Pub Date : 2023-05-19DOI: 10.1177/17499755231170700
Andrea Voyer, V. Barker
In this article, we examine recognition gaps exposed by the coronavirus pandemic. We apply Lamont’s cultural processes of inequality framework to the critical case of COVID inequality during the first wave of the pandemic in Sweden – a period in which COVID-19 cases were concentrated among immigrants. We identify recognition gaps associated with five key cultural processes of inequality. Counter to the dominant narrative of Sweden as an open and equal society, our analysis uncovers cultural processes of inequality theorists have identified in other contexts: the racialization of immigrants; and the stigmatization and evaluation of immigrant spaces. We identify two additional cultural processes: resignification in which the State’s coronavirus response was directed toward ethnic Swedish people; and inversion, in which higher death rates among immigrants were relabeled as a natural and acceptable cause of COVID deaths. In addition to applying and extending the theory, we demonstrate the value of a focus on recognition for studies of health inequality. The recognition gaps we identify in this article are practical and solvable problems. In comparison with the challenges of managing large-scale economic redistribution or abolishing prejudice and stigmatization by addressing bias on a person-by-person basis, anticipating and counteracting the cultural processes of inequality is an actionable pathway to pursuing more just and equal societies.
{"title":"Recognition Gaps and COVID Inequality: The Case of Immigrants in Sweden","authors":"Andrea Voyer, V. Barker","doi":"10.1177/17499755231170700","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755231170700","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, we examine recognition gaps exposed by the coronavirus pandemic. We apply Lamont’s cultural processes of inequality framework to the critical case of COVID inequality during the first wave of the pandemic in Sweden – a period in which COVID-19 cases were concentrated among immigrants. We identify recognition gaps associated with five key cultural processes of inequality. Counter to the dominant narrative of Sweden as an open and equal society, our analysis uncovers cultural processes of inequality theorists have identified in other contexts: the racialization of immigrants; and the stigmatization and evaluation of immigrant spaces. We identify two additional cultural processes: resignification in which the State’s coronavirus response was directed toward ethnic Swedish people; and inversion, in which higher death rates among immigrants were relabeled as a natural and acceptable cause of COVID deaths. In addition to applying and extending the theory, we demonstrate the value of a focus on recognition for studies of health inequality. The recognition gaps we identify in this article are practical and solvable problems. In comparison with the challenges of managing large-scale economic redistribution or abolishing prejudice and stigmatization by addressing bias on a person-by-person basis, anticipating and counteracting the cultural processes of inequality is an actionable pathway to pursuing more just and equal societies.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44404549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-23DOI: 10.1177/17499755231165090
Eve Ruet
{"title":"Book Review: Ruling Culture: Art Police, Tomb Robbers and the Rise of Cultural Power in Italy","authors":"Eve Ruet","doi":"10.1177/17499755231165090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755231165090","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47517753","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-23DOI: 10.1177/17499755231166069
Jeffrey Norquist
{"title":"Book Review: The Cultural Politics of COVID-19","authors":"Jeffrey Norquist","doi":"10.1177/17499755231166069","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755231166069","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48419152","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-21DOI: 10.1177/17499755221149125
Clementina Casula
{"title":"Book Review: Transnational Musicians. Precariousness, Ethnicity and Gender in the Creative Industry","authors":"Clementina Casula","doi":"10.1177/17499755221149125","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221149125","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43983788","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-21DOI: 10.1177/17499755231157111
Abigail Webster
missing. This seems related to a methodological limitation scrupulously acknowledged by the author: interviews were realised in the Japanese language by a foreigner and nonmusician researcher, aware of the limited confidence and trust deriving from one-time encounters: ‘Issues that I felt could be considered offensive or potentially uncomfortable, especially matters concerning finances, class origins or family matters . . . were skipped altogether unless raised voluntarily by my interviewees’ (p. 36). Overall, the book represents a well-informed and challenging contribution to those debates exploring the multilayered and intersectional nature of inequalities in artistic worlds, significantly affecting artists’ personal and professional lives.
