Prof Tony Bennett

Visiting Research Professor

Sociology

Profile

Tony Bennett is Visiting Research Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences and an associate member of CRESC, the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change. Professor Bennett was the Professor of Sociology at the Open University from 1998 to 2009, and a Founding Director of CRESC, before leaving to take up his current position as Research Professor in Social and Cultural Theory in the Centre for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney. He also worked at the Open University in the 1970s and early 1980s, initially as a Staff Tutor in Sociology and subsequently as Chair of the Popular Culture course before leaving for Griffith University where he was Professor of Cultural Studies and also served as Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Director of the ARC Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy. He is a member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

Professor Bennett’s interests span a number of areas across the social sciences and humanities, with significant contributions to the fields of literary theory, cultural studies, cultural sociology, and museum studies. His work in literary studies includes influential assessments of the relations between formalist and Marxist criticism, and critical appraisals of Marxist aesthetic theory. In cultural studies his work has had a formative influence on the study of popular culture and he has played a leading role in the development of cultural policy studies. His work in cultural sociology includes major surveys of the social patterns of cultural practice and consumption in both Australia and Britain, and critical engagements with the sociology of literature and audience and reception theory. His work in museum studies has contributed to the development of the ‘new museology’ particularly in the light it has thrown on the role of museums as instruments of social governance.

The common thread running through his interests across these areas concerns the ways in which culture is tangled up in the exercise of power. This continues to inform his current research focused on the ways in which the knowledge practices of aesthetics and anthropology have informed modern processes of cultural governance from the 19th century through to the present. This work includes a significant focus on the part played by the early fieldwork phase in Australian, British, French and American anthropology in the development of new practices of colonial governance. It also includes a concern with the varying social uses of aesthetic discourses, and the role of aesthetics in the history of social theory. He is also engaged in an inquiry into the role of habit as a key concept in social, political and cultural theory, and with the role it has played in the practices of both liberal and colonial governance.

Professor Bennett’s work has been translated into French, Swedish, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and he has lectured at universities, art galleries and museums in Europe, Asia, Africa, Asia and North America. He has worked in a consulting or advisory capacity for a range of governmental organisations, including UNESCO and the Council of Europe, and has conducted research collaborations with a wide range of cultural sector and government organisations in Australia and Britain.

He is currently co-editor of the Journal of Cultural Economy and of the Culture, Economy and the Social book series published by Routledge.

Qualifications

1972: PhD, Sociology, University of Sussex, UK
1968: BA, Politics, Philosophy, Economics, Oxford University, UK

Honours and Awards

2010-: Visiting Research Professor, Open University
2009: Visiting Professor, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanjing University
2005-: Visiting Professor, University of Hunan, Kaifung.
2006-: Professorial Fellow, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne
2003: Centre for Public Scholarship, Emory University, Atlanta: Visiting Fellow.
1996: Department of Communications, University of South Africa: Visiting Professor.
1998: Elected to the Australian Academy of the Humanities 1994: Unit for Interpretation and Criticism, University of Illinois: Visiting Professor.
1994: Pavis Centre for Research in Sociology and Social Anthropology, The Open University: Visiting Fellow.
1989: Faculty of Arts, Carleton University, Ottawa: Visiting Senior Scholar.
1983: Faculty of Humanities, Griffith University: Visiting Fellow.
1982: Departments of Comparative Literature and Film, University of Iowa: Visiting Professor.

Ongoing: Member of the editorial/advisory boards of: New Formations, Cultural Studies, Continuum, Critical Cultural and Communication Studies, Literature and History, The International Journal of Cultural Studies, The European Journal of Cultural Studies, Cultural Studies in Review, Museum History Journal, Museums & Society, and Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research.

Recent Publications

Books
Bennett, T., Savage, M., Silva, E., Warde, A., Gayo-Cal, M. and Wright, D. (2009) Culture, Class, Distinction, London & New York: Routledge.

Bennett, T. 2007, Critical Trajectories: Culture, Society, Intellectuals, Malden, US, and Oxford: Blackwell.

