Читать книгу Sociology of the Arts - Victoria D. Alexander - Страница 19

An approach is a group of theories that study social phenomena from the same basic perspective, with a similar set of assumptions or metatheories. Though they share metatheories, the specific theories will differ on many details, and may even be contradictory at points. There are many different approaches in sociology. For instance, a common distinction is made between positivistic and interpretive approaches. Positivists tend to measure variables and test hypotheses. Their goal is to create generalizable theories. Positivists are likely to argue that aesthetics and meaning are not amenable to empirical analysis, and thus these topics must be left to art historians and philosophers. Instead, positivists study “objective” aspects of the art world. They may research, for instance, the demographic characteristics of art museum audiences, the repertoires of orchestras, or the effects of the Internet on the strategies and earnings of recording companies.

In contrast, interpretive sociology is concerned with questions of meaning. How is meaning created and maintained in social systems? What is the relevance of people’s cultural background? What does a particular artwork mean? Most interpretivists believe that meaning cannot be abstracted from its particular situation and is, therefore, ungeneralizable. Sociology, in this view, is about understanding subjective experience and, theoretically, interpretivists are interested in explaining particular situations. Interpretive sociologists might study the meanings of art objects or how people create meaning in their lives through the consumption of art.

There is a place in sociology for both positivistic and interpretive approaches, though some scholars from one camp look down on scholars from the other camp. Indeed, it is important to see sociology, as with all academic study, as a competition among theories and approaches. This book presents five basic approaches (reflection, shaping, production, consumption, and constitutive, as described in the subsequent chapters). Each of these approaches looks at art from a particular vantage point, but they do not map neatly onto a positivistic/interpretivist distinction, which cross‐cuts all of them. In some places, the different approaches may seem complementary, but in others, contradictory. This is the nature of academic work.