Pub Date : 2022-07-27DOI: 10.1177/17499755221085153
Philip Smith, F. Stoll
An enduring feature of public life has been the social death of prominent artists, impresarios and entertainers after moral transgressions. But not everyone is shunned. Often fans and general audiences continue to consume, advocate and revere the artistic product of tainted but gifted individuals. How is this love of the ‘evil genius’ possible? The article provides answers with reference to the paradigm case of Richard Wagner and the Bayreuth Festival that he founded. The composer and event remain contaminated by deep association with antisemitism, Hitler and the Third Reich. We draw from an interview study with Wagner fans and opera connoisseurs to report on the interpretative techniques, justifications and folk-logics through which Wagner’s operas can still be listened to and found pleasurable in light of a troubled history. These involve articulations between and over four domains: (i) self (ii) artwork (iii) artist and (iv) history. These are variously connected and disconnected. We speculate that this four-factor model will be applicable in other domains where art, politics and morality make for uneasy bedfellows and the ‘evil genius’ remains culturally salient.
{"title":"Why Fans of the Evil Genius Remain Fans: The Case of Richard Wagner and the Bayreuth Festival","authors":"Philip Smith, F. Stoll","doi":"10.1177/17499755221085153","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221085153","url":null,"abstract":"An enduring feature of public life has been the social death of prominent artists, impresarios and entertainers after moral transgressions. But not everyone is shunned. Often fans and general audiences continue to consume, advocate and revere the artistic product of tainted but gifted individuals. How is this love of the ‘evil genius’ possible? The article provides answers with reference to the paradigm case of Richard Wagner and the Bayreuth Festival that he founded. The composer and event remain contaminated by deep association with antisemitism, Hitler and the Third Reich. We draw from an interview study with Wagner fans and opera connoisseurs to report on the interpretative techniques, justifications and folk-logics through which Wagner’s operas can still be listened to and found pleasurable in light of a troubled history. These involve articulations between and over four domains: (i) self (ii) artwork (iii) artist and (iv) history. These are variously connected and disconnected. We speculate that this four-factor model will be applicable in other domains where art, politics and morality make for uneasy bedfellows and the ‘evil genius’ remains culturally salient.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"17 1","pages":"351 - 372"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-07-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44085060","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 : 2022-07-23DOI: 10.1177/17499755211068656
Ricardo Campos, Leda Barbio, Á. Sequeira
This article focuses on contemporary urban art in the city of Lisbon. We understand urban art as an art world that has developed through a historical process that, in Portugal, is essentially three decades old. It began with the emergence of the subculture of graffiti in Portugal and it culminates in the gradual artification, commodification and institutionalization of graffiti and street art. We believe this was caused by a particular historical arrangement during the previous decade that produced extremely favourable conditions for the emergence of a set of artists in this field. This arrangement is characterized internationally by the expansion and recognition of street art and, on a national level (especially in Lisbon), by the actions of a number of agents (media, municipalities, art world, commercial entities, academia) that contributed to a higher visibility and legitimacy of this artistic community. Thus, we argue that a structure of opportunities was created that a allowed a number of actors to establish and define a strategy of professionalization in this field. In this article we analyse three types of opportunities: practice opportunities, symbolic, and financial. We consider the social actors that generate these opportunities as well as the way in which artists perceive them and adapt.
