ART IN SOCIETY SOCIETY IN ART

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ART IN SOCIETY/SOCIETY IN ART

• Predrag Cveticanin
• University of Nis, Serbia

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ART IN SOCIETY

• Course contents The course Art in Society
  covers the first out of two key aspects of
  sociological study of the arts the existence of
  art, the artist, and the audience in the real
  world of economy, politics, institutions. After
  covering basic perspectives in the formation of
  concepts such as society, culture and arts in the
  introduction, the core of the course studies the
  creation, production, distribution and reception
  of art from a sociological point of view.

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ART IN SOCIETY

• Sociological analysis of the artist, art and the
  audience in society and of their interrelations
  mediated by institutions is made from two
  perspectives the production of culture approach
  (Howard Becker, Richard Peterson, Diana Crane,
  Paul M. Hirsch, Paul DiMaggio) and the critical
  approach (Pierre Bourdieu, Theodor Adorno, Walter
  Benjamin, Peter Bürger). The end of the course
  pays due attention to the field of reception
  studies which has in the recent years also become
  highly inspirational for scientific disciplines
  and humanities other than sociology of art, such
  as cultural studies, audience studies, media and
  communication studies, reception aesthetics and
  literary criticism.

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ART IN SOCIETY

• KEY CONCEPTS OF THE SOCIOLOGY OF ARTS SOCIETY,
  CULTURE, ART
• I week Theories of society (consensus theories,
  conflict theories, rational/utalitarian theories
  and microsociological theories)
• II week Social structure (functionalist,
  Marxist, Weberian views, contemporary theories)
• III week Culture and Society. The history of
  concepts culture and civilization. Society and
  culture. Culture as a value concept, culture as a
  way of life and culture as a tool kit.
  Sociological approaches to culture (Marxist,
  Durkheimian, Weberian, functionalist, semiotic,
  dramaturgical, poststructuralist)
• IV week Art and society The concept of art.
  Aesthetics and sciences of art. The purpose of
  studying art. The purpose of a sociological study
  of art. Sociology of art genesis and typology.
  Contemporary sociology of the arts

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ART IN SOCIETY

• ART IN SOCIETY
• V week Art in Society Creation, production,
  distribution and reception of art. Artists, art
  works, audiences, institutions, society. Cultural
  diamond.
• VI week Field of cultural production. Pierre
  Bourdieu. Basic concepts. Practice. Fields.
  Habitus. Economic, social, cultural capital.
  Field of cultural production.
• VII week Art worlds. Howard S.Becker. Basic
  concepts. Art as collective activity. Core
  personnel and support personnel. Pattern of
  constraints and possiblities. Conventions.
  Production and distributions systems
• VIII week Artists Artists in the art worlds
  integrated professionals, mavericks, folk
  artists, naïve artists. Identifying artists.
  Artistic careers and labor markets. Artists and
  social control. Generatations and groups. Sources
  of income.

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ART IN SOCIETY

• IX - X week Production, distribution and reword
  systems Cultural industries, state cultural
  institutions, networks and non-profits.
  Gatekeepers. Reword systems independent,
  semi-autonomous, subcultural, heterocultural. Art
  criticism. Art in the age of mechanical
  reproduction. Institution of art as the
  autonomous status of art in a bourgeois society.
• XI - XII week Reception, audience, taste
  Reception, communication, mediation, taste.
  Kitsch, schund and trivial arts. The audience.
  Reception approaches. Art and symbolic
  boundaries. High culture and popular culture.
  Cultural Studies. Hegemony. Subcultures.
  Interpretative communities. After subcultures

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SOCIETY IN ART

• Course contents The course Society in Art
  consists of three segments. The first segment
  discusses epistemological issues in social
  science and methodological problems of sociology
  of art, in particular problems of explanation and
  understanding and of value neutrality, or value
  engagement of social science.
• Since art is also a field of meaning and a bearer
  of values, the course Society in Art in its
  central part covers the other side of the coin in
  the discipline sociology of art objectifying
  society in form and substance of artworks, and
  the interpretive approach to the sociology of the
  arts.

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SOCIETY IN ART

• In the third course segment historical
  development of art in the last two centuries has
  been followed. Specific attention is given to
  avantgarde movements of the early 20th century,
  and postmodern art of late 20th century. The
  course ends in the consideration of influence of
  globalization on contemporary art and its
  position in modern global society.

