Sociology Looks at the Arts

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Notes

1 Note that both edited volumes use the singular form ‘art’, although they deal with many genres and even culture in a broader sense. Why? In German, ‘Kunstsoziologie’ (art sociology) is identical with sociology of the visual arts, whereas ‘Soziologie der Künste’ (sociology of the arts) encompasses the study of all kinds of arts. For a long time, the latter has been a less prestigious study object than the former because art sociology has been closely linked to the highly prestigious ‘Kunstgeschichte’ (art history) or ‘Kunstwissenschaft’ (art study). Sociological inquiry into the arts (in the plural) is still regarded somewhat suspiciously in the German Humanities; a German ad hoc subgroup of sociologists of the arts has existed only for a few years, and only under the umbrella of the major ‘cultural sociology’ section in the German Sociological Association (Rehberg, 2012). Rough statistics confirm this view. Google Scholar has 2410 hits for ‘Kunstsoziologie’ but only 139 hits for ‘Soziologie der Künste’. There seems to be a parallel slope in France: Google Scholar produces 4360 hits for ‘sociologie de l'art’ but only 890 hits for ‘sociologie des arts’ (accessed 28 September 2016).