{"title":"Urban Art in Lisbon: Emerging Opportunities and Career Aspirations","authors":"Ricardo Campos, Leda Barbio, Á. Sequeira","doi":"10.1177/17499755211068656","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755211068656","url":null,"abstract":"This article focuses on contemporary urban art in the city of Lisbon. We understand urban art as an art world that has developed through a historical process that, in Portugal, is essentially three decades old. It began with the emergence of the subculture of graffiti in Portugal and it culminates in the gradual artification, commodification and institutionalization of graffiti and street art. We believe this was caused by a particular historical arrangement during the previous decade that produced extremely favourable conditions for the emergence of a set of artists in this field. This arrangement is characterized internationally by the expansion and recognition of street art and, on a national level (especially in Lisbon), by the actions of a number of agents (media, municipalities, art world, commercial entities, academia) that contributed to a higher visibility and legitimacy of this artistic community. Thus, we argue that a structure of opportunities was created that a allowed a number of actors to establish and define a strategy of professionalization in this field. In this article we analyse three types of opportunities: practice opportunities, symbolic, and financial. We consider the social actors that generate these opportunities as well as the way in which artists perceive them and adapt.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"17 1","pages":"204 - 224"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-07-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44595233","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 : 2022-07-07DOI: 10.1177/17499755221110296
Vasco Ramos
{"title":"Book Review: Working Class Experiences of Social Inequalities in (Post-) Industrial Landscapes. Feelings of Class","authors":"Vasco Ramos","doi":"10.1177/17499755221110296","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221110296","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"17 1","pages":"299 - 300"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47025258","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 : 2022-07-07DOI: 10.1177/17499755221108245
Julián Harruch Morales
{"title":"Book Review: The Class Matrix: Social Theory After the Cultural Turn","authors":"Julián Harruch Morales","doi":"10.1177/17499755221108245","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221108245","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"17 1","pages":"301 - 302"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44098109","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 : 2022-07-05DOI: 10.1177/17499755221076922
Linzhi Zhang
This article challenges the assumption in a classical sociology of art that artworks are created in the artist’s studio as independent and self-sufficient objects. Given that artistic production merges with exhibition making in contemporary art, I argue that the production of artworks needs to be situated in the exhibition space. In this institutional and physical environment, a set of scenographic principles dominate. Scenography is an ideology and method for exhibition making that emphasises the audience’s experience of the exhibition as a coherent entity. In the exhibition context, therefore, artworks are produced as an integral part of the scenography. Drawing upon six cases of solo exhibitions in museums and galleries, I reveal how the material, conceptual, and experiential features of artworks are shaped by scenographic considerations. The six cases also demonstrate the variations in the production of contemporary art. This article further develops the sociology of art in three ways. First, I show a middle way between the classical sociology of art and the recent material turn in cultural sociology. While the former explains artworks as social products but often fails to show the direct impact of social factors on features of artworks, the latter prioritises the agency of artworks qua artistic features but take these as given. Through the concept of scenography, I explain the social genesis of artistic features without prioritising human or non-human actors. Second, I call more attention to the dialogue with art history, especially its turns towards exhibitions for apprehending new developments in art. Third, the hybrid practices in visual art extend our understanding of artistic mediation as art itself, which becomes more applicable to different genres of art.
{"title":"Scenography and the Production of Artworks in Contemporary Art","authors":"Linzhi Zhang","doi":"10.1177/17499755221076922","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221076922","url":null,"abstract":"This article challenges the assumption in a classical sociology of art that artworks are created in the artist’s studio as independent and self-sufficient objects. Given that artistic production merges with exhibition making in contemporary art, I argue that the production of artworks needs to be situated in the exhibition space. In this institutional and physical environment, a set of scenographic principles dominate. Scenography is an ideology and method for exhibition making that emphasises the audience’s experience of the exhibition as a coherent entity. In the exhibition context, therefore, artworks are produced as an integral part of the scenography. Drawing upon six cases of solo exhibitions in museums and galleries, I reveal how the material, conceptual, and experiential features of artworks are shaped by scenographic considerations. The six cases also demonstrate the variations in the production of contemporary art. This article further develops the sociology of art in three ways. First, I show a middle way between the classical sociology of art and the recent material turn in cultural sociology. While the former explains artworks as social products but often fails to show the direct impact of social factors on features of artworks, the latter prioritises the agency of artworks qua artistic features but take these as given. Through the concept of scenography, I explain the social genesis of artistic features without prioritising human or non-human actors. Second, I call more attention to the dialogue with art history, especially its turns towards exhibitions for apprehending new developments in art. Third, the hybrid practices in visual art extend our understanding of artistic mediation as art itself, which becomes more applicable to different genres of art.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"17 1","pages":"179 - 203"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-07-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41989511","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 : 2022-06-27DOI: 10.1177/17499755221082375
Johan Lindell
A great amount of effort has gone into studying correspondences between contemporary class structures and the distribution of lifestyles and media practices therein. Structural overlaps between these spaces imply the existence of a symbolic order, where dominant factions of society constitute taste keepers endowed with the power to stigmatize those below them in the social hierarchy. Yet, research has not come to terms with the reach and depth of this symbolic order. This study combines the Bourdieusian approach with recent developments in stigma research and the notion of felt stigma. Using multiple correspondence analysis on a survey with the adult Swedish population (n = 2003) findings align with previous research in that the social space is built around capital volume and capital composition, and that media practices connect to that structure. This symbolic order is not, however, internalized by people at lower social positions. Instead, it is people invested in culture and arts – a cultural middle-class – who are most likely to anticipate that others would look down on their practices and preferences.
