Art and Society
There is no consensus as to what art is nor, until the 1970s, had sociologists expended much energy on its study or on the development of a sociology of the arts. While in Europe art had longer been of interest to sociologists than in the United States, even there it had not developed into an identifiable field with clear and internationally accepted parameters. As recently as 1968 the term sociology of art was not indexed in the International Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, which sought to sum and assess the thinking and accomplishments in the rapidly expanding social sciences of the post-World War II period. Yet by the end of the century the study of art had moved into the mainstream of sociological theory and was rapidly becoming a favored subject for empirical investigation not only in the countries of Central and Western Europe but also in the United States.
Why should art, as a subject for sociological study, have been so neglected as to have virtually disappeared from mention in American textbooks for half a century after World War I? In large part this reflected the inherent tension between sociology and art, which, as noted by Pierre Bourdieu, make an "odd couple." Artists, believing in the uniqueness of the original creator, resented the social scientist's attempt to demystify their achievements by dissecting the role of the artist in society, by questioning to what extent artists are "born" rather than "made," by conceptualizing artistic works as the products of collective rather than individual action, by anthropologically approaching art institutions, by studying the importance of networks in artistic success, and by investigating the economic correlates of artistic productivity.
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