Cultural Consumption in the Fine and Popular Arts Realms

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2006

Trends in arts and culture tend to be longer-lasting and less fragile than in other fields such as clothing design. Most herding models are not able to explain such stability, instead predicting informational cascades to be fragile and fads to be frequent. The present contribution is able to explain the hysterisis of trends in arts by incorporating the accumulation of consumption capital into a herding model. Further, the model is tested empirically by analyzing measures of relative and absolute concentration in the television business. It is concluded that by being exposed to art and culture people accumulate consumption capital for a particular style or artist and that this mechanism tends to make herding in arts stable over time.

2009

In both contemporary aesthetic theory and sociology of art there is a tendency to conceive formation of taste not primarily as segmentation and status marker, but rather as connections and exchanges crossing traditional hierarchies. In this way they seem closer to a Kantian aesthetics than to Pierre Bourdieu’s social critique of the judgment of taste. The aim of this article is to examine this tendency. To do this I will briefly introduce first the idea of subjective universality as formulated by Kant, secondly the segmentation into different cultures of taste as described by Bourdieu, and thirdly some views on the function of taste in the contemporary context of globalization and aestheticization. More in depth I will discuss some recent sociological surveys which indicate an increasing heterogeneity in contemporary cultural taste and consumption. These will be related to the theories of Kant and Bourdieu as well as the more recent views. Combining an aesthetic and a sociological p...

Working Paper Series 17 - Department of Economics - Universitá di Torino, 2012

This paper discusses the extent to which socio-demographic characteristics of consumers and their past consumption are less effective in explaining the decision of purchasing a cultural good than the characteristics of the product itself, which allow imitative behaviors and are at the basis of distinction. While the former approaches are well discussed in the literature, the latter refers to the Bourdieu's idea of objectified cultural capital, which has been rarely explored in empirical works. Because the various explanatory effects interact with each others, the paper tests a theoretical model which matches individual characteristics of the consumer with the properties of the cultural product. Specifically, we discussed the emergence of a new version of a cultural good, which is able to broaden the dimension of the market by gaining quick success in the the audience. This diffusion pattern is a quite rare event, but disruptive for the market and extremely profitable for the producer. The authors label this occurrence disruptive cultural fad and try to understand the determinants of its adoption. The hypotheses of the model are tested on a unique dataset of micro-data of purchasing transactions in Milan in the early 19 th century, when the music by Gioachino Rossini emerged as disruptive cultural fad at the dawn of the music industry.

European Societies, 2009

The Sociological Review

Taste is a subject of longstanding academic interest. The question of how cultural interests and preferences are socially stratified is at the heart of the sociology of culture. This article adds to this literature by examining the tastes of a specific social fraction, those working in cultural and creative occupations ( N = 203). The analysis finds that, in keeping with existing quantitative research on changing cultural hierarchies, cultural workers are open and eclectic in their expressions of taste. They are reflexive, able to play with, and question, ideas of taste alongside conceptions of artistic or cultural legitimacy, connecting their understandings to broader questions of social division and distinction. At the same time, this ‘emerging’ form of cultural capital is a new dividing line, substantiated by modes of consumption, depth of appreciation, and willingness to articulate commitments to engagement with culture. These distinctive tastes of cultural workers matter becaus...

SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000

Despite the effects of the crisis, several studies show that there has been an increase in cultural production in all the most important western countries over the last twenty years. Nevertheless, the dimensions of the flows of demand are changing: the lowering of the threshold of perceived accessibility to the cultural contents on offer is resulting in new population segments using them. The modalities of cultural product consumption are also changing, and are increasingly influenced by the direct involvement of the consumer in the creative processes. On the other side, the competition to conquer consumers' free time has intensified because more figures are now involved, both from the cultural industry and outside. The cultural offer has multiplied and become more differentiated. But while this consumption is changing dimensions and modality, a gap is emerging in the information and knowledge of cultural consumption behaviour, mainly due to a lack of innovative official statistical measurements. The present paper wants to understand how academic literature reacted to the need for information on cultural consumption, that became widespread during 2000. Our main objective is to offer an initial overview of scientific literature of the fist decade of the twenty-first century, while trying to understand the future research trends. The analysis showed that great attention is still dedicated to the segmentation of cultural demand, but the analysis of motivations underlying cultural consumption is significantly acquiring more importance. Moreover, we identified vast research areas in which cultural consumption has only been partially studied, such as: social consumption, studies on individual businesses, methodological triangulation, and the operative implications for business management.

