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Art Words and Art Worlds: The

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Article

Art Words and Art Worlds:The

Methodological Importance
of Language Use in Howard S.
Becker's Sociology of Art and
Cultural Production

Robert Cluley
University of Leicester, UK

Abstract
This article reviews Howard S. Becker's work on cultural production. It suggests that Becker's
influential framework for analysing cultural production, the art world, leaves us with one important
but unanswered question: the question of methodology. Exploring this question by a close reading
of Becker's writings and noting recent uses of the art world framework in combination with social
psychological methods, the article explains why language use, or art words, offers us a powerful
way to study the collective action of cultural production in art worlds.

Keywords
art, art world, collective action, Howard S. Becker, methodology, sociology of art, structuration

Introduction
Howard S. Becker — once a student at the famous Chicago school of sociology — has
produced a hugely influential body of literature addressing the production and consump-
tion of cultuial texts. Establishing Becker's importance to cultural sociology by citing a
complete list of works that use his ideas would be, as with any truly influential theorist,
a waste of paper. Put simply, his work has 'reinvigorated the formal study of culture'
(Kaufman, 2004: 335) to the extent that Becker is considered by some as 'perhaps the
leading U.S. sociologist studying art' (Katz, 2006: xi) and others as 'one of the foremost
sociologists of the second half of the twentieth century' (Plummer, 2003: 21). According
to Bourdieu (1983: 34), Becker's most important contribution to cultural sociology, in
particular, has been to focus our attention on the ways that cultural texts are created

Corresponding author:
Robert Cluley, School of Management, Ken Edwards Building, University of Leicester, Leicester LEI 7RH, UK
Email: ric48@leicesterac.uk
202

through structured collective action. His analyses move beyond the individual artist to
show us the interacting network of people who work around them, providing them with
materials, teaching them to turn those materials into art, distributing that art for them,
and, eventually, consuming it. Becker (1982) calls this interacting network the art world.
The art world, though, does more than focus our attention on social structures. Building
on his interest in deviant behaviour, Becker has worked to create a perspective that not
only emphasizes the ways that social structures enforce conventional forms of cultural
production but also allows for social actors to innovate unconventional art work.
Theoretically, then, Becker's ideas about the production of culture are grounded on what
we now call structuration. Although Becker himself rarely speaks through such terms, he
does tell us that he sees cultural texts as both 'a point of reference for people engaged in
interaction' and products of interaction (1986: 19). So, like Giddens (1976, 1979, 1984),
Becker proposes that human action is conditioned by social structures but that these
structures are themselves determined by human action.
Becker (1986) tells us that in any sociological analysis, our theoretical perspective
should drive our methodological choices. Yet despite the theoretical foundation of the art
world framework, he does not set out a prescriptive methodology specifying exactly how
we should study art worlds. He argues against the 'predominately proselytizing character'
of much work on methodology, which, he tells us, has a 'very strong propensity . . . to
preach a "right way" to do things' (1970: 4). In fact, not only does he argue against dog-
matic approaches to methods, but he also tells us that we should allow the contingencies
of our methods to change our theoretical assumptions. If we cannot study the social world
in the way we thought we could, we should look again at our theoretical assumptions
rather than force the world to fit into our expectations. For the study of art worlds, though,
this advice gets us in a mesa. Researchers who have used the art world idea to study cul-
tural production have drawn contrasting conclusions that, collectively, contradict the fun-
damental point of the framework. In the study of the production of music some researchers
conclude that social structures are, ultimately, responsible for shaping cultural texts,
while others tell us that human creativity and artistic innovation-in short, social action-
can never be contained by those social structures. If we are to let these studies change our
theoretical explanation of the production of culture as Becker (1986) advises, which per-
spective should we choose? Both contradict the theoretical perspective at the heart of the
art world framework but they are mutually exclusive social theories so we cannot accept
them both (Dawe, 1970). Becker, though, provides a way to explain what has happened.
He warns us that where there are `no strict set of approved rules and procedures' concern-
ing methods we generally face two options: 'don't do it or anything goes' (1970: 15).
Taking the anything goes approach carries considerable risks — especially when applied to
the art world perspective. It might not produce wrong answers but it might mean that we
`leave out' an important feature of the art world we study (Becker, 1986: 6). To avoid this
problem, we must ensure that our analyses of art worlds focus on both the structures that
facilitate collective action and the human creativity that innovates those structures. To do
this, we must explore the methodology of studying art worlds.
Through a close reading of Becker's writings about cultural production and sociologi-
cal methods, we come across a method that moves beyond the anything goes approach
towards an approach that accounts for the theoretical foundation of the art world frame-
work. Becker tells us that language use is an 'analytic wedge' that can help us prise open
Cluley 203

