer
les malicieuses intelligences habituées à poser des pièges aux simples, tout
cela fut employé contre elle sans la moindre honte...
Elle fut condamnée au feu... sans preuves, naturellement, et, uniquement,
parce que ses juges devaient la condamner, par ordre. Ses derniers moments
et sa mort furent admirables, et d’un héroïsme qui n’a pas été atteint, non en
vérité, par aucune autre créature humaine.
Jeanne d’Arc est la merveille des siècles. Lorsque nous réfléchissons à
son origine, à son milieu, à son sexe, à son âge, nous sommes obligés de
reconnaître qu’elle demeurera très certainement la merveille des siècles.
Lorsque nous considérons un Napoléon, un Shakespeare, un Wagner, un
Édison, nous sentons bien que le génie d’un de ces hommes s’explique en
grande partie par le milieu, les circonstances, la culture, etc., mais lorsqu’il
s’agit de Jeanne d’Arc il n’en est plus de même. Elle est née avec tout son
génie, formé, prêt à s’exercer. A seize ans, elle étonne des juges et elle n’a
jamais vu d’armée. Il y a eu de jeunes généraux victorieux, dans l’histoire,
mais tous avaient débuté par des grades inférieurs et, en tout cas, aucun n’a
été une jeune fille. En somme, nous pouvons concevoir que Jeanne soit née
avec de grandes qualités de cœur et d’esprit, mais ce qui nous confond,
c’est que ces qualités aient immédiatement atteint leur maximum
d’efficacité, sans préparation d’aucune sorte. Nous pouvons comprendre
comment la future pêche est en puissance dans une petite amande amère,
mais nous ne pouvons concevoir la pêche née spontanément, sans des mois
de lent développement et sans les effluves du soleil. Jeanne d’Arc sort tout
équipée de son humble milieu et de son obscur village, elle n’a rien vu, rien
lu, rien entendu... c’est cela qui nous stupéfie... car, enfin, on ne peut nier
qu’elle n’ait été grand capitaine, ni que son esprit n’ait eu de merveilleuses
ressources devant les fourbes et savantes questions de ses juges et
bourreaux.
Dans l’histoire du monde, Jeanne d’Arc demeure donc seule comme une
personnalité unique et inégalée.
Son histoire a encore un autre trait qui la met hors des catégories où nous
nous complaisons à ranger les hommes illustres: elle eut le don de
prophétie. Elle prédit à l’avance la longueur de sa carrière militaire, la date
du jour où elle devait être faite prisonnière et bien d’autres événements dont
elle spécifiait la date et le lieu... et toujours ces prédictions se réalisèrent. A
un moment où la France paraissait encore entre les mains des Anglais, elle
affirma deux fois devant ses juges qu’en moins de sept ans, les Anglais
seraient hors de France; ce qui se produisit en réalité.
Jeanne était douce, simple et aimable. Elle aimait son pays natal, ses
amis, la vie de son petit village. Après ses plus belles victoires, elle oubliait
sa gloire pour bercer de mots consolants les mourants et les blessés. Elle
était femme. La première fois qu’elle fut blessée, elle pleura à la vue de son
sang, mais, entendant les autres généraux parler de retraite, elle remonta
précipitamment à cheval et se rua à l’assaut.
Comme il est étrange de constater que les artistes qui ont représenté
Jeanne d’Arc ne se sont jamais souvenus que d’un seul et petit détail, à
savoir qu’elle était une paysanne, et qu’ils en ont fait une sorte de bonne
prêcheuse du moyen âge, sans finesse de traits[G]! Les artistes se sont
montrés les esclaves d’une idée figée, et ils ont oublié d’observer que les
âmes sublimes ne sont jamais logées dans des corps grossiers. Car l’âme
pétrit la chair par laquelle elle s’extériorise et, dans la lutte entre le corps et
l’esprit, c’est ce dernier qui l’emporte, lorsqu’il s’agit d’une Jeanne d’Arc.
Nous savons à qui ressemblait Jeanne d’Arc, sans chercher bien loin,
simplement en nous rappelant ce qu’elle a fait. L’artiste devrait peindre son
âme, et alors du même coup il peindrait son corps avec vérité. Elle
s’élèverait alors devant nous comme une attirante vision: nous verrions un
corps élancé, svelte et jeune, empreint d’une grâce inimaginable et
émouvante, une figure transfigurée par la lumière de cette brillante
intelligence et les feux de cet esprit surhumain.
Si nous considérons, comme je l’ai déjà dit, l’ensemble des
circonstances, origine, jeunesse, sexe, ignorance, premier entourage,
oppositions et obstacles rencontrés, victoires militaires et triomphes de
l’esprit, il est facile de regarder Jeanne d’Arc comme la créature de
beaucoup la plus extraordinaire que la race humaine ait jamais produite.
UN ARTICLE AMUSANT
Je découpe le paragraphe suivant dans un article publié par un journal de
Boston:
LA CRITIQUE ANGLAISE ET MARK TWAIN
Mark Twain trouve ses meilleurs traits d’humour en décrivant les
personnes qui n’apprécient pas du tout son humour. Nous connaissons tous
l’histoire de ces Californiens épouvantés par la façon dont un reporter
racontait une anecdote et nous avons entendu parler de ce clergyman de
