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http://cus.sagepub.com/ In Defence of Theoretical and Methodological Pluralism in the Sociology of Art: A Critique of Georgina Born's Programmatic Essay
Eduardo De La Fuente Cultural Sociology 2010 4: 217 DOI: 10.1177/1749975510368473 The online version of this article can be found at: http://cus.sagepub.com/content/4/2/217

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Cultural Sociology
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In Defence of Theoretical and Methodological Pluralism in the Sociology of Art: A Critique of Georgina Borns Programmatic Essay
I

Eduardo De La Fuente
Monash University, Melbourne, Australia

A B S T R AC T

This ar ticle welcomes Borns proposal that the sociology of ar t learn from adjacent fields that can augment the sociological repertoire. It agrees especially that sociologists can learn much from the anthropology of art and material culture studies. However, it challenges Borns claim that the sociology of art has seen little progress in recent years and thus questions certain aspects of her proposal for a post-Bourdieuian theory of cultural production. The central argument is: rather than an analytics of mediation which Born recommends the sociology of art can benefit from studying material mediators at work in concrete artistic networks, and the role of aesthetic agency and art in the constitution of social life more generally. The article concludes that the path forward for a sociology of art may lie precisely in not trying to force a reconciliation between macro and micro approaches, or between humanities and social science perspectives.
K E Y WO R D S

Alfred Gell, art and agency, cultural production, mediators, new sociology of art, sociology of art

Introduction

eorgina Born (1995, 2005) has produced two of the classics in recent social science studies of cultural production: Rationalizing Culture: IRCAM, Boulez, and the Institutionalization of the Musical Avant-Garde; and Uncertain Vision: Birt, Dyke and the Reinvention of the BBC. Cutting

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across divisions between the study of high culture and mass communications, and encompassing various artistic media, her work has provided rich empirical insights into the social organization of creativity. Her ethnographic studies try to get at the complexity governing institutions that specialize in the production of cultural goods. As Born (2010) puts it, following Michel Foucaults call for a history of the present, her study of IRCAM sought to map a series of genealogies of different temporal scale of the concept of the avant-garde, of the philosophy and aesthetics of modernism and postmodernism; of Boulezs career; of French cultural and musical policy, of the fields of electronic and computer music. Her focus on the mechanisms and contingencies by which the present had been constructed led her to conclude that IRCAM was the haphazard conjunction of these several prehistories rather than the cultural manifestation of any pre-determined teleology or historical necessity (Born, 2010). As reductionisms of any sort are on the nose in contemporary sociological circles, Borns commitment to multiplicity and contingency will no doubt be welcomed. When a scholar with such credentials opts to write a programmatic statement, many of her colleagues will understandably pay attention. Thus, The Social and the Aesthetic: For a Post-Bourdieuian Theory of Cultural Production will hopefully be widely read and provoke debate, as it is obviously designed to do. Borns (2010) main criticisms of the current state of play in the sociology of art are the following: that the field seems not to have taken on board aspects of structuralist and post-structuralist theory as well as new ways of conceptualizing temporality; that the field has defined itself largely in opposition to aesthetics and has been unable to grapple with the relative autonomy of artistic practice; and, the related issue, that the sociology of art has not been able to resolve the problem of how [a] value-free sociology can engage with the questions of form and aesthetics, and with the interpretative criticism, that are central to the humanities. On this basis, she surmises that there has been little progress in recent years when it comes to recurring problems such as providing a non-reductive account of the aesthetic in theorizing cultural production (Born, 2010). Similarly, little progress has been achieved with respect to a rapprochement between sociology and the humanities or in navigating between the extremes of decontextualized microanalytical studies and macrostructural theories (Born, 2010). We are told that the main exception to this state of affairs has been the work of Janet Wolff who from the early 1980s, as a central element in her reconstruction of the sociology of art, laid the groundwork for a sociological aesthetics (Born, 2010).1 These are significant critiques of the field and demand a detailed response. In what follows, I assess how the essay The Social and the Aesthetic constructs the field of the sociology of art and the kind of work that might be considered cutting-edge.2 I concede that the field has not resolved all the tensions identified in Borns article but suggest that some of these tensions have actually been productive, especially within what I have elsewhere called the new sociology of art (De La Fuente, 2007a). Furthermore, I offer a different reading of Alfred Gells Art and Agency and of the burgeoning field of material culture studies,

