New Books
Buchholz, Larissa. 2022. The Global Rules of Art. The Emergence and Divisions of a Cultural World Economy. Princeton University Press.
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691245447/the-global-rules-of-art
A trailblazing study of the emergence of a global cultural field and the different ways in which artists from formerly colonized or peripheral locations become valued worldwide.
Prior to the 1980s, the postwar canon of so-called “international” contemporary art consisted almost entirely of artists from North America and Western Europe, while cultural agents from other parts of the world often found themselves on the margins. By expanding and revising fields theory to a global level, The Global Rules of Art examines how and why this discriminatory situation has evolved and diversified in recent decades. Drawing from abundant source material—including information regarding the arts infrastructures of over a hundred countries; institutional histories and discourses; fieldwork on four continents; and interviews with artists, critics, curators, gallerists, and auction house agents—the book charts the complex historical transformations that led to the rise of a world-spanning field whose logics have become increasingly redefined in global terms. Moreover, blending illuminating case studies with large-scale analyses, the study uncovers how transnational networks, power structures, and larger cultural forces interact in the construction of value and reputations across continents. Theoretically, The Global Rules of Art breaks new ground by advancing a multi-scalar and multi-level global fields theory to examine processes of globalization and their effects on valuation, inequalities, and diversities.
Flaherty, Michael G., Lotte Meinert, and Anne Line Dalsgård (eds). 2020. Time Work: Studies of Temporal Agency. 1st ed. Berghahn Books.
https://www.berghahnbooks.com/title/FlahertyTime
We are very happy to announce that Berghahn Books will release a paperback edition of Time Work: Studies of Temporal Agency in March of 2023. Please consider adopting this book forcourses that concern culture, globalization, social interaction, and ethnographic methods. Examining how people alter or customize various dimensions of their temporal experience, this volume reveals how we resist external sources of temporal constraint or structure. Is the theory of time work applicable to people across different societies and cultural arrangements? This book is an edited collection of ethnographic studies by anthropologists and sociologists. Their vivid and insightful research is international in scope, including Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Egypt, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Niger, Russia, Uganda, and the United States.
McCormick, Lisa, (ed). 2022. The Cultural Sociology of Art and Music: New Directions and New Discoveries. Palgrave Macmillan.
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-11420-5
This edited collection develops the Strong Program’s contribution to the sociological study of the arts and places it in conversation with other cultural perspectives in the field. Presenting some of the newest and most original research by both renowned figures and early career scholars, the volume marks a new stage in the development of the cultural sociology of art and music.
The chapters in Part 1 set new agendas by reflecting on the field’s history, presenting theoretical innovations, and suggesting future directions for research. Part 2 explores aesthetic issues and challenges in the creation, experience, and interpretation of art and music. Part 3 focuses on the material environments and social settings where people engage with art and music. In Part 4, the contributors examine controversies about music and contestation over artistic matters, whether in the public sphere, in the American judicial system, or in an emerging academic discipline. The editor’s introduction and Ron Eyerman’s afterword place the chapters in context and reflect on their collective contribution to meaning-centered sociology.
Stillerman, Joel. 2023. Identity Investments: Middle-class Responses to Precarious Privilege in Neoliberal Chile. Stanford University Press.
https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=32853
After Pinochet’s dictatorship ended in Chile in 1990, the country experienced a rapid decline in poverty along with a quickly growing economy. As a result, Chile’s middle class expanded dramatically, echoing trends seen across the Global South as neoliberalism took firm hold in the 1990s and the early 2000s. Identity Investments examines the politics and consumption practices of this vast and varied fraction of the Chilean population, seeking to better understand their value systems and the histories that informed them.
Using participant observation, interviews, and photographs, Joel Stillerman develops a unique typology of the middle class, made up of activists, moderate Catholics, pragmatists, and youngsters. This typology allows him to unearth the cultural, political, and religious roots of middle-class market practices in contrast with other studies focused on social mobility and exclusionary practices. The resultant contrast in backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives of these four groups animates this book and extends an emerging body of scholarship focused on the connections between middle-class market choices and politics in the Global South, with important implications for Chile’s recent explosive political changes.
New Articles
Liang, Yingjian. 2022. “Different Time Frames, Different Futures: How Disadvantaged Youth Project Realistic and Idealistic Futures.” Social Problems. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/socpro/spac053.
Mueller, Jason. 2023. “Universality, Black Lives Matter, and the George Floyd Uprising.” Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory. DOI: 10.1080/1600910X.2023.2168717.
van Stee, Elena G. 2023. “Privileged Dependence, Precarious Autonomy: Parent/Young Adult Relationships through the Lens of COVID-19.” Journal of Marriage and Family 85(1):215–32. doi: 10.1111/jomf.12895.
van Stee, Elena G. 2022. “Parenting Young Adults across Social Class: A Review and Synthesis.” Sociology Compass 16(9):1–16. doi: 10.1111/soc4.13021.
Events
Conference in Honor of Annette Lareau
The University of Pennsylvania is hosting a conference in honor of Annette Lareau on the reproduction of inequality. Please find more information here:
Symposium on “The Sociology of Contemporary Art”
The journal Marges (Presses Universitaires de Vincennes) will organize a symposium on “The Sociology of Contemporary Art” on the 25th of March at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art (Paris), followed by the publication of our 38th issue on this same subject. Attached is the call for papers, which is also available online: https://calenda.org/1031789. It is written in French but we would be very glad, of course, to meet and discuss with foreign researchers. It would be especially interesting to have the point of a view of American sociologists.
Nicolas Heimendinger
Culture and Contemporary Life Series
You can access the recording to the Culture and Contemporary Life Series panel, “Inequality and Cultural Authenticity,” here: https://youtu.be/A6NRK9AHBWA
Miscellaneous
Culture Section Mentorship Program
The Culture Section of the American Sociological Association is hosting the third annual Mentorship Program as part of the 2023 ASA meetings. The goal of the program is to pair graduate students and early-career scholars with faculty and other academic professionals. Mentoring relationships not only further the professional development of our members but also create connections and community within the section.
The application to sign up as a mentor will open on March 1st and close on April 3rd. The mentee application will then open on April 17th and close on May 15th. We will share links to the forms as time gets closer. Mentors and mentees will generally be matched according to their scholarly interests and professional goals. Open to all members, the program considers an array of professional areas in addition to research, teaching, and service–such as non-academic career paths and scholar-activism. Mentoring goals, expectations, and general availability are also taken into account.
The type and frequency of connection is at the discretion of the mentors and mentees, but we do require that mentors connect with the mentees at least three times–for example, three separate Zoom meetings over the course of the calendar year.
Applicants who wish to serve as both mentors and mentees should fill out both applications. Mentors and mentees should be ASA Culture Section members.
If you have any questions, please contact: Marshall A. Taylor, mtaylor2@nmsu.edu
The Work of Barry Schwartz
Barry Schwartz, known internationally for his work on collective memory, died two years ago in a bicycle accident. His family is in possession of his books, papers, notes, and other research material from Barry’s forty+ years of research and would very much like to share this material with a sociologist who shares Barry’s interest in collective memory and who might find this material useful in their own work. If you would care to, I’d be happy to discuss this further. Please contact me at weberian@uga.edu or through the ASA Connect page.
Jim Dowd
section CULTURE 