Pensylvanie qui retourna les Innocents à l’Étranger à son libraire en
déclarant tristement que «l’homme capable de verser des larmes sur la
tombe d’Adam devait être un idiot». Mais maintenant on peut ajouter
quelque chose d’encore plus étonnant à son trophée: la Saturday Review[H],
dans son numéro du 8 octobre, critique son livre de voyages dont l’édition
anglaise vient de paraître, et le critique très sérieusement... Nous nous
imaginons la joie que doit éprouver l’humoriste à lire cela! Et vraiment cet
article est si amusant que Mark Twain ne saurait mieux faire que de le
reproduire dans sa prochaine chronique mensuelle.
Ces lignes me donnent en quelque sorte le droit de reproduire ici l’article
de la Saturday Review. J’en avais bien envie, car je ne saurais écrire
quelque chose de moitié aussi délicieux. Si un lion de bronze pouvait lire
cette critique anglaise sans rire, je le mépriserais complètement.
Voici donc l’article en question.
REVUE DES LIVRES
Les Innocents à l’Étranger. Récits de voyages, par Mark Twain. Hotten,
éditeur, Londres.
Lord Macauley est mort trop tôt! Nous n’avons jamais répété cela avec
plus de regrets qu’en terminant la lecture de ce livre extravagant: les
Innocents à l’Étranger. Macaulay est mort trop tôt, car lui seul aurait pu
démontrer clairement et pertinemment l’insolence, l’impertinence,
l’impatience, la présomption, les mensonges et surtout la majestueuse
ignorance de cet auteur.
Dire que les Innocents à l’Étranger est un livre curieux serait user d’un
terme infiniment trop faible: on ne dit pas que le Matterhorn est une
montagne élevée ni que le Niagara est une jolie cascade! Curieux est un mot
tout à fait impuissant à donner une idée de l’imposante folie de cet ouvrage.
Et du reste nous ne trouverions pas de mots assez profonds ni assez forts.
Donnons donc quelques aperçus du livre et de l’auteur et laissons le reste au
lecteur. Donnons aux gens cultivés l’occasion de se rendre compte de ce
que Mark Twain est capable d’écrire, même d’imprimer avec une
incroyable candeur. Il raconte qu’à Paris il entra chez un coiffeur pour se
faire raser et qu’au premier coup de «râteau» qu’il reçut, son «cuir»
s’accrocha à l’instrument et il fut suspendu au-dessus de sa chaise.
Ceci est assurément exagéré. A Florence, il était tellement importuné par
les mendiants qu’il prétend en avoir saisi et mangé un dans un moment de
colère. Il n’y a naturellement rien de vrai là-dedans. Il donne tout au long
un programme de théâtre vieux de dix-sept ou dix-huit cents années et
assure l’avoir trouvé dans les ruines du Colisée parmi les ordures et les
décombres! A cet égard, il sera suffisant de faire remarquer qu’un
programme écrit sur une plaque d’acier n’aurait pas pu se conserver si
longtemps dans de pareilles conditions. Il n’hésite pas à assurer qu’à
Éphèse, lorsque sa mule s’écartait de la bonne route, il mettait pied à terre,
prenait la bête sous son bras et la rapportait sur la route, remontait sur son
dos et s’y endormait jusqu’à ce qu’il dût recommencer une semblable
opération. Il dit qu’un adolescent qui se trouvait parmi les passagers
apaisait constamment sa faim avec du savon et de l’étoupe. Il explique
qu’en Palestine les fourmis font des voyages de treize kilomètres pour aller
passer l’été au désert et emportent avec elles leurs provisions; et avec cela,
d’après la configuration du pays, telle qu’il la donne, la chose est
impossible. Ce fut pour lui un acte tout ordinaire et naturel de couper un
musulman en deux à Jérusalem en plein jour de fête; et il accomplit ce beau
fait d’armes avec l’épée de Godefroy de Bouillon; il ajoute qu’il aurait
répandu plus de sang encore s’il avait eu un cimetière à lui. Tout cela vaut-
il la peine qu’on s’y arrête? M. Twain, ou n’importe quel voyageur, qui
aurait agi de la sorte à Jérusalem aurait été emprisonné et exécuté.
A quoi bon continuer? Pourquoi répéter ces audacieux et exaspérants
mensonges? Terminons par ce charmant spécimen: Il écrit: «Dans la
mosquée de Sainte-Sophie à Constantinople, je marchai dans un tel
amoncellement de saletés, de colle et de vase que je cassai deux mille tire-
bottes avant de pouvoir me déchausser ce jour-là.» Voilà de purs
mensonges! il n’y a pas d’autre mot pour qualifier de pareilles assertions.
Le lecteur continuera-t-il à s’étonner de l’abominable ignorance où
demeurent les Américains lorsque nous lui aurons dit—et nous tenons le
fait de bonne source—que ce livre, les Innocents à l’Étranger, vient d’être
adopté par plusieurs États comme un ouvrage classique pour les collèges et
écoles?
Mais si les mensonges de cet auteur sont abominables, sa crédulité et son
ignorance sont plus que suffisantes pour pousser le lecteur à jeter son livre
au feu. Il fut une fois si effrayé à la vue d’un homme assassiné qu’il sauta
par la fenêtre et s’enfuit; et il dit niaisement: «Je n’avais pas peur, mais
j’étais très agité.» Il nous fait perdre patience en nous expliquant que les