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one that recommends giving the sociology of art an even bigger nudge in the direction of materiality. I conclude by suggesting that the sociology of art stands to gain most by reflecting on aesthetic agency and the entanglement of art with non-artistic domains otherwise it risks being left behind by recent developments in the economics of art and the creative industries perspective.

Assessing the Current State of Play in the Sociology of Art

As I argued in an earlier article in this journal, the sociology of art after a long period of neglect and scorn has recently flourished and reached a certain degree of intellectual and institutional maturity (De La Fuente, 2007a). The field now has widely recognized classics such as Howard S. Beckers (1982) Art Worlds and Pierre Bourdieus (1996) The Rules of Art and, given the highly contested nature of the subject matter, has arguably achieved a remarkable degree of consensus regarding key issues: for example, that what gets defined as art reflects institutional and other social organization practices; and that a sociology of art should preferably be more empirical and grounded than the philosophical decoding of art. Becker (1982: xxi) captured the ethos that was present within the emerging field when he said, in the Preface to Art Worlds: I have spoken of Titian and comics in the same breath and have discussed Hollywood film scores or rock-and-roll tunes as seriously as the work of Beethoven it might be reasonable to say that what I have done here is not the sociology of art at all, but rather the sociology of occupations applied to artistic work. I would refer to this phase in the history of the sociology of art (roughly 197095) as the period of disciplinary specialization. Evidence of the institutionalization of the field is provided by the creation of several professional associations devoted to bringing together sociologists working on the arts.3 This period of specialization and institutionalization was, in turn, followed by what might be characterized as a period of soul-searching and vigorous debate. One of the first critics of the new orthodoxy was Robert Witkin. In his magisterial essay on Manets Olympia, entitled Constructing a Sociology for an Icon of Aesthetic Modernity, Witkin (1997: 101) suggests that [s]ociologists of art have usually been reluctant to confront the challenge to sociological thought offered by art history. He singles out Beckers Art Worlds as encouraging sociologists to pursue fruitful inquiries into the production and reception of art works in a way that circumvents critical questions of interpretation, style, and meaning in works of art, questions that arise more in the context of the grand version of European art history (Witkin, 1997: 101). Soon disciplinary specialization was being openly debated, as in Jeremy Tanners (2003: 1) Introduction to his reader, The Sociology of Art, which emphasized the shared roots of art history and sociology and in particular the degree to which early art-historical writing had a marked sociological orientation. For authors such as Tanner and Witkin, the writings of art historians such as Wlfflin, Worringer, Panofsky, Hauser and, more recently, Baxandall, have overt sociological implications. Indeed, we probably

