Fields of Restricted Massification

• In Event: 30661 - Section on Sociology of Consumers and Consumption Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 1. Production of taste

Abstract

The opposition between art and commerce underlies many sociological theories of cultural production. Bourdieusian field analysis offers a generative and highly influential framework for understanding how cultural products take shape, emphasizing the difference between symbolically oriented producers in a restricted field and economically oriented producers in a mass production field. To the extent these models are treated as dichotomous field-types, the analytic division of restricted and largescale dynamics carries problematic assumptions for the nature of autonomy, audiences, and legitimacy in cultural production fields. The current paper introduces the concept of “restricted massification” to explain the ways that the ostensibly competing logics of restricted (artistic) and mass (commercial) production co-exist in cultural fields. It challenges the ideal-typical binary by demonstrating that (1) cultural production fields incorporate economic and symbolic definitions of legitimacy to varying degrees, and (2) producers rely on multiple logics beyond the economic/symbolic divide, including democratic/distinctive orientations to consumer audiences and cooperative/competitive orientations to other producers. Drawing on 35 in-depth interviews with craft brewers in Canada, the analysis provides empirical support for the co-existence of rival logics in cultural production fields. This hybridity suggests the need for greater analytic flexibility in Bourdieusian approaches to cultural fields. Lastly, the paper proposes several future directions for studying the relationships between art and commerce in cultural production.

Author

• Ethan Shapiro, University of Toronto