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Copyright The Author(s) 2010, Reprints and permissions: http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav BSA Publications Ltd Volume 4(2): 257265 [DOI: 10.1177/1749975510368475]
Nathalie Heinich
CNRS, Paris, France
A B S T R AC T
This article attempts to clarify some misunderstandings between English-speaking and French-speaking scholars in the field of the sociology of arts and culture. In addition to a number of ambiguities in the definition of what culture, ar ts and sociology mean within the French and the Anglo-American academic traditions, the very words culture, cultural sociology and cultural studies exhibit important differences between each other as they are understood within each linguistic context. Seen from a French point of view, so-called French theory appears as a typically Anglo-American category, along with post-modernism, while French debates among sociologists of art seem to have few echoes abroad. The linguistic dissymmetry between French and Anglo-American academic cultures should be taken into account in order better to understand the nature of these misunderstandings.
K E Y WO R D S
cultural sociology / cultural studies / French theory / post-modernism / sociology of art / sociology of arts / sociology of culture
Introduction
ast year, I decided to change the presentation of my English CV, turning sociologie de la culture into sociologie de lart. The reason is that, obviously, the first term is misleading for some Anglo-American scholars, who seem to read into it another meaning. These differences between the French and the Anglo-American academic worlds are what I would like to address in this short note, considering what we term either sociology of art or (but this or is already a problem, as we shall see) sociology of culture.
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social and juridical status of creators, artists careers and curricula, role of age, gender, training, social origins etc. in the relationship to creation, collective representations of creators and creation, and suchlike), and on art mediation (circles of recognition, the roles of gate-keepers such as publishers, gallery-owners, curators, critics, agents, and so on). These three main topics of the sociology of art have been dramatically developed by the most recent generation of French researchers, following the paths opened up first by Pierre Bourdieu (1965, 1968, 1971, 1973, 1974, 1975, 1979, 1992; Bourdieu and Darbel, 1966) and then after him by Raymonde Moulin (1967, 1985, 1992). However, in the USA and in the UK, the equivalent areas do not seem to have produced very major pieces of research. Howard Beckers Art Worlds (1982) remains the most famous, the aforementioned sociology of the arts being just one section of the much wider field of sociology of culture. Here lies another risk of mutual misunderstanding between Francophones and Anglophones.
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Three Anecdotes
I want to exemplify some of the issues I am discussing through some telling anecdotes. Here is the first one. The last time I was in the USA (too long ago: about 10 years), as well as the last time I was in the UK (two weeks ago), I visited a few bookstores, as we all usually do abroad. There I desperately searched for the shelf entitled sociology. When I could not find it, I asked the salesperson. You mean cultural studies?, he said. Here is a second story. A few months ago, I attended a conference organized by the sociology department in a French regional university. When driving me back to the station at the end of the day, the organizer told me that two new members of the department had proposed a teaching course entitled tudes culturelles. It had been accepted without any problem, since everyone in the department thought it would consist in the study of cultural practices (see above). They eventually realized (too late) that tudes culturelles was the translation of cultural studies (gender studies, queer studies, post-colonial studies etc). They are now trying to stop the coming wave. Here is a third tale. In 1999, when the Boekman Foundation in Amsterdam offered me its chair of sociology of art at the University of Amsterdam for three years, the staff wanted to know my teaching programme. After hearing my presentation, they gently asked And dont you plan to teach French theory? As politely I hope as I could, I immediately answered But I teach sociology, not philosophy! And it was OK. But who was the most astonished: me, by their question; or them, by my astonishment at their question?