{"title":"Book Review: Art Work: Invisible Labour and the Legacy of Yugoslav Socialism","authors":"Abigail Webster","doi":"10.1177/17499755231157111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755231157111","url":null,"abstract":"missing. This seems related to a methodological limitation scrupulously acknowledged by the author: interviews were realised in the Japanese language by a foreigner and nonmusician researcher, aware of the limited confidence and trust deriving from one-time encounters: ‘Issues that I felt could be considered offensive or potentially uncomfortable, especially matters concerning finances, class origins or family matters . . . were skipped altogether unless raised voluntarily by my interviewees’ (p. 36). Overall, the book represents a well-informed and challenging contribution to those debates exploring the multilayered and intersectional nature of inequalities in artistic worlds, significantly affecting artists’ personal and professional lives.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46430090","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-21DOI: 10.1177/17499755221149116
Henrik Fürst
black spaces beyond their studios developing an expressive realism rather than promotional portraits. These were also part of a rebellion against the staid mores of the older generation and which increasingly crossed racial divides. Even so, one of the most poignant photos in the book is of Louis Armstrong in 1960 taken by Herb Snitzer on his tour bus. Already the most famous entertainer in the USA, Armstrong had been refused entry to a whites-only bathroom in Connecticut. Isolated, since the background is blurred, the image draws the viewer into Armstrong’s eyes as he stares directly into the camera. Snitzer captured and froze the weary defiance but also hurt and injury of racism. Jazz is a broad genre, and even in the period considered here, ranged from swing to the abstract experimental work of John Coltrane, which raises the much-debated question of the boundary between jazz/not jazz. This is touched on in Chapter 10 looking forward to newer hybrid forms, but is not particularly developed. It might have been interesting to consider Adorno’s critique of ‘jazz’, which referred largely to white swing in Weimar. This does though raise a further issue in relation to both music and photography of the autonomy of art as opposed to the subjectivity of its maker. Many who try to resolve the problem of subjectivity and objective meanings end up leaning one way or the other. Sight Readings is informed by a bold project of transcending the dichotomy but its ‘central problem’ is the photographer’s intentions as a starting point for deep interpretation and historical reconstruction (p. 359). This is done consummately but, in the process, perhaps leans more to the agency of the photographer than how cultural products take on their own autonomous life beyond their makers, so that the meanings of the images and the music they represent have subsequently been transformed. Really though a minor quibble. Sight Readings is a milestone in research on photography and American jazz.
{"title":"Book Review: Dangerous Fun: The Social Lives of Big Wave Surfers","authors":"Henrik Fürst","doi":"10.1177/17499755221149116","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221149116","url":null,"abstract":"black spaces beyond their studios developing an expressive realism rather than promotional portraits. These were also part of a rebellion against the staid mores of the older generation and which increasingly crossed racial divides. Even so, one of the most poignant photos in the book is of Louis Armstrong in 1960 taken by Herb Snitzer on his tour bus. Already the most famous entertainer in the USA, Armstrong had been refused entry to a whites-only bathroom in Connecticut. Isolated, since the background is blurred, the image draws the viewer into Armstrong’s eyes as he stares directly into the camera. Snitzer captured and froze the weary defiance but also hurt and injury of racism. Jazz is a broad genre, and even in the period considered here, ranged from swing to the abstract experimental work of John Coltrane, which raises the much-debated question of the boundary between jazz/not jazz. This is touched on in Chapter 10 looking forward to newer hybrid forms, but is not particularly developed. It might have been interesting to consider Adorno’s critique of ‘jazz’, which referred largely to white swing in Weimar. This does though raise a further issue in relation to both music and photography of the autonomy of art as opposed to the subjectivity of its maker. Many who try to resolve the problem of subjectivity and objective meanings end up leaning one way or the other. Sight Readings is informed by a bold project of transcending the dichotomy but its ‘central problem’ is the photographer’s intentions as a starting point for deep interpretation and historical reconstruction (p. 359). This is done consummately but, in the process, perhaps leans more to the agency of the photographer than how cultural products take on their own autonomous life beyond their makers, so that the meanings of the images and the music they represent have subsequently been transformed. Really though a minor quibble. Sight Readings is a milestone in research on photography and American jazz.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44405145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-17DOI: 10.1177/17499755221147610
L. Harris
This article takes a cultural approach to analysing the profound privatisation of the public in one of the many places in which it manifests: an art gallery. I argue that, as well as categories of political and economic bearing, ‘privateness’ and ‘publicness’ are cultural categories through which lived experiences are made meaningful. They are therefore performable by organisations that have dual public and private accountabilities. I draw on the cultural pragmatics understanding of ‘performance’ as well as a mesosociological attention to groups to study a private view as one example of such a performance. Through the manipulation of arenas, relations and histories I show how the art gallery staff managed to uphold the meanings of both privateness and publicness at this occasion, and manipulate them according to the different desired outcomes of social contexts. In conclusion, I argue that organisational performances of privateness and publicness are in a dynamic tension with one another; that the performative balancing act is a central part of the day-to-day work of such organisations; and that the cultural approach can help us unravel organisational strategies to paper over the social exclusions that characterise their ‘publics’.