the structures that surround social action to see how social action, itself, provides
resources that structure the social world (1986: 147). Becker (1963) most notably uses
this approach in his study of jazz musicians — that is, in a study of both cultural produc-
tion and deviant behaviour. The analysis of language use has since been developed both
methodologically and theoretically by social psychologists, organization theorists and
discourse analysts including Boje, Oswick and Ford (2004), Fairclough (1995) and
Potter and Wetherell (1987). It should be no surprise, then, to find recent work by
Strachan (2007) and Taylor and Littleton (2008) using methods developed in these disci-
plines to study language use in art worlds. Highlighting the important methodological con-
tributions these studies make the article contributes to the cultural sociology literature by
explaining why particular instances of language use, or art words, are so important to the
study of art worlds.

Art Worlds
In his seminal text Art Worlds, Becker takes issue with 'the romantic myth of the artist'
(1982: 14). Building on his earlier text (Becker, 1974), he asserts that art works 'are not
the products of individual makers, "artists" who possess a rare and special gift' (1982:
35). Instead, Becker tells us: 'All artistic work, like all human activity, involves the joint
activity of a number, often a large number, of people' (1982: 1). The group of people
most commonly associated with the production of cultural texts might be creative artists.
They are the ones who paint pictures and write symphonies. But other people help them.
This group can be viewed as mere 'support personnel' — administrative functionaries
who facilitate creativity without being creative themselves (Becker, 1982: 77). However,
from a sociological perspective, they are as essential to the production of cultural texts as
creative artists. As a result, Becker concludes that the 'sociological analysis of any art'
must concentrate on the 'division of labor' between creative artists and support personnel
(1974: 768).
Becker argues that this division of labour between creative artists and support person-
nel has a common feature no matter what type of cultural text people are working on. It
is a conventional arrangement. He explains that people making art `do not decide things
afresh. Instead, they rely on earlier agreements now become customary, agreements that
have become part of the conventional way of doing things in that art' (1982: 29). Some
conventions emerge from technologies and raw materials and others from the ways that
cultural texts are consumed (Becker, 1982: 3). Whatever their source, conventions limit
the choices an artist can make even before the artist has thought of making any choices.
They make certain materials available and outlaw certain practices. They increase the
efficiency of cultural production and create systems of value and reward (Becker, 1974:
775). In sum, they shape a social and material space in which cultural production happens.
They form the 'basic unit of analysis' in the study of cultural production, which Becker
calls the art world (1982: 36).
In Becker's analysis, the conventions that form an art world are of great importance.
Indeed, Becker tells us that 'it is not unreasonable to say that it is the art world, rather
than the individual artist, which makes the work' (1982: 194). The conventions that
structure art worlds are always under threat from innovative actors. Art worlds are, in
other words, only stable 'for a while' (Becker, 2007: 7). Technological innovations and
204

discursive conflicts routinely emerge in cultural production as artists look for new forms
of expression and support personnel seek to establish their legitimacy. Despite the power
of conventions, then, unconventional work is possible. It is typically 'more costly and
more difficult' and is often punished both economically and symbolically (Becker, 1974:
775). The art world, therefore, allows for innovation on the part of individual cultural
producers despite highlighting the importance of conventions.

Exploring Art Worlds: Becker's Methodology

In adopting the art world framework we accept a specific answer to what Becker describes
as a 'serious problem that confronts any sociological investigator who wished to study a
group or community' (1970: 20). This 'is the choice of a theoretical framework with
which to approach' our area of interest (Becker, 1970: 20). All theoretical frameworks
are based on assumptions about how we think the world works. Here, Dawe (1970) sets
out two broad traditions within sociology that can help us orientate Becker's (1982) theo-
retical foundations. Echoing Mills' (1959) distinction between sociological investiga-
tions that focus on social structures and those that focus on social milieux, Dawe explains
that we have, on the one hand, a social system tradition in sociology that assumes that
social structures define 'social meanings, relationships and actions of its members. And
because it is thus assigned priority over them, it must in some sense be self-generating
and self-maintaining' (1970: 208). The social actor is, on this reading, 'on the receiving-
end of the system' (Dawe, 1970: 209). On the other hand, we also have a sociological
tradition exploring what Dawe calls social action. Dawe explains that the task of such
research is 'always and necessarily' to demystify the social system 'by revealing' its
'roots in human action' (1970: 214). Sociologists working under this theoretical perspec-
tive explore how people actively construct the social system.
However, a truly sociological analysis needs to take account of both the social system
and social action (Mills, 1959). But this is not an easy thing to do. Indeed, developing a
sociological theory that takes account of the relation between social system and social
action has taxed some of the most esteemed social theorists of recent years (Sewell,
1992). Giddens (1976, 1979, 1984), in particular, takes on this challenge in his concept
of structuration, as does Bourdieu (1977) with his concept of habitus. As we have seen,
this is also what Becker (1982) attempts in the context of cultural production with the art
world. The art world focuses our attention on both the constraints on action by highlight-
ing the power of conventions and the limits to structures by highlighting how actors
innovate around conventions. Becker (1982) is not only concerned with order but also
conflict. In this sense, the art world framework is based on what Peterson (1976: 16) calls
a 'genetic' understanding of culture. Becker (1974, 1982) does not assume that cultural
texts mirror the social structure or vice versa. Nor does he assume that cultural texts are
produced autonomously from a social structure. Instead, he argues that