{"title":"Symbolic Violence and the Social Space: Self-imposing the Mark of Disgrace?","authors":"Johan Lindell","doi":"10.1177/17499755221082375","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221082375","url":null,"abstract":"A great amount of effort has gone into studying correspondences between contemporary class structures and the distribution of lifestyles and media practices therein. Structural overlaps between these spaces imply the existence of a symbolic order, where dominant factions of society constitute taste keepers endowed with the power to stigmatize those below them in the social hierarchy. Yet, research has not come to terms with the reach and depth of this symbolic order. This study combines the Bourdieusian approach with recent developments in stigma research and the notion of felt stigma. Using multiple correspondence analysis on a survey with the adult Swedish population (n = 2003) findings align with previous research in that the social space is built around capital volume and capital composition, and that media practices connect to that structure. This symbolic order is not, however, internalized by people at lower social positions. Instead, it is people invested in culture and arts – a cultural middle-class – who are most likely to anticipate that others would look down on their practices and preferences.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"16 1","pages":"379 - 401"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42344550","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 : 2022-06-19DOI: 10.1177/17499755221098834
B. Jaworsky, M. Lo, Marcus Morgan, Christopher Thorpe, Rin Ushiyama
In this editorial statement, we consider the journal’s history to date, the state of the field presently, and the directions in which we hope to take it in the future. Broadly, this endeavour involves reflecting on issues of continuity and change. More specifically, this requires us to identify those aspects of the journal which we consider important to ensure continuity and reproduction, and those aspects we are keen to develop to contribute towards reconstructing the field of cultural sociology along the lines of a more intellectually inclusive and global vision.
{"title":"Editorial Statement: Visions for Cultural Sociology in Uncertain Times","authors":"B. Jaworsky, M. Lo, Marcus Morgan, Christopher Thorpe, Rin Ushiyama","doi":"10.1177/17499755221098834","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221098834","url":null,"abstract":"In this editorial statement, we consider the journal’s history to date, the state of the field presently, and the directions in which we hope to take it in the future. Broadly, this endeavour involves reflecting on issues of continuity and change. More specifically, this requires us to identify those aspects of the journal which we consider important to ensure continuity and reproduction, and those aspects we are keen to develop to contribute towards reconstructing the field of cultural sociology along the lines of a more intellectually inclusive and global vision.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"16 1","pages":"305 - 317"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48866455","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 : 2022-06-10DOI: 10.1177/17499755211070142
Stribor Kuric Kardelis
The goal of this article is to analyse socio-cultural schemes embodied in the physical bodies of theatre actors and their effect on the actors’ professional development. Age, gender and beauty standards are three key variables in theatre work and their impact is noticeable all over the performers’ career spans. The basis for this research is a qualitative sample of 31 in-depth interviews with professional Spanish theatre performers. I will start by defining the dimensions of the dramatic body to focus afterwards on its physicality, image and aesthetics, as malleable forms of capital. Despite their expertise in their trade, performers are highly conditioned by their body image due to a continuous exposure to the expectations of the audience and their own. I will explore the potentiality of the performers’ marked bodies through the characters they are able to portray and the socio-cultural schemes inscribed in their bodies.