{"title":"Private View? The Organisational Performance of ‘Privateness’ and ‘Publicness’ at an Art Gallery","authors":"L. Harris","doi":"10.1177/17499755221147610","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221147610","url":null,"abstract":"This article takes a cultural approach to analysing the profound privatisation of the public in one of the many places in which it manifests: an art gallery. I argue that, as well as categories of political and economic bearing, ‘privateness’ and ‘publicness’ are cultural categories through which lived experiences are made meaningful. They are therefore performable by organisations that have dual public and private accountabilities. I draw on the cultural pragmatics understanding of ‘performance’ as well as a mesosociological attention to groups to study a private view as one example of such a performance. Through the manipulation of arenas, relations and histories I show how the art gallery staff managed to uphold the meanings of both privateness and publicness at this occasion, and manipulate them according to the different desired outcomes of social contexts. In conclusion, I argue that organisational performances of privateness and publicness are in a dynamic tension with one another; that the performative balancing act is a central part of the day-to-day work of such organisations; and that the cultural approach can help us unravel organisational strategies to paper over the social exclusions that characterise their ‘publics’.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44160820","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-04-17DOI: 10.1177/17499755231160692
Luuc Brans, G. Kuipers
What happens when politics enters strongly aesthetic cultural fields? This article proposes a novel conceptual framework, which we propose to call ideologization, to understand how political-ideological considerations influence cultural legitimation. We build on theories of legitimation and cultural intermediaries to examine the strategic case of fashion as a cultural production field at the intersection of aesthetics and economics. Combining an analysis of frames in fashion magazines since the 1980s with critical discourse analysis of British Vogue in turning-point year 2020, we theorize ideologization as consisting of three elements: aesthetic agenda-setting; the reimagination of relations between producers, consumers and intermediaries; and the generation of discursive contradictions. This process of ideologization, which we see across cultural fields since the late 2010s, has strong implications for intermediaries who act as framers and brokers of legitimate culture. We conclude by proposing future research to further develop the ideologization framework and detail the long-term impact of political-ideological logics on cultural fields.
{"title":"Fashion as ‘Force for Change’? How Ideologization Reshapes the Work of Intermediaries in the Legitimation of Culture","authors":"Luuc Brans, G. Kuipers","doi":"10.1177/17499755231160692","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755231160692","url":null,"abstract":"What happens when politics enters strongly aesthetic cultural fields? This article proposes a novel conceptual framework, which we propose to call ideologization, to understand how political-ideological considerations influence cultural legitimation. We build on theories of legitimation and cultural intermediaries to examine the strategic case of fashion as a cultural production field at the intersection of aesthetics and economics. Combining an analysis of frames in fashion magazines since the 1980s with critical discourse analysis of British Vogue in turning-point year 2020, we theorize ideologization as consisting of three elements: aesthetic agenda-setting; the reimagination of relations between producers, consumers and intermediaries; and the generation of discursive contradictions. This process of ideologization, which we see across cultural fields since the late 2010s, has strong implications for intermediaries who act as framers and brokers of legitimate culture. We conclude by proposing future research to further develop the ideologization framework and detail the long-term impact of political-ideological logics on cultural fields.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-04-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44486186","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}