how culture works as a guide in organizing collective action and how it comes into being are
really the same process. In both cases people pay attention to what other people are doing and,
in an attempt to mesh what they do with those others, refer to what they know (or think they
know) in common. (Becker, 1986: 19)
Cluley 205

Nevertheless, while Becker (1986) is clear that our choice of theoretical framework
must influence our methodology, at times in his work he argues for a pragmatic approach
to methodology. The art world framework is, in this sense, in harmony with Becker's
(1970) earlier assertion that we should be willing to revise our methods based on practi-
calities and contingencies of our research. In fact, more generally, Becker advises us that
practical problems should make us look again at our beliefs and theoretical assumptions.
He insists: 'Technical problems of research reflect the peculiarities of the social groups
we study. In solving them, we simultaneously learn something about the social structure
under observation and something about the methods we use' (1986: 156). Consequently,
Becker suggests that the 'best evidence' may simply 'be that gathered in the most
unthinking fashion, when the observer has simply recorded the item although it has no
place in the system of concepts and hypotheses he is working with at the time' (1970:
36). Here Becker seems to be arguing for us to gather evidence first and ask theoretical
questions later.
But Becker does not stringently follow his own advice. In fact, he points out some
pitfalls with such an approach. In terms of art worlds, Becker emphasizes that the pro-
duction of cultural texts involves people doing things together. 'This', he tells us, 'sets a
distinctive agenda for our inquiry. We are to look, first, for the complete roster of kinds
of people whose activity contributes to the result' (1976: 41). He describes this as the
problem of 'getting in' (1970: 15). Becker continues:

A problem that afflicts almost all researchers — at the least, all those who attempt to study, by
whatever method, organizations, groups, and communities in the real world — is getting in:
getting permission to study the thing you want to study, getting access to the people you want
to observe, interview or give questionnaires to. (1970: 15)

Becker (1986) points out that it is often only particular groups that present themselves
to us for study and this can influence our findings. For example, if we want to study
criminals we can find many of them in a prison but these are, by definition, criminals
who have been caught (Becker, 1986: 140). It is entirely possible that something very
important separates them from the criminals who have not been caught. 'This sampling
error', Becker explains, 'and it is properly called that, may have distorted many of our
theories; for instance, it may contribute to the substantial predilection of social scientists
for theories of consensus rather than conflict' (1970: 17). In the study of art worlds, this
means that we might favour the conventional and easily accessible and ignore the uncon-
ventional. Consequently, we might think that art worlds are more constrained by conven-
tions than they are.
Once we have found an art world to study there is a further issue: where should our
`observation post' be (Becker, 1986: 143)? Becker tells us, for example, that if we want
to study deviants we could locate ourselves in 'places where the deviants' we are inter-
ested in studying 'congregate and then either simply observe them or take the opportu-
nity to interact with them and gather information in a more direct and purposive way'
(1986: 143). But it might be impossible for us to get involved and remain impartial
observers. In the course of our research we may be dragged into the very thing we are
trying to study. This, of course, is not necessarily bad. Faulkner and Becker tell us that it
206