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also because Bourdieu himself never considered himself either a cultural studies or a post-modern scholar (he even strongly refused such a categorization), no more than he saw himself as a philosopher, always being very eager to demonstrate the superiority of sociology over philosophy (see Heinich, 2007). (As an aside, I should say that post-modernism used to be a fashionable trend in French philosophy a generation ago, after Lyotards interventions. But today it seems quite outdated. While it may still be used in art theory, it is almost absent in the human and social sciences. When one hears post-modernism in France, one immediately thinks American, just as in the cases of MacDo and Coca-Cola). French scholars are always astonished when hearing that Bourdieu is included in the pantheon of so-called French theory. A thing called French theory does not actually exist in France. We know the structuralist trend of the 1960s, developed by the anthropologist Lvi-Strauss, the psychoanalyst Lacan, the philosopher Foucault. We also know Derridas deconstruction and Deleuzes post-Bergsonism. We also know Bourdieus sociologie de la domination or sociologie des champs. But we do not know something called French theory in spite of some recent efforts to import it from the USA (see Cusset, 2003). The authors included in this strange category are either dead or very old (Lvi-Strauss has just died at the age of 100). Their major works appeared more than 40 years ago. For French researchers in the present day, this is the past. So many new things and innovative authors have appeared in the various social science disciplines over the last four decades. Should we ignore these new and exciting ideas, in order to confine ourselves to authors that we used to read so long ago, when we were students? No our debates are not in those terrains any more.
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axiological neutrality, that is, the avoidance of any normative assessment, in order to limit the scientific discourse to a strictly descriptive and analytical level (see Heinich, 1998). The issue is all the more relevant in that the model of the intellectuel engag (the politically committed scholar) is very strong in modern French academic culture. Needless to say, cultural studies and post-modernism are, in the eyes of their opponents, just some of the most common ways to foster value-laden discourse, to confuse research with ideology, and to load social sciences with political or critical issues by repeatedly aiming at deconstructing and thus dismissing traditional hierarchies and categories (but only on campuses, which might somehow limit the efficiency of the programme). This is why I disagree with Janet Wolff when she calls for a growing dialogue between sociology and cultural studies (Wolff, 2005): as a fervent supporter of the scientific, neutral, un-political, empirically-grounded (as well as qualitative and comprehensive) conception of sociological research, I do hope that cultural studies, post-modernism and French theory will mostly remain an Anglo-American speciality. French society of art also includes two other ongoing and rather acute debates. The first one is related to the aforementioned opposition between humanities and the social sciences. It involves, on one side, the sociology of art-works (mostly consisting in learned commentaries) and, on the other, the sociology of artistic producers, consumers, and mediators (based on empirical surveys, through either quantitative or qualitative methods).7 For the supporters of the former conception, the supreme goal of sociology should be to enlighten us as to the social stakes of art-works, whatever they are. This is a position which, in the eyes of their opponents (to which I belong), is but an old, pre-sociological way of thinking. It desperately tries to re-assemble art and sociology after having treated them as if they were two entirely different entities. It also reproduces the academic privilege traditionally granted to artworks, claims the hegemony of sociology over art history, and remains entangled in unending debates on whether one should focus on art-works internal or external determinants. In my eyes, the methodological and conceptual resources of sociology as a scientific discipline are much more appropriate to the study of activities, representations and values related to arts than to the works themselves, for which art historians and cultural historians have provided quite interesting insights. This discussion is ongoing. The final French debate in the sociology of art pertains to the opposition between legitimate culture and popular culture. Should the sociologist focus on major arts, because they are considered as such by the actors, and as a result of such perceptions play important roles in society? Or should the sociologist try to dismiss this hierarchy by privileging more minor arts in the research agenda? Although Bourdieu himself seems to have been somewhat ambivalent, he was strongly accused of fostering the first option by some of his previous collaborators, who referred to the Birmingham School version of cultural studies (in particular to Richard Hoggarts work) in order to sustain their critiques (see Grignon and Passeron, 1989). Here too the debate has not yet closed.
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Notes
1 2 3 4 The first noticeable occurrence of this use can be found in the title of the international conference organized in Marseilles: cf. Raymonde Moulin (1986). For a discussion and commented results of the surveys on cultural practices, see Olivier Donnat (1994). I tried to define and present the traditions of cultural history, aesthetic sociology, social history and survey sociology in La sociologie de lart (Heinich, 2002). On the difference between implicit culture (the broader and mostly AngloAmerican sense) and explicit culture (the restricted and mostly French sense), see for instance Robert Wuthnow and Marsha Witten (1988).