Bennett, T. 2007, Culture and Society: Collected Essays, Beijing: Guangxi Normal University Press.

Bennett, T. 2004, Pasts Beyond Memories: Evolution, Museums, Colonialism, London & New York: Routledge.

Bennett, T., Frow, J. & Emmison, M. 1999, Accounting for Tastes: Australian Everyday Cultures, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.

Bennett, T. 1998 Culture: A Reformer’s Science, Sydney: Allen and Unwin; London & New York: Sage. [Croatian translation, Golden marketing-Technicka knjiga].

Bennett, T. (ed.) 1996, Museums and Citizenship: A Resource Book, special issue of Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, vol. 39, part 1.

Bennett, T. 1995, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics, London & New York: Routledge.

Bennett, T. 1990, Outside Literature, London & New York: Routledge; New York: Methuen Inc.

Bennett, T. & Woollacott, J. 1987, Bond and Beyond: The Political Career of a Popular Hero London: Macmillan; and New York: Methuen Inc.

Bennett, T. 1979, Formalism and Marxism, London & New York: Methuen.

Edited Collections
Bennett, T. & Joyce (eds) (in press; 2010) Material Powers: Culture, History and the Material Turn, London & New York: Routledge.

Bennett, T. & Frow, J. (eds) 2008, Handbook of Social and Cultural Analysis, London: Sage, 732 pp.

Bennett, T. Grossberg, L. & Morris, M. (eds) 2005, New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society, Oxford: Blackwell. [Chinese translation, Nanjing University Press; Italian translation; Japanese translation].

Silva, E. B. & Bennett, T. (eds) 2004, Contemporary Culture and Everyday Life, Durham: The Sociologypress.

Bennett, T. & Watson, D. (eds) 2001, Understanding Everyday Life, Oxford: Blackwell.

Bennett, T. & Carter, T. (eds) 2001, Culture in Australia: Policies, Publics, Programs, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.

Bennett, T., Buckridge, P., Carter, D. & Mercer, C. (eds) 1992, Celebration of a Nation: A Study of Australia's Bicentenary, Sydney: Allen and Unwin.

Bennett, T. (ed.) 1990, Popular Fiction: Technology, Ideology, Production, Reading, London & New York: Routledge.

Bennett, T., Mercer, C. & Woollacott, J. (eds) 1986, Popular Culture and Social Relations, Milton Keynes: Open University Press. [Chapter ‘Blackpool: Hegemony, Ideology, Pleasure’ republished in Ryan, M. (ed.) 2007/8, Cultural Studies: An Anthology, Oxford: Blackwell.]

Gurevitch, M., Bennett, T., Curran, J. & Woollacott, J. (eds) 1981, Culture, Society and the Media, London & New York: Methuen.

Waites, B., Bennett, T. & Martin, G. (eds) 1981, Popular Culture: Past and Present, London: Croom Helm.

Bennett, T., Martin, G., Mercer, C. & Woollacott, J. (eds) 1980, Culture, Ideology and Social Process, London: Batsford.

Bennett, T., Boyd-Bowman, S., Mercer, C. & Woollacott, J. (eds) 1981, Popular Television and Film, London: British Film Institute.

Book Chapters (since 2000)
Bennett, T. 2010, ‘Habit, Instinct, Survivals: Repetition, History, Biopolitics’, in, Gunn, S. & Vernon, J. (eds), The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain, University of California Press.

Bennett, T. 2010, ‘Culture Studies and the Culture Complex’, in, Hall, J. R. et al (eds), Culture: A Sociological Handbook, London and New York: Routledge.

Bennett, T. 2010, ‘Culture/ Knowledge/ Power: Between Foucault and Bourdieu’, in, Silva, E. & Warde, A. (eds), Cultural Analysis: The Legacy of Bourdieu, London & New York: Routledge.

Bennett, T. 2010, ‘Making and Mobilising Worlds: Assembling and Governing the Other’, in, Bennett, T. & Joyce, P. (eds), Material Powers: Essays Beyond the Cultural Turn, London: Routledge.