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understand the early attempts at a sociology of art by Simmel, Weber, the young Lukacs and Mannheim much better (not to mention Bourdieus own debt to Panofsky!) if we stop thinking of sociology and art history as completely disconnected endeavors (Tanner, 2003: 825). My sense is that some of the criticisms lodged against sociological specializations (and imperialism) have been taken on board by the intended targets of such criticism. Thus, in Art from Start to Finish, the originator of the sociological concept of art worlds writes, with his co-editors, that there has always been a blind spot in the sociology of art: any discussion of specific art works (Becker et al., 2006: 6). Their volume seeks to rectify this by showing that a sociology of art ought to consider to what extent the artwork is one of the actors involved in a drama of its own making and that works can be studied in terms of the observable fact that they have lives and careers, that they go from here to there to somewhere else (Becker et al., 2006: 6). This kind of framing of the sociology of art as needing to focus on the social life of art-objects, as they move in and through society, has been taken up by a number of sociologists whom we might term art-sociologists.4 Musical passion and the drug-like effects of music (Gomart and Hennion, 1999; Hennion, 1993), the entanglement of sonic materials with the body and psychic states (DeNora, 2000, 2003) and the role of aesthetic design in the success of economic goods (Molotch, 2003, 2004), have all recently been addressed by sociologists wanting to show what they can distinctly and authoritatively say about such things. The defining feature of this kind of sociology is that art and the social are co-produced, and that one should avoid establishing mediating links between art and society when this is not done by an identifiable intermediary (Hennion, cited in DeNora, 2003: 40). At first glance, the new types of sociological writing about the arts might suggest a field that is confused and contradictory a field torn between grand theorists, like Tanner and Witkin, wanting to return to Art History (with a capital A and H), and micro-sociologists, such as Becker and DeNora, wanting to follow art-objects in the course of their movement through society. But are these divisions necessarily unproductive or entirely new? My argument regarding the new sociology of art an umbrella term for this theoretical and methodological diversity in arts-related sociological research is that many recent practitioners of the field have sought to address these tensions head on. Many authors have actually made the tensions present within the sociology of art a productive rather than debilitating feature of their work. In particular, they have sought to address the charge of reductionism and also the claim that sociologists are not equipped to deal with the art work and aesthetics (see De La Fuente, 2007a, 2007b). The notion that the field has unresolved tensions also suggests that the dynamics in question are not entirely new. Indeed, in many respects, they date from the foundation of the social sciences. Thus, for example, Max Weber (1978: 95) argues that a sociology of art fulfills its purely empirical task when it has explained the material, technical, social and psychological conditions of an artistic style. In keeping with his espousal of a value-free social science, he thinks it is not the central task of a sociologist to evaluate the Gothic style

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in relation to, say, the Romanesque or Renaissance style (Weber, 1978: 95). But, given Webers (1978: 98) commitment to a verstehen social science, he recommends that anyone who wants to achieve anything in art history, in however purely empirical a vein, must also have the capacity to understand artistic activity.5 He adds that a sociologist would be no better than a second-rate connoisseur, who claims to have understood an artist when he has lifted the curtains of his studio, if the focus of his or her explanations are simply the external methods of representation and the manner of the artist (Weber, 1978: 94). Not for nothing is Webers (1958) one and only foray into the sociology of the arts a study of the expressive apparatus of music, including harmonic relations, musical instrumentation, and the effects of this musical grammar on the ear of Western peoples. My point is not so much that a difficult text like The Rational and Social Foundations of Music ought to serve as a template for a contemporary sociology of art although this argument has been made (see Braun, 1994). My point is simply that from the time of Weber (1978: 95), the sociology of art has recognized that its field of inquiry ought to be as much technical revolutions in artistic styles as developments in human feeling in art, and that it ought to broach topics as diverse as social psychology, religious history, and the material and social conditions of art.

Alfred Gells Anthropology of Art: Art-as-Agency

Despite the theoretical and methodological differences cited above, a common feature of many recent sociological writings on art is the desire to grapple with art-as-agency. Not content with studies of production and reception, or with seeing art-objects as projection screens for social actors, the new sociology of art has attempted to account for how art works do things to people. The parallel move in art history and visual culture studies has been the increasing interest in how pictures move and generally provoke viewers into certain kinds of actions (see Freedberg, 1989). Within the social sciences, one of the most productive and innovative theoretical frameworks for understanding art-as-agency is that provided by the anthropologist Alfred Gell (1998), in his Art and Agency. It was therefore refreshing to see Born (2010) commending Gells writings for offering a more promising approach that moves us away from the unbridgeable chasms of subject and object, object and context and gets us to focus on arts material, social and temporal mediation. Born also praises Gell for embedding art in concrete networks of exchange. But she worries that his theory of art resurrects an anthropological version of sociological reductionism [by] putting off limits a fuller engagement with the specifically aesthetic qualities of cultural objects; and also that he hampers his framework by disconnecting it from the analysis of wider historical processes social, political, economic, discursive or material (Born, 2010). In what follows I want to take issue with Borns reading of Gell and her downplaying of the conceptual innovations his work offers.