simples et les paysans ne se doutent pas que Lucrèce Borgia ait eu une
existence réelle hors des pièces de théâtre. Il est incapable de comprendre
les langues étrangères, mais il est assez fou pour critiquer la grammaire
italienne. Il dit que les Italiens écrivent le nom du grand peintre Vinci, mais
le prononçant «Vintchi» et il ajoute avec une incomparable naïveté d’esprit:
«Les étrangers écrivent bien, mais prononcent mal.» A Rome, il accepte
sans sourciller la légende d’après laquelle le cœur de saint Philippe Néri
était si enflammé de divin amour qu’il éclata dans sa poitrine... Il croit à
cette absurdité uniquement parce qu’un savant très pourvu de diplômes le
lui affirme.—«Autrement, dit ce doux idiot, j’aurais aimé savoir ce que ce
bon Néri avait mangé à son dîner.» Notre auteur fait une longue expédition
à la Grotte du Chien pour expérimenter le pouvoir mortel des émanations
délétères sur les chiens et il aperçoit en arrivant qu’il n’a pas de chien. Un
homme plus sage aurait au moins gardé cela pour lui, mais avec cet
innocent personnage, il faut s’attendre à tout. A Pompéï, il trébuche dans
une ornière, et lorsque, quelques secondes plus tard, il se trouve en présence
d’un cadavre calciné, il s’imagine qu’il s’agit du chef de la voirie de
l’ancienne Pompéï et son horreur se change en un certain sentiment de
satisfaction vengeresse. A Damas il visite le puits d’Ananias, qui a trois
mille ans, et il est surpris et réjoui comme un enfant en constatant que l’eau
en est aussi fraîche et pure que si le puits avait été creusé de la veille. En
Terre Sainte, il se heurte aux noms hébreux et arabes et en fin de compte, il
se met à appeler les endroits Baldiquisiville, Williamsburg, etc., «pour la
commodité de l’écriture», dit-il.
Après avoir parlé si librement de la stupéfiante candeur de cet auteur,
nous voudrions continuer par la démonstration de son inqualifiable
ignorance. Mais nous ne savons où commencer. Et si nous savions où
commencer, nous ne saurions par où finir. Nous ne donnerons donc qu’un
échantillon de son savoir, un seul: Avant d’aller à Rome, il ne savait pas que
Michel-Ange était mort! Et alors, au lieu de passer sa découverte sous
silence, il se met à exprimer toutes sortes de bons sentiments, disant
combien il est heureux que le grand peintre soit désormais hors de ce
monde de douleur et de misère!
Maintenant, c’est assez, et le lecteur peut se livrer au petit jeu des
recherches de pareilles balourdises, il en trouvera.
Ce livre est dangereux, car les erreurs de jugement et de fait s’y étalent
avec une incroyable désinvolture! Et cet ouvrage doit servir à former
l’esprit des jeunes gens des écoles américaines!
Le pauvre homme erre parmi les antiques chefs-d’œuvre des grands
maîtres et cherche à acquérir quelque notion d’art... C’est bien, mais
comment étudie-t-il et à quoi cela lui sert-il? Lisez: «Lorsque nous voyons
un moine regardant le ciel en compagnie d’un lion, nous savons que c’est
saint Marc. Lorsque nous voyous un moine pourvu d’une plume et d’un
livre et regardant le ciel, nous savons que c’est saint Mathieu. Lorsque nous
voyons un moine assis sur un rocher et regardant le ciel, sans avoir d’autre
bagage qu’un crâne, nous savons que c’est saint Jérôme. Lorsque nous
voyons d’autres moines regarder le ciel, mais sans autre marque spéciale,
nous sommes obligés de demander qui ils représentent...»
Alors, il énumère les milliers de répliques des quelques tableaux qu’il a
vus et il ajoute, avec sa candeur habituelle, qu’il lui semble ainsi mieux
connaître ces belles œuvres et qu’il va peut-être commencer à éprouver
pour elles un très grand intérêt, le bon nigaud!
Que Les Innocents à l’Étranger soient un livre remarquable, nous
pensons l’avoir démontré. Que ce livre soit pernicieux, nous croyons l’avoir
également prouvé. C’est l’ouvrage d’un esprit malade.
Mais après avoir expliqué tout ce qu’a y avait de sot, de faux et de
stupide dans ce volume, terminons par un mot charitable, et disons que
même dans ce livre on peut trouver quelques bonnes choses. Toutes les fois
que l’auteur parle de son propre pays et laisse l’Europe tranquille, il ne
manque pas de nous intéresser et même de nous instruire. Personne ne lira
sans profit ses chapitres sur la vie dans les mines d’or et d’argent de
Californie et du Nevada, sur les Indiens de l’Ouest et leur cannibalisme, sur
la culture des légumes dans des barils vides avec l’aide de deux cuillerées à
café de guano, sur le déplacement des petites fermes, la nuit, en des
brouettes, pour éviter les impôts, sur les races de mules et de vaches dont on
se sert dans les mines de Humboldt et qui grimpent par les cheminées et
vont troubler les paisibles dormeurs. Tout cela est non seulement nouveau,
mais digne d’être signalé. Il est malheureux que l’auteur n’ait pas introduit
plus de ces détails dans son livre. Enfin, c’est un ouvrage bien écrit et très
amusant, ce qui lui rend un peu de valeur.
UN MOIS PLUS TARD