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SOCIETY IN ART

• I week Epistemological issues
  Naturwissenschaften and Geisteswissenschaften.
  Explanation and understanding. Facts and values.
  Quantitative and qualitative methods.
  Positivistic sociology. Interpretative sociology.
  Critical Sociology. Postmodern sociology.
  Methodenstreit, Werturtailstrait,
  Possitivismusstrait
• II week Methodological issues Research and
  theory evidence and interpretation in sociology
  of art. Methods of collecting data in sociology
  of art
• III week Objectifying society in the arts
  Theodor W. Adorno. The dispute between empirical
  and critical sociology of art polemic between
  Alphons Silbermann and Theodore W. Adorno.
  Methodological outcomes of the polemic.
• IV week Contentual transposition of socialness
  Reflection approaches. Content analysis.
  Iconographic analysis

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SOCIETY IN ART

• V week Hermeneutical approaches in sociology of
  art. Philosophical hermeneutics. Interpretation.
  Hermeneutical cyrcle. Weltanschauung.
  Sociological hermeneutics.
• VI week Structural transposition of socialness
  Goldmanns sociology of the novel Sociology of
  the novel. Genetic structuralism
• VII week Structural transposition of socialness
  Lukaczs sociology of drama Remarks on sociology
  of literature. Sociology of drama. Characteristic
  features of modern drama.
• VIII week Semiotics of art Culture is like a
  language. Signifying systems. Cultural codes.
  Myth. Death of an author. Text. Intertextuality.
  Deconstruction

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SOCIETY IN ART

• IX week Social history of art Immanentism and
  social history of art. Heinrik Wölfflin and
  Arnold Hauser. 19th century art Classicism,
  Romanticism, Realism, Impressionism.
• X week Avant-garde Consitutive moments of
  avant-garde. Fashion, taste, the audience.
  Avantgarde and alienation.
• XI week Modernism and post-modernism The end of
  modernism. Distrust of meta-narration. Modernism
  as an unifinished project. Postmodernism as the
  cultural logic of late capitalism. The postmodern
  sublime. Characteristics of postmodern art
• XII week Globalization and arts The
  international flaw of the popular arts. The media
  imperialism thesis. Cultural Tourism

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RECEPTION STUDIES/ CULTURAL PARTICIPATION

• Predrag Cveticanin
• University of Nis, Serbia

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RECEPTION STUDIES

• Roots of reception approaches media research,
  cultural studies, literary criticism
• Media research Uses and gratification
  perspective
• Cultural studies Encoding/decoding (S.Hall,
  D.Morley)
• The active audience strategies tactics (M.de
  Certo), semiotic power semiotic resistance
  (J.Fiske)
• Literary criticism theory of reception
  aesthetics horizon of expectations (H.R.Jauss)
  interpretive communities (S.Fish)

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CULTURAL PARTICIPATION

• Pierre Bourdieu Distinction a Social Critique
  of the Judgment of Taste - introduction of the
  cultural dimension into sociological study of
  stratification and classes.
• Theory of practice (habitus) x (capital)
  field practices.
• Economic capital, social capital, cultural
  capital
• Cultural capital in the embodied state in
  objectivized state, and in the institutionalized
  state.
• Aesthetic consumption and ordinary consumption
  Taste of freedom, taste of necessity and
  pretentious taste.

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CULTURAL PARTICIPATION

• H.Gans Popular Culture and High Culture
  Analysis and Evaluation of Taste
• Taste cultures and taste publics
• Taste cultures
• High culture
• Upper-middle culture
• Lower-middle culture
• Low culture
• Quasi-folk low culture

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CULTURAL PARTICIPATION

• Richard A. Peterson from elite and mass to
  omnivore and univore
• Michele Lamont creation of symbolic boundaries
  among different social groups on the basis of
  taste and aesthetic choices.
• Bethany Bryson Political and aesthetic tolerance
  (study of music dislikes)
• Dauglas B. Holt Studies of cultural captial in
  its embodied form

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STUDIES OF CULTURAL PARTICIPATION IN SERBIA

• Sreten Petrovic Reception of Art research of
  taste types of the students of the University of
  Belgrade (1996)
• Milos Nemanjic Cinema and Theatre Audience in
  Belgrade (1991)
• Sreten Petrovic Tipology of tastes
• Conformist taste
• Traditionalist taste
• Avant-garde taste