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At one level, Gells anthropological theory of art could strike one as either counter-intuitive if not outright hostile to what we traditionally think of as the sociology of art.6 Art and Agency suggests that the social role of art is not to be found in the meaning of art or its communicative function. Even the aesthetic properties of art-objects are seen as coincidental to a sociology of art. Gell (1998: 56) writes that he doubts a warrior on a battlefield is aesthetically interested in the design of an opponents shield even if it was designed to frighten him; or, as often happens with artifacts from primitive societies, modern museums regard that shield as a work of art. That such an artefact can be appreciated aesthetically might interest a sociology of art institution but it is not what Gell is trying to explain. So what is Gell proposing as the proper domain for a social science of art? He suggests it ought to involve the study of social relations in the vicinity of objects that mediate social agency in an art-like manner (Gell, 1998: 7). However, since Gell is committed to avoiding an essentialist conception of the art-object, what could he mean by art-like? He posits the following: I propose that art-like situations can be discriminated as those in which the material index (the visible, physical thing) permits a particular cognitive operation which I identify as the abduction of agency (Gell, 1998: 13). In short, art is a type of causality. In the case of art-objects, we have a type of causality that involves the displacement of intention from subject to object: [Art works] fascinate, compel, and entrap as well as delight the spectator (Gell, 1998: 23). It is worth noting that Gell sees himself as providing a thoroughly constructionist or relational account of art-objects.7 He also offers an innovative account of agency. Gell (1998: 16) defines agency as persons (and things) who/which are seen as initiating causal consequences caused by acts of mind or will or intention. The agency of the art-object does not primarily reside in the kinds of institutional actors or factors that the sociologist is accustomed to studying. Agency can inhere in graven images, not to mention motor cars as in practice, people attribute intentions and awareness to objects like cars and images of gods (Gell, 1988: 17). The other in a social relationship does not have to be a human being. Gell cites the example of a little girl who says she loves her doll and her doll is her best friend, and the doll is treated as a family member. He quips: But what is [Michelangelos] David if it is not a big doll for grown-ups? (Gell, 1998: 18). Gell (1998: 21) admits that conceiving our relationships with dolls, motor vehicles and art-objects in this manner has a touch of animism about it. But he wants to stress that his theory of art as agency is not a form of materialculture mysticism. We cannot tell in advance which objects will have agency. The emphasis is on the agency of objects in specific material relations. A recent collection of essays by archeologists and art historians, inspired by Gells framework, goes some of the way to showing that replac[ing] the emphasis on aesthetics and the communication of meaning with a concentration on the material agency of art promises to transform how we understand every aspect of art production and reception, from issues of representation to artistic creativity,

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artist-patron relationships, and the social effectiveness of art (Arnold, 2006: vii). The editors of the collection contend that Gell is not interested in the analytics of beauty in the sense of Kants Third Critique but he is more concerned with Kants First Critique, which explores how the human sensory capacity construes and gives form to stimuli (Tanner and Osborne, 2006: 67).8 The emphasis is not on the social construction of aesthetic value but rather the kinds of affective efficacy that art-objects have in the world. Tanner and Osborne (2006: 10) suggest this is a rejection of the art historical writings of authors such as Norman Bryson and Jonathan Crary, whose underlying Foucauldean premise is that reception can be studied in language-like terms, as involving viewers bringing discourses of spectatorship to bear on works of art [thereby] emphasizing history and cultural convention at the expense of physiology and psychology of vision. In Gells theory of art, art-objects enthrall, arrest and, generally, make us do things.9 In the next section, I outline why, contrary to Borns call for an analytics of mediation, the notion of art-asagency suggests a focus on mediators.