Warde, A. & Bennett, T. 2008, ‘A Culture in Common: The Cultural Consumption of the UK Managerial Elite’, in, Williams, K. & Savage, M. (eds), Remembering Elites, Sociological Review Monograph, Oxford: Oxford: Blackwell.

Bennett, T. 2008, ‘The Art Museum as Civic Machinery’, in, Jaschke, B., Martinz-Turek, C. & Sternfeld, N. (eds), Sammlungen Austellen, Vienna: Verlag Turia + Kant.

Bennett, T. 2008, ‘Sociology and Culture’, in, Bennett, T. & Frow, J. (eds), Handbook of Cultural Analysis: London: Sage.

Bennett, T. 2006, ‘Exhibition, Difference and the Logic of Culture’, in, Karp, I. & Kratz, C. (eds), Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp 46-69.

Bennett, T. 2006, ‘Civic Seeing: Museums and the Organisation of Vision’, in, MacDonald, S. (ed.), Companion to Museum Studies, Oxford: Blackwell, pp 263-281.

Bennett, T. 2006, ‘Culture and Differences: The Challenges of Multiculturalism’, in, Boda, S. & Cifarelli, M. R. (eds), When Culture Makes the Difference: Heritage, Arts and Media in Multicultural Society, Rome: Meltemi Editore, pp 21-37. [Also in Bonet, L. & Négrier, E. (eds), La fin des cultures nationales? Les politiques culturelles à l’épreuve de la diversité, Paris: La Découverte, 19-31.]

Bennett, T., Savage, M., Silva, E., Warde, A. Gayo-Cal, M. & Wright, D. 2005, ‘Cultural Capital and the Cultural Field in Contemporary Britain’, CRESC Working Papers on Socio-cultural Change, No. 3, University of Manchester and the Open University.

Bennett, T. 2005, ‘The Media Sensorium: Cultural Technologies, the Senses and Society’, in, Gillespie, M. (ed.), Understanding Audiences, Milton Keynes: The Open University Press.

Bennett, T. 2003, ‘The Rules of Culture: Exhibition and the Politics of Knowledge’, in, Furuichi, Y. (ed.), Asia in Transition: Representation and Identity, Tokyo: Japan Foundation Asia Centre. [Republished in Journal of the Leisure Studies Association.]

Bennett, T. 2004, ‘Metropolis, Colony, Primitive: Evolution and the Politics of Vision’ in Kopp, K. et al, (eds), Metropolis and Primitive, Berlin: Metzler Verlag.

Bennett, T. & Silva, E. 2004, ‘Everyday Life in Contemporary Culture’, in, Silva, E. & Bennett, T. (eds), Cultures and Everyday Life, Durham: The Sociologypress, pp 1-20.

Bennett, T. 2004, ‘The Invention of the Modern Cultural Fact: Toward a Critique of the Critique of Everyday Life’, in, Silva, E. & Bennett, T. (eds), Cultures and Everyday Life, Durham: The Sociologypress, pp 21-36. [Chinese translation in Cultural Studies, 2006, 6: 25-268.]

Bennett, T. 2002, ‘Stored Virtue: Memory, the Body and the Evolutionary Museum’, in, Radstone, S. & Hodgkin, K. (eds), Regimes of Memory, London & New York: Routledge, pp 40-54. [Republished in Radstone, S. & Hodgkin, K. (eds), Memory Futures: Memory, Subjectivity and Recognition, New Brunswick & London: Transaction Publishers.]

Bennett, T. 2003, ‘Culture and Governmentality’, in, Bratich, J., Packer, J. & McCarthy, C. (eds), Foucault, Cultural Studies and Governmentality, New York: SUNY Press, pp 47-66.

Bennett, T. 2002, ‘Contesting Times: Conflicting Histories in Postcolonial Contexts’, in, Jordan, T. & Pile, S. (eds), Social Divisions and Differences, Oxford: Blackwell, pp 49-78.