`offers wonderful possibilities for data gathering not open in the same way to outsiders'
(2008: 19). In particular, as Becker, Faulkner and Kirschenblatt-Gimblett explain, if you
are already involved in the thing you want to study `[y]ou know what forms of collective
activity are there to be studied, what the typical problems of participants in the activity are,
what to ask people about, what kinds of events to be on the lookout for. You've already
done a pilot study' (2006: 15). But there are also some unique disadvantages to studying
something you are a part of (Faulkner and Becker, 2008: 19). For instance, we might
become too involved. Our study might affect the world that we want to understand and
describe. In the study of art worlds, this might mean that we lack perspective and may
miss the structures around us — especially as many art worlds valorize artistic freedom
and tend to downplay the importance of conventional arrangements. So what we take for
innovations might be imposed on us by conventional arrangements beyond the horizon
of our insider viewpoint.
Aside from this general methodological advice, in Art Worlds, Becker points out some
specific methodological considerations for the study of art worlds. In particular, he high-
lights the importance of considering our sample size — that is, calculating the boundaries
of the art world we are studying. He tells us that when we are studying an art world we
should speak to as many people as we can because qd]ifferent groups of participants
know different parts of the total body of conventions used by an art world' (1982: 42).
But how do we know when we have spoken to enough people? Becker (1982) also tells
us that art worlds blur into each other. So, how do we know that we have stopped learn-
ing about one world and started learning something about another one? Unfortunately,
Becker does not offer us solutions to these problems. For instance, Bryman (2001: 98)
points -out that Becker himself used a snowball sampling method in his (1963) study of
deviance, but at no point does he explicitly advocate this technique for the study of art
worlds. Rather, Becker's (1982) guidance on methodology leaves us with many blanks
to fill in. He draws us a map but leaves out many directions that would allow us to navi-
gate our way around (Becker, 2007). The risk is, consequently, that we can easily get lost.

An Example of the Problem

As a result of these gaps, the art world has been used in conflicting ways within different
strands of research in the sociology of culture. Even within the study of the production
of music, for instance, an area where Becker (1951, 1963) has done much empirical
research, the art world framework has been incorporated into two competing methodo-
logical approaches. As we will see, one has a theoretical foundation in the social struc-
ture tradition and the other in the social action tradition.

Production of Culture
The production of culture perspective, like the art world framework, posits that cultural
texts 'do not spring forth full blown' (Peterson, 1979: 152) and that they are not made by
`unique' creative geniuses working alone (Peterson, 1976: 14). It should be no surprise,
then, that Becker (1976) contributed to an early edited collection on the production of
guley 207

culture perspective edited by Richard A. Peterson (1976). This research perspective,

though, is founded on the idea that cultural texts are ultimately shaped by the contexts in
which they are produced and not by the people who work in these contexts (Peterson,
1982; Peterson and Anand, 2004; Ross, 2005; Sanders, 1982). Indeed, 'the distinctive
characteristic of the production-of-culture perspective' is its focus on the 'infrastructure'
that surrounds cultural production (Peterson, 1976: 14).
In this regard, Peterson and Anand (2004) review the production of culture perspec-
tive as a distinct research method. They.describe it as an attempt to explore 'the constitu-
ent elements comprising a field of symbolic production' (2004: 313). Each of these
constitutive elements, which cover technology, laws and regulation, industry structures,
organization structures, careers and markets, can be studied individually. We can explore
how an element affects the ways that cultural texts are made. But these constitutive
elements are interlinked. Changes in any element are absorbed into others. We can,
accordingly, also investigate the impact of one element on other elements.
Researchers exploring the production of music from a production of culture perspec-
tive have tended towards quantitative analysis and historical data — using industry
reports, media accounts and sociological texts to chart the relationships between vari-
ous constituent elements. Peterson and Berger (1975), in perhaps the most widely
debated example production of culture research, employ this approach to explore the
relationship between industry structure and innovation in the recorded music industry.
Using sales charts, they compute the number of hit records four and eight firm oligar-
chies produce in a given year. They conclude that high levels of concentration of owner-
ship lead to noticeably decreasing levels of variety among hit records. Drawing on
Peterson and Berger (1975), other researchers employing the production of culture per-
spective have further quantified this analysis. Dowd (2004), for instance, quantifies the
variation of hit records.
Research using the production of culture perspective, as a result, rarely uses ethno-
graphic empirical research. But this should be no surprise. The perspective is based on
the idea that individuals are not responsible for cultural production. They work within
social institutions that are, ultimately, responsible. Peterson (1990), for instance, rejects
a traditional account of the sudden explosion of rock 'n' roll music that focuses on indi-
vidual innovators. Instead, he argues:

in any era there is a much larger number of creative individuals than ever reach notoriety, and
if some specific periods of time see the emergence of more notables, it is because these are
times when the usual routinising inhibitions to innovation do not operate as systematically,
allowing opportunities for innovation to emerge. (1990: 97)

Broadly speaking, we might accordingly place the production of culture within the
social structure tradition Dawe (1970) describes. In terms of the art world, it focuses on
conventions and the ways that social structures enforce them rather than allow or foster
the innovation of individual social actors. 'The particulars of symbol production vary
from setting to setting', Peterson explains, but 'all must come to terms with the same
contingencies that shape the ways artists can make culture' (1979: 156).
208