J’ai reçu dernièrement quelques lettres et ai lu plusieurs articles de
journaux, le tout à peu près de même teneur. J’en donne ici d’authentiques
spécimens. Le premier est extrait d’un journal de New-York, le second
d’une lettre d’un éditeur et le troisième d’une lettre d’un ami. Je préviens
cependant mes correspondants et le public que l’article cité ci-dessus, qui
parut dans le Galaxy et qui avait la prétention de n’être qu’une
reproduction de la critique publiée par la Saturday Review, a été écrit par
moi-même sans en excepter une ligne.
Maintenant voici les spécimens:
1º Le Herald dit qu’il n’y a rien de si comique que «la sérieuse critique»
faite par la Saturday Review sur le dernier livre de Mark Twain. Nous
partagions déjà ce sentiment avant d’avoir lu l’article, mais, depuis que
nous l’avons pu voir, tel qu’il est reproduit, dans le Galaxy, nous pensons
que Mark Twain n’a qu’à se bien tenir, si les critiques anglais se mettent à
être de si bons humoristes sans le savoir.
2º Je pensais que vos œuvres étaient généralement très bonnes, mais
depuis que j’ai lu dans le Galaxy la reproduction de l’article de la Saturday
Review, j’ai découvert que j’étais bien au-dessous de la vérité. S’il m’est
permis de vous donner un avis, je vous conseillerai d’ajouter en appendice à
votre prochaine édition des Innocents cet article anglais. Cela fera ressortir
dans tout son éclat votre verve et cela vous servira merveilleusement.