{"title":"The Body of a Performer as a Form of Capital: Age, Gender and Aesthetics in Theatre Work","authors":"Stribor Kuric Kardelis","doi":"10.1177/17499755211070142","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755211070142","url":null,"abstract":"The goal of this article is to analyse socio-cultural schemes embodied in the physical bodies of theatre actors and their effect on the actors’ professional development. Age, gender and beauty standards are three key variables in theatre work and their impact is noticeable all over the performers’ career spans. The basis for this research is a qualitative sample of 31 in-depth interviews with professional Spanish theatre performers. I will start by defining the dimensions of the dramatic body to focus afterwards on its physicality, image and aesthetics, as malleable forms of capital. Despite their expertise in their trade, performers are highly conditioned by their body image due to a continuous exposure to the expectations of the audience and their own. I will explore the potentiality of the performers’ marked bodies through the characters they are able to portray and the socio-cultural schemes inscribed in their bodies.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"17 1","pages":"159 - 178"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44319850","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 : 2022-06-08DOI: 10.1177/17499755221078713
B. Grüning
This article examines the relationship between music and politics in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), departing from the crucial role the State played there in organizing, and controlling all fields of cultural production. Much of the literature on the subject either depicts the interaction between the State and artists as unidirectional or represents their relationship as highly conflictual due to contrasting understandings of culture and its functions. In both cases, this tendency to dichotomize makes it hard to explain, for instance, how music genres that had arisen in Western countries could flourish in the GDR despite the official understanding of ‘socialist music’ propagated by the Socialist Unity Party (SED). Conversely, by adopting a field perspective, this article aims to highlight how musicians, the State, and Party representatives competed to shape the symbolic space of the GDR musical field. Hence, instead of understanding Party and State decisions as merely applications of ideological principles, a field perspective enables us to consider them as resulting from strategies, depending on both the objective position occupied in the musical field and its spatial-material dimension, and as aimed at maintaining their own power within it. The political elite succeeded, then, in actualizing its strategy of legitimating emerging music genres which were potentially disrupting until it was able to provide musicians with physical cultural spaces for developing their careers and, at the same time, expressing criticisms. On the other hand, from the 1950s, localized music scenes were created which proposed an alternative understanding of music to the official one without, however, refusing the core principles which structured the GDR musical field. After the end of the 1970s, though, new music scenes were formed which positioned themselves outside the institutionalized music spaces and places, refusing in this way the rules of the GDR musical field and questioning its very existence.
{"title":"Cultural Spaces as Political Spaces: The Musical Field of the German Democratic Republic","authors":"B. Grüning","doi":"10.1177/17499755221078713","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221078713","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the relationship between music and politics in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), departing from the crucial role the State played there in organizing, and controlling all fields of cultural production. Much of the literature on the subject either depicts the interaction between the State and artists as unidirectional or represents their relationship as highly conflictual due to contrasting understandings of culture and its functions. In both cases, this tendency to dichotomize makes it hard to explain, for instance, how music genres that had arisen in Western countries could flourish in the GDR despite the official understanding of ‘socialist music’ propagated by the Socialist Unity Party (SED). Conversely, by adopting a field perspective, this article aims to highlight how musicians, the State, and Party representatives competed to shape the symbolic space of the GDR musical field. Hence, instead of understanding Party and State decisions as merely applications of ideological principles, a field perspective enables us to consider them as resulting from strategies, depending on both the objective position occupied in the musical field and its spatial-material dimension, and as aimed at maintaining their own power within it. The political elite succeeded, then, in actualizing its strategy of legitimating emerging music genres which were potentially disrupting until it was able to provide musicians with physical cultural spaces for developing their careers and, at the same time, expressing criticisms. On the other hand, from the 1950s, localized music scenes were created which proposed an alternative understanding of music to the official one without, however, refusing the core principles which structured the GDR musical field. After the end of the 1970s, though, new music scenes were formed which positioned themselves outside the institutionalized music spaces and places, refusing in this way the rules of the GDR musical field and questioning its very existence.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"17 1","pages":"225 - 251"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47529107","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 : 2022-05-31DOI: 10.1177/17499755221097938