Practices of World Building, 2013

To choose the terms made infamous by Adorno and Horkheimer has the interest of immediately confronting us to the sociological issues raised today by the Internet, that is to say the potential effects of a « major technical innovation in cultural production and distribution and in information systems » on legitimate culture and on social relations 1. Furthermore, even if I disagree with their conservative-and fallacious-vision of the cultural industry, the strength of their discourse relies on their close attention in Dialectic of Enlightenment to the action of the objects-films and series-produced and distributed, at their time, by the Hollywood studios and the first TV networks. The rather surprising celebration by Adorno, in the sixties, of the Long-Playing record as a stunning technical revolution of the opera consumption brings confirmation of this regard given to the objects operated by the cultural consumer to achieve his pleasure : « The term "revolution" is hardly an exaggeration with regard to the long-playing record. The entire musical literature could now become available in quite authentic form to listeners desirous of auditioning and studying such works at a time convenient to them » 2. In this case, according to Adorno's own words, a new technical object-in the sense of the material product used as an operatoroffers the listener a means to come in possession for himself of another technical objectshere the musical technique of the opera's composer experienced by the listener-which he was obliged to share with the audience of a musical venue 3. Adorno's celebration of the LP record is thus a contribution to the ontology of art by underlining the two types of technical objects which are intertwined in any so-called « cultural product ». With the help of the LP record, « objectification, that is a concentration on music as the true object of opera, may be

The paper briefly describes a recently completed research project on the social stratification of cultural consumption, presents some major findings from this project, and considers their implications for public policy in relation to the arts. A central theme is the inadequacy of the 'homology' argument, claiming that social hierarchies and cultural hierarchies map closely onto each other. This argument is shown to be empirically unsound and to underestimate the complexity of the relationship between social stratification and cultural consumption, as this is determined by the combined effects of income, education and social status. One question that then arises is what policy response, if any, is required by the fact that many individuals do not participate extensively in the arts even though they have the economic and cultural resources required to do so (self-exclusion rather than social exclusion). And a second is that of how far, in attempts at increasing participation, status-linked motivations might be exploited.

The most common definitions of popular culture suffer from a presentist bias and cannot be applied to pre-industrial and pre-capitalist societies. A survey reveals serious conceptual difficulties as well. We may, however, gain insight in two ways. 1) By moving from a Marxist model (economic/class/production) to a more Weberian approach (societal/status/consumption). 2) By looking to Bourdieu’s “cultural capital” and Danto’s and Dickie’s “Institutional Theory of Art,” and defining popular culture as “unauthorized culture.” Keywords: popular culture, cultural capital, “institutional theory of art,” Arthur Danto, George Dickie, Pierre Bourdieu, Antonio Gramsci

2008

Patterns of cultural taste and consumption are the subject of a large and complex debate. Recent work has focused on the theories of Bourdieu and Weber in explaining cultural consumption, with some favouring the former and others the latter (Chan and . From a policy perspective, there is great interest in the extent to which those that attend subsidised arts venues resemble the population, with an assumption that certain groups are under-represented. As a result, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) set the Arts Councils of England and Wales targets to increase arts attendance among 'priority groups': disabled people, black and minority ethnic groups, and those in lower socio-economic groups.

