During the last two decades, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has become a dominant force in cultural activity ranging from taste in music and art to choices in food and lifestyles.
The Field of Cultural Production brings together Bourdieu's major essays on art and literature and provides the first introduction to Bourdieu's writings and theory of a cultural field that situates artistic works within the social conditions of their production, circulation, and consumption.
Bourdieu develops a highly original approach to the study of literary and artistic works, addressing many of the key issues that have preoccupied literary art and cultural criticism in the last twentieth century: aesthetic value and canonicity, intertextuality, the institutional frameworks of cultural practice, the social role of intellectuals and artists, and structures of literary and artistic authority.
Bourdieu elaborates a theory of the cultural field which situates artistic works within the social conditions of their production, circulation, and consumption. He examines the individuals and institutions involved in making cultural products what they are: not only the writers and artists, but also the publishers, critics, dealers, galleries, and academies. He analyzes the structure of the cultural field itself as well as its position within the broader social structures of power.
The essays in his volume examine such diverse topics as Flaubert's point of view, Manet's aesthetic revolution, the historical creation of the pure gaze, and the relationship between art and power.
The Field of Cultural Porduction will be of interest to students and scholars from a wide range of disciplines: sociology and social theory, literature, art, and cultural studies.
Preface Editor's Introduction: Pierre Bourdieu on Art, Literature and Culture Part I. The Field of Cultural Production 1. The Field of Cultural Production, or: The Economic World Reversed 2. The Production of Belief: Contribution to an Economy of Symbolic Goods 3. The Market of Symbolic Goods Part II. Flaubert and the French Literary Field 4. Is the Structure of Sentimental Education an Instance of Social Self-analysis? 5. Field of Power, Literary Field and Habitus 6. Principles for a Sociology of Cultural Works 7. Flaubert's Point of View Part III. The Pure Gaze: Essays on Art 8. Outline of a Sociological Theory of Art Perception 9. Manet and the Institutionalization of Anomie 10. The Historical Genesis of a Pure Aesthetic Notes Selected Bibliography Index
Pierre Bourdieu is professor of Sociology at the College de France. His numerous other works include Homo Academicus and Language and Symbolic Power.
Reviews for The Field of Cultural Production
Since the early 1970s, French sociologist Bourdieu has become a major theoretical voice in the critical study of cultural practices. This volume brings together Bourdieu's major essays on art, literature, and culture, published between 1968 and 1987. It includes articles appearing in English for the first time, others previously published in book and journals but not always readily accessible, and a series of three lectures presented as the Christian Gauss Seminars in Criticism at Princeton U. in 1986, here published for the first time in any language. * Booknews *