Dominik Želinský
In Matters of Revolution, Dominik Bartmanski revisits East Europe’s post-1989 transformation to explore two cases of urban metamorphosis and re-signification: Berlin and Warsaw. However, Bartmanski’s book is more than an analysis of two divergent trajectories of post-1989 urban change: it is an ambitious push towards a synthesis of cultural sociology, material anthropology and phenomenology. In my view, Bartmanski’s effort is successful: the book is (1) sociologically productive in delivering excellent thick descriptions and robust explanations (2) theoretically accomplished in merging fitting agendas and developing an intellectually independent and innovative perspective (3) stylistically excellent. In the first two chapters, Bartmanski expounds on his challenge to mainstream sociology, which – following thinkers like Weber – ‘preoccupied itself with ideas’ as ‘abstract mentalities expressed in language’ (p. 16). But to conceive of ideas as disembodied is naïve: according to Bartmanski, ‘socially vital ideas embodied and emplaced ideas. Their significance varies because of material and spatial circumstances in which they are brought to existence and made resonant’ (p. 16). Pulling on threads from structuralist and poststructuralist theories of culture (from Barthes to Alexander), anthropology (Miller or Ingold), and phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty), Bartmanski carves out an autonomous perspective that allows him to integrate abstract structures of ideas with deep sensitivity to their emplacement (or displacement) through architectural (or broadly material and embodied) performances. The result is a theory of iconicity that breaks with earlier work Bartmanski undertook with Alexander in an edited volume Iconic Power, which neatly separated the ‘relatively autonomous’ (Bartmanski, 2012: 60) depth and surface layers of iconic objects. In the present book, Bartmanski productively challenges this dualism and emphasizes that they are ‘interdependent rather than independent’ (p. 47) and never ‘concretely separated’ (p. 47). In Chapters 3 to 5, Bartmanski deploys his framework to understand post-revolutionary transformations of the East European urban landscape. In Chapter 3, he focuses on the iconic significance of the revolutions themselves, asking why the deconstruction of the Berlin Wall captured the world’s imagination in a way that overshadowed revolutions in other countries, especially Poland and Hungary. Bartmanski argues that the answer lies in 1097938 CUS0010.1177/17499755221097938Cultural SociologyBook Reviews book-review2022
{"title":"Book Review: Matters of Revolution: Urban Spaces and Symbolic Politics in Berlin and Warsaw After 1989 by Dominik Bartmanski","authors":"Dominik Želinský","doi":"10.1177/17499755221097938","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221097938","url":null,"abstract":"In Matters of Revolution, Dominik Bartmanski revisits East Europe’s post-1989 transformation to explore two cases of urban metamorphosis and re-signification: Berlin and Warsaw. However, Bartmanski’s book is more than an analysis of two divergent trajectories of post-1989 urban change: it is an ambitious push towards a synthesis of cultural sociology, material anthropology and phenomenology. In my view, Bartmanski’s effort is successful: the book is (1) sociologically productive in delivering excellent thick descriptions and robust explanations (2) theoretically accomplished in merging fitting agendas and developing an intellectually independent and innovative perspective (3) stylistically excellent. In the first two chapters, Bartmanski expounds on his challenge to mainstream sociology, which – following thinkers like Weber – ‘preoccupied itself with ideas’ as ‘abstract mentalities expressed in language’ (p. 16). But to conceive of ideas as disembodied is naïve: according to Bartmanski, ‘socially vital ideas embodied and emplaced ideas. Their significance varies because of material and spatial circumstances in which they are brought to existence and made resonant’ (p. 16). Pulling on threads from structuralist and poststructuralist theories of culture (from Barthes to Alexander), anthropology (Miller or Ingold), and phenomenology (Merleau-Ponty), Bartmanski carves out an autonomous perspective that allows him to integrate abstract structures of ideas with deep sensitivity to their emplacement (or displacement) through architectural (or broadly material and embodied) performances. The result is a theory of iconicity that breaks with earlier work Bartmanski undertook with Alexander in an edited volume Iconic Power, which neatly separated the ‘relatively autonomous’ (Bartmanski, 2012: 60) depth and surface layers of iconic objects. In the present book, Bartmanski productively challenges this dualism and emphasizes that they are ‘interdependent rather than independent’ (p. 47) and never ‘concretely separated’ (p. 47). In Chapters 3 to 5, Bartmanski deploys his framework to understand post-revolutionary transformations of the East European urban landscape. In Chapter 3, he focuses on the iconic significance of the revolutions themselves, asking why the deconstruction of the Berlin Wall captured the world’s imagination in a way that overshadowed revolutions in other countries, especially Poland and Hungary. Bartmanski argues that the answer lies in 1097938 CUS0010.1177/17499755221097938Cultural SociologyBook Reviews book-review2022","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"17 1","pages":"410 - 411"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2022-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41706929","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}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：