Bennett, T. 2002, ‘Sociology and Government’, in, Hamilton, P. & Thompson, K. (eds), The Uses of Sociology, Oxford: Blackwell, pp 41-67.

Bennett, T. Emmison, M. & Frow, J. 2001, ‘Social Class and Cultural Practice in Contemporary Australia’, in, Bennett, T. & Carter, D. (eds), Culture in Australia: Policies, Publics, Programs, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, pp 193-216.

Bennett, T. & Watson, D. 2001, ‘Understanding Everyday Life: Introduction’, in, Bennett, T. & Watson, D. (eds), Understanding Everyday Life, Oxford: Blackwell, pp ix-xxiv.

Bennett, T. 2001, ‘Home and Everyday Life’, in, Bennett, T. and Watson, D. (eds), Understanding Everyday Life, Oxford: Blackwell, pp 1-33.

Bennett, T. 2001, ‘Cultural Policy – Issues of Culture and Governance’, in, Snickars, F. (ed.), Culture, Society and the Market, Stockholm: Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs, pp 13-28.

Bennett, T. 2001, ‘Cultural Policy’, International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioural Sciences, London: Elsevier, pp 3092-7.

Journal Articles (since 2000)
Bennett, T. & Healy, (eds) 2009, Journal of Cultural Economy [Special Double Issue: ‘Assembling Culture’, 2 (1-2).

Bennett, T. 2009, ‘Museum, Field, Expedition and the Circulation of Reference,’ Journal of Cultural Economy 2(1-2):

Bennett, T. & Healy 2009, ‘Assembling culture’, Journal of Cultural Economy, 2(1-2):

Bennett, T. 2009, ‘Counting and Seeing the Action of Literary Form: Franco Moretti and the Sociology of Literature’, Journal of Cultural Sociology, 3(2): 277-297.

Bennett, T. 2008/9, ‘Aesthetics, Government, Freedom’, Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism, 6: 76-91.

Bennett, T. 2008, ‘The Intellectual Genealogies and Possible Futures for Cultural Studies: An Interview with Tony Bennett’ [refereed interview with Professor Huimin Jin, Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences], Cultural Politics, 4(2): 161-182.

Bennett, T. 2007, ‘Making culture, changing society: the perspective of culture studies’, Cultural Studies, vol 21, nos 4-5, 610-629.

Bennett, T. & Dodsworth, J. 2007, ‘Liberalisms, Government, Culture’, Cultural Studies, 21(4-5): 525-548.

Bennett, T. , Grossberg, L. & Morris, M. 2006, ‘Originals Remakes, Assemblages: A Rretrospect on New Keywords’, Criticism, 47(4): 567-71.

Bennett, T. 2007, ‘The Work of Culture’, Journal of Cultural Sociology, 1(1): 31-48.

Bennett, T. 2007, ‘Habitus Clivé: Aesthetics and Politics in the work of Pierre Bourdieu’, New Literary History, 38(1): 201-228.

Bennett, T. 2006, ‘Culture and Society: Theoretical and Biographical Perspectives’, Jiangxia Social Sciences, 6: 233-244.

Bennett, T. 2006, ‘Distinction on the Box: Cultural Capital and the Social Space of Broadcasting’, Cultural Trends, 15(2-3): 193-212.

Bennett, T. & Silva, E. 2006, ‘Cultural Capital and Inequality – Policy Issues and Contexts’, Cultural Trends, 15(2-3): 87-106.

Bennett, T. 2006, ‘Postscript: Cultural Capital and Inequality – Refining the Policy Calculus’, Cultural Trends, 15(2-3): 239-244.

Bennett, T. 2005, ‘The Historical Universal: The Role of Cultural Value in the Historical Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu’, British Journal of Sociology, 56(1): 141-164.

Savage, M. & Bennett, T. 2005, ‘Cultural Capital and Social Inequality’, British Journal of Sociology, 56(1): 1-12.

