The Sociology of Culture and Cultural Production
Philip Smith, 167-182
Richard Peterson, Why 1955? Explaining the Advent of Rock Music (in reader)
This is a different area of cultural studies from what we have seen so far in this course, although it resembles in some ways Horkheimer and Adorno’s Critical Theory, as it is focused on cultural products including mass media and popular culture—music, films, television, novels etc.
We can call this perspective the production perspective
Less abstract than much of the theory we have dealt with so far, less general, philosophical
More concrete
This is good and bad, depending on your appetite for social and cultural theory, which can be visionary, imaginative, and sometimes difficult
The Production Perspective is a current approach; that is people are using it and developing it today to study things they care about
The production perspective covers several fields, including communications, media studies, and sociology
When we talk about culture here, we are talking about
Culture as an institutional sphere devoted to the making of meaning
i.e. art, music, theater, fashion, literature, religion, the media, education
This definition is from William Sewell, from the start of the course
So culture here is not values or ideas or beliefs or rituals or identities (as in cultural studies and other areas)
In the production perspective scholars study the culture industries, although they do so more carefully than Horkheimer and Adorno ever did
RECEPTION STUDIES
Remember how Horkheimer and Adorno imagined audiences, i.e. the reception of culture…?
For Critical Theorists, audiences are basically passive, “narcotized” – they accept whatever popular cultural products are spoon-fed to them
We still see evidence of this kind of Marx-ish understanding of reception in the British Cultural Studies tradition
you will remember the ideas of dominant reading and oppositional reading
People actually go out and study how people receive mass media, for example how people from different class backgrounds interpret television shows that are very nationalistic
How people can creatively and reflexively interpret cultural products
How people actually watch TV or read in their everyday lives
Together, these sorts of studies lead us to question Critical Theory’s model of the passive consumer
e.g. “Watching Dallas”
On the other, cultural critics often regarded
e.g. in 1983 Jack Lang, the French Minister of Culture, proclaimed
Since Horkheimer and Adorno, and before them as well, “professional intellectuals” have been dismissive of American-style consumer culture. Many analysts see popular culture as not just entertainment. They think it has obvious, manipulative ideological effects.
Ien Ang studied the reception of
So reactions in
Katz and Liebes, two American-Israeli social scientists, studied the reception of
Israeli Arabs
New immigrants from
Immigrants from
Kibbutzniks
These were compared to similar groups in
They watched the show, then participated in an “open structured” discussion and filled out questionnaires.
They found that people interpreted the show in very different ways, sometimes incorrectly.
Some of the Moroccan Jews claimed that the show made them more proud of their Jewish identity and their moral standards (as compared with the
They conclude that the discourses of ordinary people about
Also we learn to think carefully about the “mass” audience, which is not as uniform in its interpretations and the way cultural products are consumed as some theories suggest
How do people interpret the Coca Cola/Turkey commercial? How do people in Turkey watch and interpret MTV?
The Production of Culture
The “production perspective”
Alternative to strict market-based accounts of culture industries
H&A: the “culture industry” (singular)—shapes our knowledge and interpretation of current events, other cultures, international opinion of the
So much for cultural reception studies.
Why do people watch certain movies, certain kinds of movies, with certain themes?
Why are certain forms of music, television, film, and literature popular in certain places at certain times?
Where do museums come from? Concert halls? Libraries? Monuments? War memorials?
Sociologists discuss certain categories of people: gatekeepers and sponsors
Gatekeepers are taste-makers who work within and outside corporations to separate out certain cultural products (films, bands, songs, actors, television shows) because they believe they will become popular and profitable. These people work as agents, and for media corporations. They have to be hip, on the cutting edge of fashions.
Sponsors are wealthy and powerful individuals and organizations who provide resources (money, social and political connections) to promote certain cultural products and projects (museums, orchestras, theatres) that suit their tastes and interests. Sponsors include wealthy patrons, municipal governments, and even states.
At different times, due to social, technological and economic changes, different networks of sponsors and gatekeepers can emerge, leading to cultural changes and the popularization of new genres of art and music (e.g. impressionist painting in the early 19th century, which was initially rejected).
Richard Peterson, Why 1955? Explaining the Advent of Rock Music
Rock music, or some form of it, is a nearly universal form of music. Where did it come from? Why? And why did it begin in 1955? If we are interested in these sorts of questions, a production of culture perspective can be very useful, as it is very concrete, pointing to specific social, economic, and technological processes that shape what we listen to, eat, and watch.
In 1955 a rock aesthetic replaced the jazz aesthetic in American popular music
Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Tony Bennett, Perry Como à Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, Little Richard, and many more
Can we use a supply side explanation to account for this change? That is, people like Elvis Presley came and revolutionized the music scene?
