Routledge International Handbook of the Sociology of Art and Culture

The Routledge Handbook of the Sociology of Arts and Culture offers a comprehensive overview of sociology of art and culture, focusing especially – though not exclusively – on the visual arts, literature, music, and digital culture. Extending, and critiquing, Bourdieu’s influential analysis of cultural capital, the distinguished international contributors explore the extent to which cultural omnivorousness has eclipsed highbrow culture, the role of age, gender and class on cultural practices, the character of aesthetic preferences, the contemporary significance of screen culture, and the restructuring of popular culture. TheHandbook critiques modes of sociological determinism in which cultural engagement is seen as the simple product of the educated middle classes. The contributions explore the critique of Eurocentrism and the global and cosmopolitan dimensions of cultural life. The book focuses particularly on bringing cutting edge ‘relational’ research methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative, to bear on these debates. This handbook not only describes the field, but also proposes an agenda for its development which will command major international interest.

Laurie Hanquinet is a Lecturer in the Department of Sociology at the University of York. She specializes in the quantitative analysis of culture. Her main fields of interest are sociology of culture and art as well as social sciences methodology. She has undertaken research on the visitors of modern and contemporary art museums, on the role of artists in the society and on different dimensions of cultural participation.

Mike Savage became Professor of Sociology at the LSE in September 2012, where he is active in leading the International inequalities Institute which began in 2015. Previously he was Professor at the University of Manchester, where he had been Director of the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) from 2004 to 2010, and Professor at the University of York, where he founded the European Centre for Cultural Exploration from 2010-2012.