Micro-sociology
In contrast, a number of writers, including Bennett (1980), Cluley (2009), Cohen (1991a),
Finnegan (1989) and Negus (1992, 1999), adopt the art world perspective as part of the
`micro-sociology' of music production (Finnegan, 1989: 4). This approach focuses the on
day-to-day work of people who make music together. It explores interactions 'where ten-
sions between artists, consumers and corporations are mediated and find expression in a
range of working practices, ideological divisions and conflicts [as] it is these which deci-
sively shape the sounds and visions of contemporary pop music' (Negus, 1992: 154).
Bennett (1980), for example, examines looks at how more conventional forms of music
come to affect rock musicians in Colorado. He describes how musicians and support person-
nel struggle to overcome the constraints on their actions enforced by conventions in their art
world — sometimes successfully and sometimes unsuccessfully. Interestingly, Bennett
(1980) was not only taught by Becker but describes him as his 'most professional critic'.
As a result of this focus, the micro-sociology of music often takes the form of partici-
pant observation based on informal interviews with musicians and support personnel in
specific situations and locations (Sanders, 1982). It involves researchers observing people
as they make music in natural settings. Typically, such context-specific data is gathered
through case-studies, which, Cohen tells us, provide 'valuable insight into an industry that
is notoriously difficult to define and assess, illuminating the complexity of life at this
grass-roots level and highlighting the various important issues and processes involved'
(199 ib: 344). In this regard, it is notable that many micro-sociologists of music are also
involved in producing music themselves — often with the very people they study. Negus,
for instance, describes how after years spent flirting on the edge of the music industry, 'in
desperation I became a sociologist' (1999: 2). He explains that his research was driven by
a desire to 'understand what I had been through and ... to figure out why I was now sitting
in a library in north London and not recording my latest album in Manhattan' (1999: 2).
In keeping with the social action tradition described by Dawe (1970), and in contrast to
the production of culture perspective outlined above, micro-sociologists explore the social
action that is involved in making music. They often focus on the unconventional by look-
ing at how social actors challenge and construct conventions.

From this brief description of the production of culture and the micro-sociological
research traditions we can see that Becker's (1982) art world framework relates to two
very different approaches to studying the production of music. Both draw on the idea that
cultural texts are not produced by an artist alone but by a network of actors working
within particular material and discursive spaces. However, one approach looks down
from the macro-level of the social structure and the other looks up from the micro-level
of social action. The difference between the production of culture and micro-sociological
approaches is, put otherwise, not just a question of pragmatics such as access to data but
also of theoretical perspective. One set of researchers, broadly speaking, focus on the art
world as a set of conventional activities determined by social structures, and the other
focus on a set of relations determined by unconventional social actions.
While this characterization of these research perspectives is crudely drawn, it illus-
trates that the anything goes approach to studying art worlds allows the framework to be
Cluley 209

appropriated by empirical research that draws on different theoretical perspectives and

supports different theoretical conclusions that not only contradict each other but also the
theoretical foundation of the art world framework itself. Indeed, as we have seen, in the
study of the production of music one research tradition emphasizes the role of structure
and other agency, but both see structure and agency as standing in opposition. As we
have also seen, though, the art world framework set out by Becker (1982) posits that
structure and human agency, to take Sewell's comments on structuration theory, 'presup-
pose each other' (1992: 4, emphasis in original). This leads us to a problem. According
to Becker (1986), we should allow empirical studies of art worlds to modify our theoreti-
cal models. Should we, as a consequence, revise our opinion of the art world framework
in light of either the production of culture perspective or micro-sociological research into
the production of music? Did Becker get it wrong in seeing cultural texts as resources
that combine into social structures that are themselves created from social action? To
paraphrase Wittgenstein (1921), should we use the art world framework as a ladder that
we can kick away once we have climbed up it? If so, which perspective should we
choose?