Bennett, T. 2005, ‘Civic Laboratories: Museums, Cultural Objecthood, and the Governance of the Social’, Cultural Studies, 19(5): 521-547. [Revised version of CRESC Working Papers on Socio-cultural Change, No. 2, University of Manchester and the Open University).

Bennett, T. & Savage, M. 2004, ‘Introduction: Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion’, Cultural Trends, 13(2): 7-14.

Bennett, T. 2003, ‘Representation or Exhibition?’, Journal of Education in Museums, 24: 3-8.

Bennett, T. 2002, ‘Archaeological Autopsy: Objectifying Time and Cultural Governance’, Cultural Values, 6(1-2): 29-48.

Bennett, T. 2001, ‘Pasts Beyond Memories: The Evolutionary Museum Liberal Government and the Politics of Prehistory’, Folk: Journal of the Danish Ethnographic Society, 43(autumn): 49-76.

Bennett, T. 2000, ‘Acting on the Social: Art, Culture, and Government’, American Behavioural Science, 43(9): 1412-1428. [Also in Meredyth, D. & Minson, J. (eds), Citizenship and Cultural Policy, London: Sage Publications, pp. 18-34.]

Reports (since 2000)
Bennett, T., Savage, M., Silva, E., Warde, A., Gayo-Cal, M. & Wright, D. 2006, Media Cultures: A Report on the Organisation of the Media Field in Contemporary Britain, London: British Film Institute.

Bennett, T. 2002, Differing Diversities: Culture, Policy, Citizenship and Diversity, Strasbourg: Council of Europe Policy Note.

Bennett, T. 2001, Differing Diversities: Cultural Policy and Cultural Diversity, Strasbourg: Council of Europe.

Prof Tony Bennett

Visiting Research Professor

To Be Allocated

Qualifications

Professional affiliations
Director ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change
Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities
Professorial Fellow, School of Culture and Communications, University of Melbourne

Research Interests

My general interests are in areas where the concerns of sociology, cultural studies and cultural history intersect. Areas of special interest include: (i) the history and theory of museums, and the role played by diverse systems of representing and remembering the past in the construction of particular ways of being and acting in time; (ii) the history and theory of the development of modern forms of cultural governance and their role in shaping social conduct in the context of different regimes of citizenship; (iii) statistical and ethnographic studies of everyday cultural practice and their relevance to the concerns of both contemporary class theory and cultural policy development; (iv) the development of forms of cultural analysis, drawing on the perspectives of science studies and governmentality theory, that are capable of throwing new light on the relation between culture and the social; and (iv) the relationships between social theory and cultural theory.

Current projects underway in these areas include an ESRC funded inquiry into the relationships between cultural capital and social exclusion in contemporary Britain. This inquiry, conducted with Dr. Elizabeth Silva of the Open University and with Professor Mike Savage and Professor Alan Warde of the University of Manchester, constitutes a major empirical and theoretical engagement with the work of Pierre Bourdieu. It is also related to current cultural policy concerns through partnership arrangements with the Department of Culture, Media and Sport, the Office of National Statistics, the British Film Institute, and the four national Arts Councils.

Work is also beginning on two new projects. One, Making Culture, Changing Society focuses on the relations between the emergence of a range of distinctive entities associated with the modern concept of culture (art, aesthetics, heritage) and their enrolment in liberal forms of government. The second, Making and Mobilising Worlds, considers the role played by the relationships between collecting expeditions in the fieldwork phase of anthropology and the practices of museums and other exhibition and heritage forms as agents of social change.

Recent editorial projects include, with Professor Lawrence Grossberg of the Univesity of North Carolina and Professor Meaghan Morris of Lingnan University in Hong Kong, New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society, published by Blackwells in 2005. I am also editing a Handbook of Cultural Analysis for Sage Publications with Professor John Frow of the University of Melbourne.

Recent Publications

Bennett, T. (2006) ‘Exhibition, difference and the logic of culture’ in I. Karp and C. Kratz (eds) Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations, Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 46-69.

Bennett, T. (2006) ‘Civic seeing: museums and the organisation of vision’, in S. MacDonald (ed) Companion to Museum Studies, Oxford: Blackwell, 263-281.

