- Date
- Tuesday 21 May 2019, 09:30 - 12:00
- Type
- General
- Room
- M7-39
- Space
- Van der Goot Building
Please join on May 21st for a talk on cultural capital and reproduction in cultural elites by Martin Gustavsson of Stockholm University and Andreas Melldahl of Uppsala University. This talk is organized by Laura Braden (Arts and Culture Department), so please contact Laura for any questions (Braden@eshcc.eur.nl).
Social Closure in the Swedish Field of Art:
Diachronic and synchronic analyses of the relation between social origin and artistic careers, 1945–2004
Martin Gustavsson Andreas Melldahl
Score, Stockholm University Dept. of Sociology, Uppsala University
Sociology of Education and Culture Sociology of Education and Culture
martin.gustavsson@score.su.se andreas.melldahl@soc.uu.se
A central concern within research on elites and ruling classes has always been the degree to which social elites manage to monopolize the resources required to reach such positions. In this presentation we discuss how – with which methods and data – the position-takings and the social reproduction of powerful groups can be studied and, as a part of this, whether processes of social closure seem to be in operation (cf. Parkin 1979; Murphy 1988). One common research strategy within elite studies is to examine individuals who manage to occupy – and retain – leading positions within formal institutions and organizations. Here we will instead describe and discuss methods and work procedures that can be used to locate and identify elites that cannot be apprehended through their occupancy of formal positions. We focus on cultural elites – using the example of artists in Sweden – since this condition is particularly blatant in the areas where such groups compete for social prominence; methods and sources suited to account for their specific power are hence required. The field of art is a sufficiently restricted area to enable us to chart all – formal and informal – dominant positions within it during a rather extensive period of time. From which classes and class fractions did the individuals originate who managed to occupy dominant positions – of different kinds and at different points in time – in the Swedish field of art?
The analyses are based on a large historical source material, collected into a prosopography, or a collective biography. Through the prosopography, dominant positions in the Swedish art field during the period 1945–2004 can be analytically constructed. In our presentation, we focus on (1) a first sub-sample of some 645 artists to examine changes over time in the social composition of the group of artists occupying dominant positions. Our main results suggest that Swedish leading artist mainly come from more privileged backgrounds and that popular classes are underrepresented. Furthermore, a shift has occurred in the recruitment patterns, where artists from cultural fractions of the middle and dominant classes are increasing their share, while the economic fractions are decreasing. These results reveal a pattern of social closure in the field of cultural production. Moreover, we examine (2) a second sub-sample of artists being active in the field during the years 1967–1969, in an attempt to on the one hand empirically draw the contours of the structure of the field of art at that time and on the other to relate the different positions that artists occupy in the field to their social origins. This second analysis is so far preliminary.