Mediation or Mediators?
Cognizant of the problems associated with emphasizing external factors, Borns revisioning of the sociology of art engages with recent developments in material culture studies. She cites the work of Daniel Miller, Fred Myers and Chris Pinney, as representing a style of analysis that focuses on the cultural object and the forms of mediation through which it is constituted and which in turn it inaugurates (Born, 2010). These authors are described as heirs to Gells legacy, although they are praised for taking things further and demonstrating, for example, what happens when intercultural contact results in an uneasy encounter between different ontologies or regimes of value (Born, 2010). Fred Myerss (2002) study of the Western market for Australian Aboriginal art is a case in point. These kinds of studies are put forward as discerning the distinctive ontologies that inform expressive practices and highlighting the need to understand such ontologies in terms of their social, discursive, aesthetic and material operations, [something] that has as yet received scant sociological attention (Born, 2010). By ontologies, Born presumably means the historically specific modes of valuing and judging aesthetic objects within a given culture, or in a given time or place. So how is the work of such materially minded anthropologists different to that of Gell? We are told that, [i]n marked contrast to Gell, there is an understated sense in the writings of such anthropological authors, which allows the exegesis of the object to be roundly elaborated, including their aesthetic qualities and their historical conditions (Born, 2010). The current crop of anthropological authors which Born (2010) admires treat the aesthetic object as capable of eliciting cultural criticism and connect the work of academics to the value communities engaged in cultural production. Indeed, Born puts a significant

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amount of faith in the capacity of the sociology of art to inform contests over aesthetic value and to mediate between different competing regimes of value see also Wolffs (2008) recent book, The Aesthetics of Uncertainty. Leaving to one side the vexed issue of the proper role of sociology in public life (a largely unsettled matter), I would like to suggest that the sociology of art should not be based on an analytics of mediation as Born seems to prefer but rather on the study of mediators in the manner that Bruno Latour (2007) has recommended in his actor-network theory. Like Gells notion of the art-object possessing material agency due to the relations of shifting intentionality, established by the artnexus, for Latour the system of art is less a field or world and more a heterogeneous network of human and nonhuman mediators (Albertsen and Diken, 2004: 37). In such a network of art-objects, there is no fixed hierarchy of values and the relationship between art and other social networks is less than pure. The intentions of agents sentient or otherwise depend on their place in a network of intermediaries. Studies of art have started to embrace the idea of both artist and art work as mediator. For example, Svetlana Alperss (1988) study of Rembrandt suggests that there are various Rembrandts: the social agent who produces paintings and the one who acted as an intermediary within networks of exchange and diffusion of art works. Hennion (cited in Albertsen and Diken, 2004: 50) suggests that Rembrandt was both a great artist and a great merchant. Experiencing a Rembrandt painting is yet another thing. To be an art lover is to oscillate between being active and passive. It involves creating the emotional and aesthetic conditions under which one can allow oneself to be swept away (Gombart and Hennion cited in Albertsen and Diken, 2004: 51). The love of art involves the kind of object fetishism that we are ready to recognize in our relationship with other ordinary objects. Interestingly, Daniel Miller (2005: 5) proposes something similar when he suggests that in material culture studies the study of materiality involves overcoming the tyranny of the subject and embracing the humility of things. This suggests that rather than a history of subjectivity and discursive formations we need a stronger focus on the agency and materiality of things. I would argue this is the direction the sociology of art has been moving in since Beckers Art Worlds. Only, recently, the field has become even more conscious of the agency and materiality that these humble things called art works are able to exercise over other social actors. But to return to the concept of mediators what might it mean for the sociology of art? I think the challenge today is to explain the many kinds of relations and networks of aesthetic, economic, emotional and technological ties that art-objects enter into. In a situation where economists are quickly colonizing the study of the arts (see Throsby, 2000), and the notion of creative industries points to a new set of contracts between art and commerce (Caves, 2002), the art genie has jumped well and truly out of the art institution bottle. In short, art is now embedded in a range of socialities. We might undertake a tour of regional galleries or artists studios while on a Sunday drive; or, when visiting a foreign metropolis, spend much of our leisure time looking at

