A special issue in Cultural Sociology

Elizabeth Silva and Mike Savage have co-edited a special issue on field analysis in Cultural Sociology (Volume 7, Issue 2, June 2013).

Presentation of the special issue

The idea of field analysis has been championed as an alternative to ‘variable based’ accounts of social life, and offers the potential for cross-fertilization with complexity theory and forms of ‘descriptive’ research. Yet, the Bourdieusian roots of field analysis pose challenges as well as advantages, given the widespread critique of reductionist elements in Bourdieu’s thinking. This introduction to the special issue lays out how Bourdieu conceives of field analysis and some of the ambivalences this might give rise to. The papers in this special issue explore through worked examples how field analysis might be radicalized and made more dynamic. We focus on three main issues: (1) understanding emerging field dynamics which challenge the influential model that Bourdieu uses in Distinction, (2) showing the potential for comparative analysis and (3) recognizing the role of materiality in cultural relations. The papers collected here allow for varied engagements with the theoretical underpinnings of the classical formulations of field theory, via empirical analyses of both ‘established’ and ‘new’ fields to explore the trajectories of possible developments in field analysis.

Content

Field Analysis in Cultural Sociology, by Mike Savage, Elizabeth B. Silva

The Social Conditions of Cultural Domination: Field, Sub-field and Local Spaces of Wind Music in France, by Vincent Dubois, Jean-Matthieu Méon

Genre, Boundary Drawing and the Classificatory Imagination, by David Beer

Materials in the Field: Object-trajectories and Object-positions in the Field of Contemporary Art, by Fernando Dominguez Rubio and Elizabeth B. Silva

The Divisive Power of Humour: Comedy, Taste and Symbolic Boundaries, by Sam Friedman and Giselinde Kuipers

Cementing Relations within a Sporting Field: Fell Running in the English Lake District and the Acquisition of Existential Capital, by Sarah Nettleton

Cosmopolitan Capital and the Internationalization of the Field of Business Elites: Evidence from the Swiss Case, Felix Bühlmann and André Mach

A Field Analysis of Cosmopolitan Taste: Lessons from the Netherlands, by Roza Meuleman and Mike Savage

Methodological Issues in National-Comparative Research on Cultural Tastes: The Case of Cultural Capital in the UK and Finland, by Semi Purhonen and David Wright

The articles can be downloaded on the Publisher's website.