2016

The goal of this chapter is to question this observed eclecticism - or "omnivorousness" in the expression popularized by R.A. Peterson - in light of the results of a study conducted in Quebec (Canada) on art lovers and cultural consumers among the upper middle class. One of the principal objectives of this inquiry was to study the relation between professional and cultural worlds: In what ways does professional status determine one's cultural sphere? And up to what point do these two worlds cohere? Another equally important objective was to establish for this population the criteria considered relevant in matters of taste: Is the long-standing high/low distinction the most determining factor in the expression of taste, or do other classificatory schemes play a more significant role? This led to an exploration of a double complexity: that of the cultural uni verse of the elite, which is actually far more heterogeneous than one may assume a priori; and that of the multiplicity of symbolic markers that underlie the process of taste legitimization.

One of the Frankfurt School's major contributions to sociology, as well as media and communication studies was Theodore Adorno and Max

The Sociological Review, 2004

If, as Bourdieu noted, 'sociology and art do not make good bedfellows ' (in Tanner, 2003: 96), the productive tension between them is at least revealing of the contours of each, and illuminating of the dilemmas facing sociology as it grapples to 'sociologise' its object. The appearance of three books in the field of the sociology of the arts is welcome testament to a renewed vigour with which sociology is accounting for relatively autonomous spheres of culture. And not before time, for art is also achieving unprecedented coverage throughout the culture industries, its figures and forms fanning out beyond the hallowed realms of the museum, the canon and the library, into mainstream consumer culture. In fact, one can't help observe the ironies of a small division of Charles Saatchi's über-collection going up in flames at a warehouse in East London as the demise of some of Britain's most inflated art is ceded by and abandoned to the fires of cultural entrepreneurialism -a fitting but inevitable circularity Baudrillard would undoubtedly liken to the ultimate art of disappearance in postmodern times. Whatever the reason for the current interest, students no longer have to rely exclusively on classics such as Becker's Art Worlds, Zolberg's Constructing a Sociology of the Arts, and Wolff's The Social Production of Art, to guide them through the field.

Art and Research – Contemporary Challenges

Sociological research of cultural consumption practices has an old tradition in many European countries and more recently in EU-statistics at the continental level. In Romania, extensive research has been coordinated under the auspices of the Ministry of Culture, but they are also the prerogative of some local initiatives, especially in the context of the elaboration of the county cultural strategies or in-depth analysis of creative industries. Such research is also very useful in the context of various European competitions such as the Competition for the European Capital of Culture. In our communication, we will exemplify a series of profile researches set up at national or local level in recent years to emphasize the role of sociological research in the field.

ephemera 13(2): 269-292, 2013

The theory that the contemporary self is largely constituted in the sphere of consumption has become something of an orthodoxy in recent years. Against this view, it is argued that there are many areas of consumption in which taste has become commodified as a kind of expertise. The creation of a market for this expertise depends on a ‘disabling professionalism’ (Illich, 1977) which undermines the individual’s confidence in, and capacity for, independent judgment. The result is an alienation of consumption in which its immediate use-value is subordinated to an exchange value which Bourdieu called ‘cultural capital’. In the process consumption loses its capacity to express the individual’s species-being, becoming objectified instead as a medium of social stratification. The means by which disabling professionalism undermines its clients’ confidence in their own taste are illustrated by two vignettes, The first is from the collecting of art at the millionaire level and the second from interior decoration at the level of the suburban semi-detached. In both cases the outcome is an alienation of consumption in that the tastes expressed are not the clients’ own. As a prolegomenon to this argument, the paper begins by arguing that the concept of alienation can be defended from its critics by redefining it as an impairment of the capacity for collective intentionality. Whereas consumption possesses a potential for collective intentionality, this is negated when it is objectified as the exchange value which Bourdieu calls ‘cultural capital’. In Distinction, however, Bourdieu’s account of cultural capital as deriving from the practices of an ‘aristocracy of culture’ is unconvincing. As an alternative it is suggested that cultural capital is the product of alliances between cultural producers, critics, educators and commercial interests. It is these agencies which employ the tactics of disabling professionalism in the commodification of taste and in doing so, are responsible for an alienation of consumption.