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art and bring home a poster or designer object from the museum shop. During either art experience we are also likely to consume food, wine, coffee, or simply absorb the ambience provided by the cultural spaces. We may well ask: where does the art experience start and stop or stop and start? If the sociology of art does not want to leave such topics to economists, cultural geographers or experts in the branding/marketing of cities and regions, it needs to show that it can demonstrate that the sociology of art is much more than the study of things that are socially valued as art. That can be said very succinctly, is somewhat tautological and does not require much effort to research. If, on the other hand, we are prepared to undertake the laborious and painstaking job of following art-objects through society, we have lots of art mediators to study.

Conclusion: Where to Now?

I trust that Professor Borns programmatic essay will generate debate and discussion as to the state of the sub-discipline of the sociology of art. In all probability it will be judged differently to her exemplary ethnographies of IRCAM and the BBC. As befits a programmatic statement, it ought to be discussed in terms of how it perceives the current state of play and the way forward. I have made it clear that I think that her desire to embrace anthropological and material culture studies of art is certainly persuasive, but I am less inclined to accept her depiction of where the field of the sociology of art stands. I also part company with her reading of Gell on art-as-agency and prefer the more Latourian notion of mediators to the more Hegelian notion of mediation. In arguing that the sociology of art is healthier than Born acknowledges I also implicitly suggest a different way forward. As I have indicated, I am heartened by the work of Tanner and Witkin, which attempts a rapprochement with art history, archeology and the semiotics/psychology of art; and the more micro-sociological focus of authors such as Becker and DeNora. Occasionally, the line between the macro-historical and the micro-interactional will become blurred in the hands of a supple sociologist of the arts (for example, Hennions writings). But I do not think we need fear theoretical and methodological pluralism, nor become obsessed with eliminating conceptual differences. Arguably, the sociology of art can live with a productive set of tensions between macro and micro, humanistic and social science approaches. Can the type of a sociology of art I imagine be called a new school of thought or a new paradigm? The answer is probably no. As Becker (1999) has said, in relation the so-called Chicago School of sociology, rather than seeing sociological approaches as systems of thought we ought to see sociological research and writing as revolving around schools of activity.10 It is worth noting that in terms of joint activity, there is one sociology department fortunate enough to have two sociologists who have produced new and, in many respects, complementary ways of doing the sociology of art. One of these thinkers prefers grounded and empirical sociological work; the other works philosophically and

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historically (or, as suggested earlier, perhaps History with a capital H). One seems to take her cues from Goffman, Garfinkel and Latour; the other from Hauser, Piaget and the semiotics of art. Both have written about major artistic figures (the first about Beethoven;11 the second about Van Eyck and Manet12); and both have sought to trace the complex entanglements between art and nonart (the first, between music and activities such as physical exercise;13 the second, on the parallels between aesthetic modernism and modern organizational symbolism14). And, interestingly, both have written books on Adorno.15 I am referring of course to the work of Tia DeNora and Robert Witkin at the University of Exeter. I can imagine that over the years these two scholars have had many conversations and that their work has cross-pollinated in all kinds of ways. Perhaps, the way forward for the sociology of art more generally lies in the type of complementary work that this grounded-empiricist and grand theorist have produced in the last two decades. We may not all be lucky enough to have our theoretical and methodological doppelgangers in the same department. But, given the current vibrancy of the sociology of art, my bet is that we will not struggle to find good conversation partners to enrich our own work.

