The Economics of Monumental Production: How Monumental Sculptures Mediated Debates over Lithuanian’s Economic Transition

• In Event: 20420 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 5: Materiality and Affordances

Abstract

How do monuments mediate economic debates? Recent research emphasizes that visual and material qualities of cultural objects constrain their interpretations, shaping the contours of the discussions they catalyze. Materiality, in this literature, is typically treated as a bundle of aesthetic qualities that evoke responses through sensory processes. Yet, as sociologists of cultural production have long argued, the materials of which art objects are made can also be understood as commodities, which circulate in networks of economic exchange. Bridging these two streams of sociological research, I explore how these economic networks enable and constrain the narratives afforded by material forms. I focus on two contentious monumental sculptures constructed in post-Soviet Vilnius, Lithuania, at different points in the country’s transition from a socialized to market-based economy. For both case studies, I draw on archival materials and key informant interviews to examine how resources were accessed to build these structures; how, in the process, people interpreted these transactions to comment on Lithuania’s economic conditions and dependencies (real and aspirational); and how economic framings of the materials used (e.g., bronze, steel, granite) shaped the meanings assigned to the monuments over time. I find that the two initiatives both facilitated debates over Lithuania’s post-Soviet economic transition. One raised questions about how to manage the country’s international resource dependencies, and the later, instead, prompted a look inward, catalyzing a reckoning about how taxpayers’ dollars should be spent in times of economic scarcity. Together, these cases reveal a set of mechanisms by which the commodified materials of which monuments are made can enable and constrain public discourse on economic development.

Author

• Andreja Siliunas, University of Virginia