Abstract
Who has the power to institutionalize culture? How is it that cultural forms become legitimated and appropriated by certain groups? And what are the organizational forms that guarantee the continuity of the interlocks among classifications, etiquette, and resources in the long run? This article explores these questions by observing the struggle over the institutionalization of opera as high culture during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century in Buenos Aires, a region of the world understudied by cultural sociologists. It contends that to answer these questions we need to observe the contested dynamics though which the process of institutionalization happens. It also shows how this contestation affects, in the long-term, the processes of evaluation and legitimation of the classification upheld, and the consequences it has in terms of audience stratification. In the Discussion section, I present a novel framework for the study of pathways to high culture institutionalization that highlights how the role of the state and competing stakeholders can introduce variable relationships among the elites, the arts, and social closure.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 169-196 |
Number of pages | 28 |
Journal | Theory and Society |
Volume | 43 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 2014 |
Funding
Acknowledgments Support for this research came from a Small Grant awarded by the University of Connecticut. I owe the stimulus to write this article to Gaye Tuchman and to an invitation by Paul DiMaggio to present my work on opera in Buenos Aires at the Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Center at Princeton University. Previous versions were presented at ASA and SSHA annual meetings, at the UC Davis Culture Workshop, and at the Yale Center for Comparative Research workshop. Marco Santoro corrected some of my overly simplistic assumptions about the organizational sociology of culture. Pablo Palomino made sure this study was conducted with historiographical rigor. Owen Whooley, Gabi Abend, Andrew Deener, Peter Stamatov, Alison Gerber, Pierre Kremp, Lisa McCormick, Phil Smith, Julia Adams, Nick Wilson, Matt Mahler, Rene Almeling, Tim Dowd, Michael McQuarrie, John Hall, Rob Jansen, and Mariana Heredia gave pointed criticisms and advice. Horacio González, the National Library Director, and Ezequiel Grimson, the Director of the Music Department of the National Library of the Argentine Republic made sure I had access to all the documents the Library had on the Colón—to them my deepest gratitude. I’d also like to thank the Theory and Society Editors and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable advice during the editorial process.
Keywords
- Classification
- Cultural entrepreneurship
- Elites
- High culture
- Social closure
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- History
- Sociology and Political Science