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On sociology of culture, see for instance Diana Crane (1992). For a strong distinction between sociology of culture ( weak programme, thin description, culture as a dependent variable, as in the Birmingham School) and cultural sociology (strong programme, thick description, culture as an independent variable, as in some recent trends in the anthropology of science), see Jeffrey C. Alexander and Philip Smith (2001). The debate appeared in Moulin (1986), and was re-opened in issue number 10 of the journal Sociologie de lart, Sociologie des oeuvres, in 1997.
References
Alexander, J.C. and Smith, P. (2001) The Strong Program in Cultural Sociology, in J. Turner (ed.) The Handbook of Sociological Theory, pp. 13550. New York: Kluwer. Becker, H. (1982) Art Worlds. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Bourdieu, P. (1965) Un art moyen. Essai sur les usages sociaux de la photographie. Paris: Minuit. Bourdieu, P. (1968) Elments dune thorie sociologique de la perception artistique, Revue Internationale des Sciences Sociales 20(4): 64064. Bourdieu, P. (1971) Disposition esthtique et comptence artistique, Les Temps Modernes 26(295): 134478. Bourdieu, P. (1973) Le march des biens symboliques, LAnne Sociologique 22: 49126. Bourdieu, P. (1974) Les fractions de la classe dominante et les modes dappropriation de loeuvre dart, Information sur les Sciences Sociales 13(3): 731. Bourdieu, P. (1975) Linvention de la vie dartiste, Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 2(March): 6793. Bourdieu, P. (1979) La distinction. Critique sociale du jugement. Paris: Minuit. Bourdieu, P. (1992) Les rgles de lart. Gense et structure du champ littraire. Paris: Seuil. Bourdieu, P. and Darbel, A. (1966) Lamour de lart. Les muses dart europens et leur public. Paris: Minuit. Crane, D. (1992) The Production of Culture. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Cusset, F. (2003) French Theory. Foucault, Derrida, Deleuze & Cie et les mutations de la vie intellectuelle aux Etats-Unis. Paris: La Dcouverte. Donnat, O. (1994) Les Franais face la culture. De lexclusion lclectisme. Paris: La Dcouverte. Grignon, C. and Passeron, J.-C. (1989) Le savant et le populaire. Paris: GallimardLe Seuil. Heinich, N. (1998) Ce que lart fait la sociologie. Paris: Minuit. Heinich, N. (2002) La Sociologie de lart. Paris: La Dcouverte. [Collection Repres] Heinich, N. (2007) Pourquoi Bourdieu. Paris: Gallimard. Moulin, R. (1967) Le march de la peinture en France. Paris: Minuit. Moulin, R. (ed.) (1985) Les artistes. Essai de morphologie sociale. Paris: La Documentation Franaise. Moulin, R. (1986) (ed.) Sociologie des arts. Paris: La Documentation Franaise. Moulin, R. (1992) Lartiste, linstitution et le march. Paris: Flammarion. Wolff, J. (1981) The Social Production of Art. London: Macmillan.
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Wolff, J. (2005) Cultural Studies and the Sociology of Culture, in D. Inglis and J. Hughson (eds) The Sociology of Art: Ways of Seeing, pp. 8797. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Wuthnow, R. and Witten, M. (1988) New Directions in the Study of Culture, Annual Review of Sociology 14: 4967. Zolberg, V. (1990) Constructing a Sociology of the Arts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nathalie Heinich
Nathalie Heinich is research director in sociology at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris. She specializes in the sociology of arts (artistic professions, aesthetic perception, conflicts about contemporary art), socio-anthropology of identity crisis (in fiction, authorship and survivors testimonies), womens identity (the states of women and mother-daughter relationships), and the epistemology of the social sciences, with special reference to sociology of art, the writings of Norbert Elias, Pierre Bourdieu, and others. Address: Centre de Recherches sur les Arts et le Langage, CNRS Campus GrardMgie, 3 rue Michel-Ange F-75794 Paris Cedex 16, France. Email: heinich@ehess.fr