The Importance of Language

This problem can be overcome if we insist that, as the art world interprets the production
of culture through the relationship between social structure and social action, any meth-
ods we use to operationalize the concept must be designed to uncover this relationship.
As we have seen, Becker does not explicitly do this in his work. Implicitly echoing
Giddens's idea of structuration in the sociological study of culture, Becker (1986: 19)
explains that 'how culture works as a guide in organizing collective action and how it
comes into being are really the same process'. Cultural texts allow people to interact and
are produced by people interacting. Part of studying art worlds, then, becomes exploring
exactly how social actions construct social structures as the micro-sociology of music
does, and to explore how those social structures, condition social actions, as the produc-
tion of culture perspective does. Or, to put this another way, the study of art worlds
should focus on how conventional arrangements structure unconventional action and
how unconventional action creates conventional arrangements.
Throughout his work Becker tells us that the language people use when producing
cultural texts both reflects the structures that support their conventional arrangements
while also allowing actors to challenge those structures. Language use is according to
Becker, an 'analytic wedge' that lets us open up the relationship between structure and
agency in the production of culture (1986: 147). For illustration of this we can turn to
Becker's work on jazz musicians. Becker (1963) describes how these musicians make
sense of their activities by dividing their world into cats and squares, and he attributes a
specific role for language use in regulating and representing the distinction between
these two groups. Put simply, cats see themselves as being different from squares because
they speak differently. This difference, though, is not just a matter of vocabulary. It is
because the ways these groups speak represents their different worldviews. As Jeffcutt,
Pick and Protherough (2000: 130), writing more recently than Becker, explain: 'When
we say of others that "they don't speak our language", we mean that they use the same
210

words but within a different framework of associations and values that embody different
concepts'.
So cats ` talk a special language' in comparison to squares (Becker, 1951: 144). They
speak of things being cool and hip. They combine 'the image of French bohemian artists'
with 'an elaborate vocabulary' that describes 'ignorant fans, demanding managers, varie-
ties of drugs, and the authorities' (Lena and Peterson, 2008: 707). This vocabulary covers
words that

have grown up to refer to unique professional problems and attitudes of musicians, typical of
them being the term 'square'. Such words enable cats to discuss problems and activities for
which ordinary language provides no adequate terminology. There are, however, many words
which are merely substitutes for the more common expression without adding any new
meaning. (Becker, 1951: 143-144)

Squares, in contrast, do not understand what cats talk about, just as they do not under-
stand why cats play the music they do when they could more easily play popular tunes and
make a more comfortable living (Becker, 1963). Squares, in short, lack both the understand-
ing of, music, the vocabulary and the worldview that cats have. They are the audience who
demand popular dance and folk tunes and also the families and friends of musicians who do
not appreciate the unconventional behaviour expected of a musician. Collectively they
demand that cats play 'bad music in order to be successful' (Becker, 1963: 90) and force a
cat to choose 'between conventional success and his artistic standards' (Becker, 1963: 83).
Becker tells us that the division of the world into cats and squares is not simply about
policing the membership of an artistic community — creating an insider group and an
outsider group. Rather it is an attempt by jazz musicians, on the one hand, to make sense
of the constraints on their actions enforced upon them by the social system (Weick,
1995), in particular the economic imperative that forces them to play 'bad' music, while
on the other hand, it is simultaneously an attempt by these jazz musicians to structure the
world themselves. The social structures might punish them for playing jazz, but through
developing their own vocabulary, it is they who structure their world. They are engaged
in 'a process of self-segregation' (Becker, 1963: 100). Becker explains:

The process of self-segregation is evident in certain symbolic expressions, particularly in the

use of an occupational slang which readily identifies the man [sic] who can use it properly as
someone who is not square and as quickly reveals as an outsider the person who uses it
incorrectly or not at all. (1963: 100)

From this reading of Becker's work, we can add further guidance to his general meth-
odological advice that we have outlined above. We should focus on language use. Indeed,
Becker (1986: 147) summarizes this point when he remarks that '[u]nusual terms or
unusual uses of conventional words signal areas of central concern to the people under
study and provide an opening analytic wedge, as the term "square" did in studying musi-
cians'. In terms of studying art worlds, this approach allows us to focus on the production
of cultural texts through the relationship between social structure and social action. By
asking people to explain what they are doing in terms that they naturally use, we can
learn about the art world as both a set of conventions and structures, and also as a series
of unconventional actions.
Mier 2I

So it is: possible to set out a methodology for exploring art worlds that truly takes
account of the theoretical foundation of the perspective. Moreover, this method is already
present in Becker's work even if he does not explicitly address it for fear of dogmatically
prescribing a methodology. For Becker's inheritors, then, we do not have to reject the art
world idea on the basis of its methodological contingency. Studying language use offers
a method that can explore art worlds from an appropriate theoretical perspective without
forcing the world to meet our prior assumptions about it.