But at any given time there are many creative, special talents, most of whom do not get recognized
What about a demand side explanation? That is, at some points in time there are major demographic changes, e.g. more young people, and they demand different kinds of music and other cultural products that reflect their own lives, not the lives of their parents’ generation. People want music that speaks to them.
In the case of rock music, the oldest of the baby-boomers was only 9 years old in 1955.
Richard Peterson argues that it was changes in the commercial culture industry itself that led to the popularity of rock music. These changes were legal and technological and business changes.
1909 “United States Copyright Law”—protected artists from sheet-music companies
ASCAP—American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers—formed to collect royalties from public performances—dominant by 1930s
As late as 1950 an oligopoly of only 18 music publishers controlled all the music which could reach the public ear. Everything.
The ASCAP oligopoly produced safe, smooth, melodic music with muted jazz rhythms and harmonies.
The work of black musicians in the blues, jazz, and r&b and later soul was excluded, as was Latin and country music. These musical forms were only for local audiences, and were not national.
In 1939 BMI, a new licensing agency, was formed by radio networks, but could not induce publishers and songwriters to defect from ASCAP. So instead, they began signing black, Latin, and country music singers and songwriters.
ASCAP, the musical oligarchy, failed to come to terms with radio networks over licensing fees in 1939, so these networks turned to BMI and began to provide exposure to black, Latin, and country music, although change was slow and rock had not yet been invented.
Technology and Patent Law
Deal between two brokered by government
RCA small disks are durable, can be shipped by mail, hold singles, allowed for musical experimentation
1947—FCC approves more broadcasting stations
Popularization of TV and transistor radio—cheaply made by Japanese—encourages “Top 40” radio format
Paul DiMaggio, Market Structure, the Creative Process, and Popular Culture (in reader)
Here we have a more general article presenting ways of theorizing popular culture, and contrasting these to purely economic approaches and other approaches. This is typical of economic sociology, another area in which Paul DiMaggio is active.
He is generally concerned with the quality of cultural products available to the public. This informs his research on museums and other cultural institutions.
Discusses “mass society” and “mass culture” arguments about popular culture, which like Critical Theory itself presume a decline in the quality of cultural products available to, in this case, Americans
abundance, diversity, vitality à homogeneity, blandness, triviality
rationalization, individualization and alienation, creation of big national markets and homogeneous tastes and preferences
Mass culture is criticized by both cultural conservatives and radicals
conservatives: mass culture uses sex and violence to make money (the lowest common denominator), does not respect traditional religious values
radicals argue that elites create bland, dumb mass culture products to encourage people to consume uncritically
e.g. Critical Theory, Habermas and the “colonization of the life world”
Innovation becomes rare as market forces rule: cultural products must appeal to the lowest common denominator, base urges…and large markets
DiMaggio argues that Mass Culture theories rest on one of two simplistic economic assumptions
free market assumption: what the public wants, the public will get (conservative)
monopoly assumption: a few organizations control cultural production and dictate taste (radical)
But there’s absolutely nothing concrete about these sorts of assumptions, and this is where a bit of sociological realism is needed. Real cultural products (books, movies, television programs, music) are produced by for-profit organizations that face the constraints of the market. Some are produced by not-for-profit organizations that face other constraints and pressures.
But, then again, some culture industries seem to follow the mass culture model. Others seem to follow a niche or specialization model.
books, records, films, television programs
versus
television programs, mass-circulation magazines, school textbooks, mass-market paperback novels
What determines the form of particular culture industries, and the degree of creativity they allow artists?
DiMaggio follows Peterson and others in arguing that degree of oligopoly in a culture industry is the key to understanding its degree of creativity and innovation versus homogeneity
DiMaggio wants to know if this is true for the culture industries as a whole, not just for popular music
Makes a few assumptions
Managers in culture industries want to create predictability, reduce uncertainty
Latent Demand for a diverse range of cultural products
Innovation comes from below (from artists), is not really encouraged by culture industry bureaucracies
So he argues that managers in culture industries want to control markets, to prevent competitors from entering them, and to control creative talent so that they create cultural products in a regular, predictable, efficient way
So American television executives (only three networks) had been able to control their industry for a long time (until cable and satellite TV), while the recording industry has had uneven success at doing this
Brokerage Systems of Administration
Brokers – essentially agents who represent artists to corporations, and corporations to artists, but generally work for the corporation
Entrepreneurial Brokers – brokers do not work for culture industry firms
Centralized Brokers – network television, textbooks
See Table on p. 160
DiMaggio finds that, generally, culture industries have become less concentrated over the last few decades due partly to technology (cable and satellite TV, CDs, DVDs) and also to demographic specialization.
The Critical Theory “nightmare” of cultural homogenization is probably unfounded.
Wendy Griswold, American Character and the American Novel (in reader)
She addresses literary theory, in particular the assumption, broadly held, that literature (and cultural products generally) reflect changes in society. So to understand history or modern society, one can learn a lot by studying changes in cultural products like art, literature, and music.