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CULTURAL NEEDS, HABITS AND TASTES OF CITIZENS OF
SERBIA AND MACEDONIA (2005)

• Predrag Cveticanin
• University of Nis, Serbia

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CULTURAL NEEDS, HABITS AND TASTE OF CITIZENS OF
SERBIA AND MACEDONIA (2005)

• Part of the project Cultural Needs, Habits, and
  Taste of Citizens of Serbia and Macedonia of the
  Committee for Civic Initiative from Nis (Serbia),
  Centre for Contemporary Arts from Skopje and
  Centre for Balkan Cooperation Loja from Tetovo
  (Macedonia), financially supported by European
  Cultural Foundation.
• Surveying in the field was carried out in the
  period October December 2005. Out of the
  planned 1,485 subjects in Serbia we interviewed a
  total of 1,364 persons (91.9 of the planned
  sample). In Macedonia, out of the planned 990
  subjects we surveyed 896 (90.5 of the planned
  sample).

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CULTURAL NEEDS, HABITS AND TASTE OF CITIZENS OF
SERBIA AND MACEDONIA (2005)

• Cultural needs
• Cultural habits
• Audience (active, passive, forced, non-audience)
• Tastes (traditional elite taste, conventional
  taste, urban taste, rurban taste, folklore taste
  and omnivores elite omnivores, urban omnivores,
  rural omnivores)
• Cultural style (low-use, middle-use, high-use)

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CULTURAL NEEDS

• Exploration of cultural needs was operationalized
  via two questions related to favourite ways of
  spending leisure time
• The first question was open-ended and it asked
  subjects to list themselves how they prefer to
  spend their spare time. In the second question we
  offered them twenty one activities and asked
  subjects to assess their preferences (answers
  ranging from I like this most to I dont like
  this at all).
• Basic characteristics of leisure time in both
  cases suggest that favorite activities are
  private occurring in a narrow circle of friends
  or family and that they are free of charge.
• Activities aimed at satisfying cultural needs,
  although present in some citizens, are not the
  dominant form of spending free time among the
  citizens of Serbia and Macedonia. This is the
  third relevant trait of leisure time in these
  societies.

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CULTURAL HABITS

• The group of questions we wanted to use to scan
  the actual cultural activities of our subjects,
  i.e. their cultural habits, consisted of twenty
  three questions.
• We asked subjects to state how many books they
  have in their home library, how many books they
  have read in the last twelve months, how often
  they listen to music, which concerts they have
  gone to in the last year, and how much they have,
  in this period, gone to the library, the movies,
  the theatre, concerts, galleries, etc.
• We also asked how often they read daily papers
  and magazines, watch / listen to TV and radio
  stations, which shows they watch / listen to on
  TV and radio, whether and how often they use the
  computer and the Internet, whether they practise
  an art as amateurs or professionals, and, if yes,
  which art, and whether they have pursued any
  artistic activities in the last twelve months
  (alone or in a group, as amateurs or
  professionals).

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COMPARISONS

• Surveys
• Europeans' Participation in Cultural Activities
  conducted by Eurobarometer in April 2002 in the
  (then) fifteen EU member states
• New Europeans and Culture, conducted by
  Eurobarometer in March and April 2003 in (then)
  ten EU candidate countries, and in Bulgaria,
  Romania, and Turkey

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TASTES

• Five taste types
• Elite taste
• Conventional taste
• Urban taste
• Rurban taste
• Folklor taste
• Three types of omnivores
• Elite omnivores
• Urban omnivores
• Rural omnivores

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CULTURAL STYLES

• The synthetic category of cultural style gathers
  the dimensions of cultural needs, habits, and
  taste.
• It points to the role and importance of cultural
  resources and cultural practices in the lifestyle
  of our subjects, or, in other words, to the
  position of symbolic culture (culture in the
  narrower sense) in their way of life (culture in
  the broader, anthropological sense).
• As indicators of cultural style of our subjects,
  we used data on what subjects feel the need for
  in the cultural domain (what they are interested
  in, or what they wish), on what their actual
  cultural activities are in cultural reception and
  production (what it is that they really do in the
  domain of culture), what type of taste they
  belong to (what they like), what they know of the
  world of culture and art, how much they spend on
  satisfying their cultural needs, and what
  cultural products and equipment they have.