Analyzing Language
Yet, simply acknowledging the role of language in facilitating and enacting social struc-
tures through social action does not address all of the methodological gaps that Becker
leaves in his explanation of art worlds. Having captured evidence of language use within
an art world, we are led to a further problem: how can we make sense of such special
vocabularies once we have recognized and understood them? On this point, Becker does
not offer us assistance but, as we shall see, methods developed in social psychology,
organization theory and discourse analysis provide us with techniques that draw on
structuration theory. Reviewing these methods can help us to see why particular types of
language, that I call art words, are so important in the study of art worlds.
But first, let us look at how this focus on language use has been developed in recent
studies of art worlds. Taylor and Littleton (2008) offer an example. Their research draws
directly on Becker's (1982) work on art worlds and employs tools developed within social
psychology and discourse analysis to explore a particular art world. They analyse two
interviews conducted with a fashion designer. The first interview takes place when the
designer is still a student, the second when she has taken on a job teaching design. They use
the art world framework to orientate the 'multiple possibilities' (Taylor and Littleton, 2008:
279) that this particular creative producer draws on to manage her 'creative identity pro-
ject' (Taylor and Littleton, 2008: 276). In particular, they highlight two contradictory
scripts that this creative producer draws on to deal with the challenges of making art and
the problem of maintaining a consistent self-image as an artist in the contradictory fields of
her cultural production. The first they call 'art-versus-money', the second 'money as vali-
dation' (Taylor and Littleton, 2008: 281). The art-versus-money script is evident when the
creative producer they interview attempts to distance herself and her art work from the
profit motive. In these instances 'the failure to make money can even be taken as a marker
of artistic success' (Taylor and Littleton, 2008: 280). In contrast, the money-as-validation
script is evident when the creative producer presents earning money from her creative
activities both as a way she can earn a living and as a confirmation of the value of her art
and her value as an artist. This was demonstrated when the creative producer 'spoke as if
"good" art would logically carry a high monetary value' (Taylor and Littleton, 2008: 280).
Taylor and Littleton conclude that these scripts are not just 'recognisable, even cliched
resources' but that they also 'make available a certain positioning which can be taken up or
resisted' by cultural producers (2008: 281). In short, these scripts structure an art world in
the same way that the vocabularies developed by cats structure their art world. They
position some activities as conventional and some as unconventional.
212

A similar approach is also used by Strachan (2007: 247), who explores 'the com-
mon discursive constructions that affect and justify aesthetic and industrial practice'
within the UK music industries. Like Taylor and Littleton (2008), he finds that people
working within small-scale record labels draw on 'well-worn tropes' relating to
authenticity and commercialism (2007: 247). 'These discursive formations', Strachan
explains, 'are used by micro-label owners to explain and justify why they are involved
in small-scale cultural production, what rewards they gain from such involvement and
ultimately what they hope to achieve through it' (2007: 250). Such discursive forma-
tions help employees in small-scale record companies `to position themselves against
the "music industry" and thus against the inherently insidious nature of "business"'
(Strachan, 2007: 250).
In both the work of Strachan (2007) and Taylor and Littleton (2008) ways of speaking
about cultural production, whether we think of them as scripts and discursive formations
or as interpretative repertoires, as Potter and Wetherell (1987: 153) call them, allow us to
see how 'contrasting sets of terms' can be 'used in different ways' to anchor and orientate
social action. In particular, the cultural producers studied by these researchers draw on
very similar types of language use to position their activities as unconventional, in that
they are set up against the wider culture industry, and conventional, in that their activities
are valued in some way. The cultural producers set up this position through their ways of
speaking about their art worlds. These ways of speaking are what we, might call 'art
words'. In this regard, Oswick et al. (2007) point out that the analysis of language use
tells us more than we might think. It not only tells us what people are saying but exposes
the relationship people have to what they are describing. Language use does not just
reflect the world. It reflects the position a speaker has taken to the world they are
describing.
For many social psychologists and discourse analysts this means that language use
performs the same function as social structures (Potter and Wetherell, 1987: 141). It both
opens and closes particular kinds of action. To put this in terms we have used so far,
language use plays a part in structuring our worlds. It provides resources from which we
structure the world but also allows for innovation, resistance and creative social action.
Indeed, it is a structural resource that only exists within social action — that is, between
speakers. Consequently, 'the task of discourse analysis is not to apply categories to par-
ticipants' talk, but rather to identify the ways in which participants themselves actively
construct and employ categories in their talk', as this allows us to see how language use
constructs their world (Wood and Kroger, 2000: 29). So far we have described this
through the sociological concept of structuration, but Fairclough (1995: 73) in his impor-
tant contribution to critical discourse analysis describes it as the 'dialectic relation'
between discourse, agency and structure. He explains:

discourse is shaped by structures, but also contributes to shaping and reshaping them, to
reproducing and transforming them. These structures are most immediately of a discoursal/
ideological nature — orders of discourse, codes and their elements such as vocabularies or turn-
taking conventions — but they also include in a mediated form political and economic structures,
relationships in the market, gender relations, relations within the state and within the institutions
of civil society such as education. (Fairclough, 1995: 73)
auley 213