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Sociology of the Arts in Action Arturo

Sociology of the Arts

Sociology of the Arts

ISSN 2569-1414 ISSN 2569-1406 (electronic)

Cover illustration: izusek // GettyImages

“A well-designed collection of essays by a new generation of social scientists that

Part I Reconsidering the Frames of Artistic Production 45

Part II New Visions on Creative Practices 115

Part III The Artwork: Expanding the Analysis of Its

8 With the Beatles: Generating the Recorded Rock Album

Part IV Deepening Reception Analysis: Aesthetic Experience,

Claudio E. Benzecry is Professor of Communication Studies and

Group. Her main research work is on political theater, popular culture,

Culture and Creativity (with Claudio Benzecry, under contract with

Alvaro Santana-Acuña is Associate Professor of Sociology at Whitman

Fig. 2.1 Design work on models of the environment. Source: Author 55

Table 3.1 Typology of creative settings 73

New Perspectives for the Sociology

Arturo Rodríguez Morató

A prominent characteristic of the arts in contemporary society is their

A. Rodríguez Morató (*)

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

instead of concentrating and isolating themselves, began to spread along

In this context, the sociology of the arts is currently experiencing a

This book provides a presentation of the discipline, focused on its most

The Overhaul and Maturity of the Sociology

contributed to its transformation, one of them taking place in the 1960s

inscribed, on the contrary, within the framework of academic sociology

reach a large academic projection in the following decade in many areas of

production followed a similar process by approaching it as a dynamic of

does so programmatically, affirming at the same time the relational per-

dynamising character. It is the outline of a new postmodern cultural order:

The Sociology of the Arts in Action

reconsideration of the relationship between sociological and other disci-

globalisation of the discipline or the predominant theoretical eclecticism

On the side of cultural production, on the contrary, the works focus

accredited sociological models of the social space of creation, those of

The sociological works on artistic innovation that have proliferated in

Broadening the Sociological View of the Arts

discipline today, rather than offer an analytical synthesis of their best-­

peculiar creative logic that operates within this characteristically heterono-

intersubjectivity, the main perspective being that of habitus, in an interpre-

generative formula and ultimately allows him to reframe it, relocating it

theory and the Yale Strong Program’s emphasis on “iconicity” as involv-

configuration of layers of meaning of the object to focusing on the dialec-

(Extrait de mon «Autobiographie inédite».)

Villa Quarto, Florence, janvier 1904.

UN MOIS PLUS TARD

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Part I Reconsidering the Frames of Artistic Production 45

Part II New Visions on Creative Practices 115

Part III The Artwork: Expanding the Analysis of Its

8 With the Beatles: Generating the Recorded Rock Album

Part IV Deepening Reception Analysis: Aesthetic Experience,

Fig. 2.1 Design work on models of the environment. Source: Author 55

Table 3.1 Typology of creative settings 73

discipline today, rather than offer an analytical synthesis of their best-