Notes
1 The claims made on behalf of Janet Wolffs work suggest why Borns assessment of the sociology of art differs radically from my own. Born (2010) argues that, in books such as The Social Production of Art (1981) and Aesthetics and the Sociology of Art (1983), Wolff had laid the groundwork for a fully historical investigation of the social location and ideological dimensions of aesthetic judgments, thereby offering the sociology of art the prospect of a sociological aesthetics located beyond traditional aesthetics. Born (2010) cites approvingly Wolffs own programmatic declaration that it is possible to analyze the specificity of the aesthetic in terms of the particular discursive practices that constitute it, while leaving open the possibility of relating [it] to extra-aesthetic factors. I am not so convinced that you can have your Kantian cake and eat it too. Not for the kinds of reasons that Bourdieu (1984) outlines in Distinction but because I think it creates an opposition between the inside and outside of art which inevitably leads to a new set of reductionisms of one kind or another. Furthermore, Wolffs (2003: 160) recent book, AngloModern: Painting and Modernity in Britain and the United States, offers some rather limp conclusions regarding how extra-aesthetic factors (namely, class, gender/sexuality and ethnicity) have participated in the construction of a particular narrative of modern art (Wolff, 2003: 160). Such a hypotheses may still turn a few heads in art history circles (although I doubt it) but to me it seems rather prosaic and laboured compared to recent work done in the sociology of art. 2 In fairness to the author, at no stage in the article does she use the term cutting edge. However, some sense of temporality and some measure of innovativeness is implied by Borns contention that the field has not progressed much in the last two decades and, in the corollary assertion, that Janet Wolffs (1981, 1983) work during the early 1980s was probably the most insightful sociological approach to art until the recent work of anthropologists.

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Theoretical and Methodological Pluralism in the Sociology of Art De La Fuente 3 The three most pertinent cases worth mentioning are: the founding of the Social Theory, Politics and the Arts conferences in 1974, the establishment of the Culture section of the American Sociological Association in 1987 which was driven by art-sociologists such as Vera Zolberg, Diana Crane, Howard S. Becker and Richard Peterson; and the creation of the European Sociological Association Research Network on the Sociology of the Arts in 1999. 4 Art-sociology as against a sociology of art, in the sense that this new kind of work been undertaken by sociologists studying the arts tends to reject seeing the art-object as a product of social relations. For example, DeNoras (2003: 3) revisioning of sociological studies of music could be called a music-sociology to the extent that it prefers seeing the medium of music [as an] active ingredient or animating force to inanimate product (an object to be explained). 5 Interestingly, many of the first- and second-generation sociologists studying the arts were either semi-professional or keen amateur musicians, painters, photographers, authors, and so on; or they were trained in humanities disciplines such as art history, music and literature. Theodor Adorno, Alfred Schutz and, more recently, Richard Sennett belong to the first category; Karl Mannheim and, more recently, Tia DeNora and Wendy Griswold belong to the second. Born also belongs to the list of social scientists with a background in the arts. The back cover of Rationalizing Culture refers to her background as a musician experienced in live performance, recording, and broadcasting. 6 It should be mentioned that Gells Art and Agency is a remarkable and dense book written in approximately a month while he was in the final stages of fighting cancer (Thomas, 1998: vii). 7 Due to reasons of space I will not be able to elaborate Gells theory of what he calls the art nexus. It basically entails the relationship between the following four items: (1) index: the material characteristics such as shape, color, texture and form that shape inferences and cognitive interpretations; (2) artists or originators: those who are ascribed causal responsibility for the existence of and characteristics of the index; (3) recipients: those in relation to whom, by what Gell terms abduction, an index is considered to exert agency; and (4) prototypes: a visual entity that abducts consciousness through recognition of types, either through resemblance or some other set of cues. Gell suggests that all elements in the art nexus can alternate between acting as agent or patient (that is, as either the subject or object of causal agency). As all agency is relational in character, the position of agent and patient is situational. 8 We might say that if Bourdieu fancied having done to Kants Critique of Judgement what Durkheim had done to the study of suicide, then Gell is doing for Kants Critique of Pure Reason what Durkheim achieved for the study of sacred objects and totems in the Elementary Forms or Mauss accomplished for objects of exchange in The Gift. 9 According to Tanner and Osborne this places Gells anthropological theory of art closer to David Freedbergs (1989) The Power of Images and W.J.T. Mitchells (1996) What do Pictures Really Want? than the kind of Foucauldean art history that focuses on the construction of aesthetic subjects and aesthetic value through different discursive regimes. 10 Beckers distinction between school of thought and school of activity is derived from Gilmores (1988) study of music worlds. 11 See DeNora (1995).