Like DiMaggio’s analysis of the claims of Critical Theory and other cultural critics (conservative and radical), Griswold’s analysis is sociologically realistic and, in a sense, deflating
We can begin by wondering where the novel form came from in the first place, how and why it became so popular.
Popular novels were a product, in part, of the rise of the British middle class in the 18th century, and especially of housewives who could not read Latin and were not interested in poetry, but who were literate in English and wanted entertainment.
18th century was also a time of great interest in the human personality.
Also the rise of booksellers (rather than wealthy patrons) who paid authors by the number of pages.
The result is the novel, which is not too hard to read, devoted to the individual personality and character, and to topics of interest to middle class women.
But nineteenth century American novels are not like this. They are usuallyabou men or boys fleeing society, having adventures in the wilderness far from women (Huckleberry Finn, Moby Dick, Last of the Mohicans, Red Badge of Courage. Why?
Something about the “American character”? Something about the national psyche? Puritan morality?
Wendy Griswold did a sociological study. She took a random sample of American novels published from 1876-1910.
She hypothesized that overall, the content of these novels would not be so different from that of European novels, because European critics tended to focus on what made American novels unique and ignored those that looked a lot like European novels.
Then she wanted to find economic, legal, organizational factors that could explain the uniqueness of American novels. She finds this in copyright law, which allowed legal piracy (copying and selling) of novels by foreign writers until the late 19th century (1891). Publishers made huge profits this way (how could they not?)
Griswold hypothesizes that American novels will be different from European novels until 1891 (because until then they needed to be unique to sell well), but afterward they would become more conventional, concerned with love, marriage, money, morality etc. This is just what she found.
For example, in the earlier period American novels were much more likely than European novels to depict social mobility.
In the earlier period American novels were much more likely to have middle class protagonists, while European novelists had upper class protagonists.
Social reform (prison reform, temperance, treatment of women, cruelty to animals) was more prominent in American novels in the first period, less so in the second period.
American novels were more likely to be set in small towns in the first period.
American novels were more likely to be humorous in the first period.
All of this supports a sociological perspective, in particular a production of culture perspective, on the novel.
Snobs and Cultural Omnivores
Richard Peterson and Roger Kern, "Changing Highbrow Tastes: From Snob to Omnivore"
When we read Bourdieu, we may sense that he’s not entirely right when it comes to the contemporary scene. Do ambitious people really sip wine, go to museums, etc to lift their status and distinguish themselves from others?
Isn’t that all a bit too Parisian, and too old?
Peterson and Kern discuss why this “snob model” is right for certain locations and certain historical periods, such as the late 19th century in the
Anglo-Saxons wanted to distinguish themselves from recent immigrants from
Sociologists interested in the arts, media, taste, status, high culture and so forth sometimes refer to Bourdieu’s approach as the “snob model”
But the snob model does not seem to capture the tastes and interests of elites in
Rich white suburban teenagers listen to rap music. College students listen to world music, Latin music, Afro-Caribbean, rap, popular music.
P&K discuss highbrows, snobs, and omnivores.
Highbrows – like elite culture – classical music and opera
Snobs – highbrows who do not participate in lowbrow (cultures of poor marginal groups, such as blacks, youth, isolated rural people) or middlebrow (commercial, mass cultural) activities
– a perfect snob refuses to engage in any lowbrow or middlebrow activities
these are very rare in the
you could probably find a few in
Omnivores – enjoy a wide range of lowbrow and middlebrow cultural activities
Remember Bethany Bryson’s article on Musical Dislikes -- patterned tolerance and multicultural capital
P&K find that “omnivorousness is replacing snobbishness”
Omnivores do not like everything, but they are open to appreciating everything
In a way it is opposed to snobbishness, which is based on rigid rules of exclusion
Discriminating omnivorousness replacing snobbishness reflects multiculturalism and relativism in society over ethnocentrism
Omnivores appreciate music differently than other people. They do not identify with it.
Why the shift from snobbishness and to omnivorousness
devaluation of snobbishness because of widespread availability of highbrow culture in the media
rising education levels
geographic migration and social class mobility have mixed people holding different tastes
mass media presents lots of cultural materials to many people
value change from group prejudice, supported by racist social science, to tolerance and diversity
art world change from 19th century European scene, where theorists in the European Royal Academies believed that there were absolute standards of beauty and vulgarity
This consensus was swept away by market forces and aesthetic entrepreneurs in the 20th century (impressionists, Picasso, expressionists, minimalists, postmodernists)
Obviously the value of art was a product of its social circumstances, not of the art itself
generational politics Youth culture has become a viable alternative to “adult” culture
globalization and new elites for whom inclusion and omnivorous is probably a more useful way to create distinction than exclusion and snobbishness