Bennett, T. (2006) ‘Culture and differences: the challenges of multiculturalism’ in S. Boda and Maria Rita Cifarelli (eds) When Culture Makes the Difference: Heritage, Arts and Media in Multicultural Society, Rome: Meltemi Editore, 21-37.

Bennett, T. (2006) ‘Distinction on the box: cultural capital and the social space of broadcasting’, Cultural Trends, 15 (2 and 3), 193-212.

Bennett, T. (2005) ‘The media sensorium: cultural technologies, the senses and society’ in M. Gillespie (ed) Understanding Audiences, Milton Keynes: The Open University Press.

Bennett, T. (2005) ‘The historical universal: the role of cultural value in the historical sociology of Pierre Bourdieu’, British Journal of Sociology, 56 (1), 141-164.

Bennett, T. (2005) ‘Civic laboratories: museums, cultural objecthood, and the governance of the social’, Cultural Studies, 19 (5), 521-547. 

Bennett, T. (2004) Pasts Beyond Memory : Evolution, Museums, Colonialism, London and New York : Routledge.

Silva, E. and Bennett, T. (eds) (2004) Contemporary Culture and Everyday Life, Durham : The Sociologypress.

Bennett, T. (2002) ‘Contesting times : conflicting histories in postcolonial contexts' in Jordan and Pile (eds) Social Divisions and Differences, Oxford : Blackwells, pp. 49-78.

Bennett, T. (2002) ‘Sociology and government' in Hamilton and Thompson (eds) The Uses of Sociology, Oxford : Blackwells, pp. 41-67.

Bennett, T. (2002) ‘Culture and governmentality' in Jack Bratich, Jeremy Packer and Cameron McCarthy (eds) Foucault, Cultural Studies and Governmentality, New York : SUNY Press, pp. 47-66.

Bennett, T. (2002) ‘Stored virtue: memory, the body and the evolutionary museum', in S. Radstone and K. Hodgin (eds) Regimes of Memory, London and New York : Routledge, pp. 40-54.

Bennett, T. and Carter, D. (eds) (2001), Culture in Australia: Policies, Publics, Programs, Melbourne : Cambridge University Press, 384 pp.

Bennett, T. (2001) Differing Diversities : Cultural Policy and Cultural Diversity, Strasbourg: Council of Europe.

Bennett, T. and Watson, D. (eds) (2001) Understanding Everyday Life, Oxford : Blackwells.

Bennett, T. (2000) 'Intellectuals, culture, policy: the technical, the practical and the critical', Pavis Papers in Social and Cultural Research , no. 2, Pavis Centre for Social and Cultural Research, Milton Keynes, The Open University.

Bennett, T. Frow, J. and Emmison, M. (1999) Accounting for Tastes : Australian Everyday Cultures, Melbourne : Cambridge University Press.

Bennett, T. (1998) Culture: A Reformer's Science, Sydney, Allen and Unwin; London and New York, Sage.

Bennett, T. (1998) 'Pedagogic objects, clean eyes and popular instruction: on sensory regimes and museum didactics', Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science and Technology, vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 345-71.

Bennett, T. (1998) 'Cultural studies : a reluctant discipline', Cultural Studies, vol. 12, no. 4, pp. 528-45.

Bennett, T. (1998) 'Culture and policy: acting on the social', Cultural Policy, vol. 4, no. 2.

Bennett, T. (1997) 'Speaking to the eyes : museums, legibility and the social order' in Macdonald, S. (ed.) Politics of Display : Science as Culture, London, Routledge.

Bennett, T. (1995) The Birth of the Museum : History, Theory, Politics, London and New York, Routledge.

Bennett, T. (1995) 'Figuring the audience' in Hay, J. and Grossberg, L. (eds) The Audience and its Landscape, Boulder, CO, Westview Press.

Bennett, T. (1990) Outside Literature, London, Routledge.

A repository of research publications and other research outputs can be viewed at The Open University's Open Research Online.