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Witkin (1992, 1997). DeNora (2000). Witkin (2009). DeNora (2003) and Witkin (1998).

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Theoretical and Methodological Pluralism in the Sociology of Art De La Fuente Gilmore, S. (1988) Schools of Activity and Innovation, Sociological Quarterly 29(2): 20319. Gombart, E. and Hennion, A. (1999) A Sociology of Attachment: Music Amateurs, Drug Users, in J. Law and J. Hazzard (eds), Actor-Network Theory and After, pp. 22047. Oxford: Blackwell. Hennion, A. (1993) La Passion Musicale. Paris: Mtaili. Latour, B. (2007) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Miller, D. (2005) Materiality: An Introduction, in D. Miller (ed.), Materiality, pp. 150. London: Duke University Press. Mitchell, W.J.T. (1996) What Do Pictures Really Want?, October 77: 7182. Molotch, H. (2003) Where Stuff Comes From: How Toasters, Toilets, Computers, and Many Other Things Come to Be as They Are. New York, NY: Routledge. Molotch, H. (2004) How Art Works: Form and Function in the Stuff of Life, in R. Friedland and J. Mohr (eds), Matters of Culture: Cultural Sociology in Practice, pp. 34177. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Myers, F. (2002) Painting Culture: The Making of an Aboriginal High Art. London: Duke University Press. Tanner, J. (2003) Introduction: Sociology and Art History, in J. Tanner (ed.), The Sociology of Art: A Reader, pp. 126. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Tanner, J. and Osborne, R. (2006) Introduction: Art and Agency and Art History, in J. Tanner and R. Osborne (eds), Arts Agency and Art History, pp. 127. Oxford: Blackwell. Thomas, N. (1998) Foreword, in A. Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory of Art, pp. viixiii. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Throsby, D. (2000) Economics and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weber, M. (1958) The Rational and Social Foundations of Music. Translated by D. Martindale, G. Neuwirth and J. Riedel. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press. Weber, M. (1978) Value-Judgments in Social Science, in W.G. Runciman (ed.), Weber: Selections in Translation, pp. 6998. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Witkin, R.W. (1992) Van Eyck through the Looking Glass, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 22(3): 32950. Witkin, R.W. (1997) Constructing a Sociology for an Icon of Aesthetic Modernity: Olympia Revisited, Sociological Theory 15(2): 10125. Witkin, R.W. (1998) Adorno on Music. London and New York, NY: Routledge. Witkin, R.W. (2009) The Aesthetic Imperative of a Rational-Technical Mastery: A Study in Organizational Control through the Design of Artifacts, Music and Arts in Action 2(1): 5668. Wolff, J. (1981) The Social Production of Art. London: Macmillan. Wolff, J. (1983) Aesthetics and the Sociology of Art. London: George Allen and Unwin. Wolff, J. (2003) AngloModern: Painting and Modernity in Britain and the United States. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Wolff, J. (2008) The Aesthetics of Uncertainty. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.

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Eduardo De La Fuente
Eduardo De La Fuente is Lecturer in the School of English, Communications and Performance Studies at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. He has published a monograph entitled Twentieth Century Music and the Question of Modernity (Routledge, 2010) and co-edited (with Peter Murphy) Philosophical and Cultural Theories of Music (Brill, 2010), as well as a number of essays on the sociology of art in journals such as Sociological Theory, Cultural Sociology, Journal of Sociology, Classical Sociology, Distinktion and Thesis Eleven. Email: eduardo.delafuente@arts.monash.edu.au

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