According to discourse analysts, therefore, language use is a resource which condi-

tions social actions yet is, in turn, a resource out of which social structures are built.
Accepting this idea, we can reconceive the cats and squares that Becker analyses as
`speech communities' who share 'background knowledge' that allows them to make
sense of and organize their world — to feel, as Fairclough (1995: 27-28) puts it, 'that
things are as they should be'. They use language to 'mark' their 'alternative social cate-
gories' and 'exemplify' their 'different world views' by reclaiming existing words and
developing new terms (Potter and Wetherell, 1987: 127). For this reason many social
psychologists, organization theorists and discourse analysts reject 'the assumption that
there is a world (internal or external) that can be known separately from its construction
in discourse' (Wood and Kroger, 2000: 28). 'Talk', Wood and Kroger summarize, 'cre-
ates the social world in a continuous ongoing way. It does not simply reflect what is
assumed to be already there' (2000: 4).
So, having seen recent contributions to the cultural sociology literature draw on the
art world framework and employ methods developed in social psychology and discourse
analysis, we can now return to the methodological gaps that emerge from a close reading
of Becker's work. Earlier we highlighted a number of methodological considerations that
Becker raises throughout his work. In the study of art worlds, in particular, we saw that
these considerations leave us asking where the boundaries of an art world stand. Language
use, we can now see, provides an answer to the problem of drawing boundaries to art
worlds. It is through language use that cultural producers draw limits to their art world.
In the case of the cats Becker studies, they create a group outside of their art World that
they call squares. The cats segregate themselves from squares by creating their own
language which includes the term square itself. In keeping with the ongoing relationship
between structure and action, this divisions does not mean that the squares have no effect
on cats but that this opposition provides a structure for cats' activities. For the creative
producers Taylor and Littleton (2008) and Strachan (2007) study, particular ways of
speaking about their activities also allow them to construct a social structure by position-
ing themselves against a group who are themselves constructed in the discourse the crea-
tive producers use. In all of these cases, it is by structuring their work against a
discursively-constructed 'industry' that cultural producers draw boundaries around their
own art worlds. The boundaries of art worlds are defined, therefore, by art words — that
is, by the recognizable vocabularies that provide ways for both creative artists and sup-
port personnel to position their activities within an art world.

Conclusion
In this article, I have reviewed Becker's art world framework. We have seen that Becker
sets out the art world as a distinctive approach in the study of cultural production. It
encourages us to look beyond the work of an individual artist to the network of actors and
relationships that let people work together to make art works. However, I have shown
how a failure to engage with the theoretical side of Becker's framework has got us into a
position where the study of cultural production has built upon Becker's ideas, but also
ignored a theoretical foundation of the art world framework. Drawing on examples from
the study of the production of music, I have shown how Becker's ideas have been used
214

to support work conducted under both a social system and social action perspective. The
theoretical perspective behind the art world framework, though, is balanced between
both perspectives.
I have argued that recognizing this theoretical foundation of the art world framework
is the first step to finding more consistent methodologies for the study of cultural produc-
tion. With this point in mind, I have presented a review of Becker's texts not just on the
art world but also on sociological methods. From this review we have uncovered lan-
guage use as an important analytic wedge for prising open the relationship between
social structures and social action. Having looked first at Becker's (1963) analysis of
language use among cultural producers, then reviewing some recent contributions to the
cultural sociology literature which employ the art world framework and study language
use, I have explained how language emerges from social action to produce social struc-
tures. Applying this explanation to art worlds allows us to overcome an outstanding
methodological problem that we inherit from Becker's work, namely, the problem of
drawing limits to an art world. We have seen that it is through language use that cultural
producers define their art worlds. Language use makes certain positionings available for
them and helps them to establish what is conventional and what is unconventional. It
creates borders.
I have attempted to reinvigorate a discussion of the ways in which sociologists of
culture can use the art world framework to study the production of cultural texts. I have
argued that methods from social psychology and discourse analysis, in particular the
analysis of language use, offer a powerful way for us to explore how art worlds are struc-
tured and restructured, and how the frequently competing artistic and economic logics
that structure cultural production are themselves rendered discursively to enable action
and to produce structures around that action. What we can call art words are therefore an
essential part of the study of art worlds.

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Robert Cluley is a Lecturer in Marketing and Management at the School of Management,

University of Leicester, where he is also a member of the Centre for Philosophy and Political
Economy. He has conducted research on a wide variety of topics including leadership, psycho-
analysis, music and buzzwords.
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