Content uploaded by Susanne Janssen
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Susanne Janssen on Jan 31, 2021
Content may be subject to copyright.
1
Accepted manuscript of:
Susanne Janssen (2001). The empirical study of careers in literature and the arts.
In: Dick Schram and Gerard Steen (Eds.) The Psychology and Sociology of Literature.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins, pp. 323-357.
https://doi.org/10.1075/upal.35.19jan
The empirical study of careers in literature and the arts
Susanne Janssen
1
1. Introduction
In the last few decades, scholars from a variety of disciplines – (art) history, literary studies, sociology,
mass communication studies, psychology, and cultural economics - have contributed to our understand-
ing of production and profession in literature and the arts. Their studies cover different periods and socie-
ties and address a broad range of topics which, in one way or another, relate to the work and careers of
those involved in the production and distribution of culture. As space is limited, this rich line of research
will be reviewed only in part in this article.
Primarily, the focus will be on careers in literature and the visual arts, although occasionally at-
tention will also be paid to other (both artistic and non-artistic) occupations, because such comparisons
have yielded useful insights in the past.
Secondly, this article focuses on writers and artists; other professionals in the field of art and lit-
erature, including publishers, editors, agents, dealers, critics, and reviewers will be discussed mainly in
terms of how they affect the work and careers of writers and artists. We have restricted our focus in this
way for reasons of brevity, but also because there is a relative absence of systematic, empirical research
into such ‘para-artistic’ occupations and their practitioners, especially for the postwar period.
Thirdly, this contribution will deal with the work of writers and other artists in a thematic fash-
ion, rather than focusing on the gamut of theoretical perspectives and approaches in this area. The fol-
lowing sections shed light on the changing support structures on which writers and artists have depended
for their livelihood and to gain other types of recognition for their work (section 2), the various ways in
which mediators shape individual works and whole careers (section 3), the characteristics of artistic oc-
cupations and their implications (section 4), and the recruitment and career development of artists (sec-
tion 5). The article concludes with some comments on the state-of-the-art of research on artistic work
and careers.
Of course, the above topics and questions were not picked at random. They stem from several
theoretical perspectives and research traditions that were developed by empirically oriented sociologists
of literature and the arts from the 1970s onwards, including the production-of-culture perspective (Peter-
son 1994); the empirical study of literature and literary systems theory (Schmidt 1980,1993 and 1998);
art world research (Becker 1982; Gilmore 1990); and field theory, also referred to as the institutional
analysis of the field of cultural (literary) production (Bourdieu 1993; Van Rees 1983). Although these
approaches have different points of departure, employ different concepts and methodologies, and focus
on different aspects of the production of art and literature, there are no clear-cut divisions between them.
Many individual researchers and studies, with good reason, can be and have been considered to be repre-
sentative of more than one approach. It lies outside the scope of this article to detail all the similarities
and differences among the above perspectives and approaches.
2
It is most important in this context that
1
Correspondence to: s.janssen@eshcc.eur.nl.
2
This has been done extensively elsewhere. See, among others, Blau (1988; Zolberg 1990; Andringa 1998).
Zolberg (1990) discusses the differences between Becker’s ‘art world’ approach and Bourdieu’s ‘field’ analysis.
2
they have illuminated, in one way or another, the thoroughly social nature of artistic production by fore-
grounding the social processes through which all artists acquire the necessary resources to do their job.
Writers and other artists have to acquire financial resources to support themselves and their fam-
ilies, creative resources to help conceptualize aesthetic expression, material resources to actualize artistic
work, distributional resources to establish contacts with the art world and exchange their work, and criti-
cal resources to legitimate their work and facilitate further resource acquisition. Becker (1982) illustrates
this for a variety of artistic media including literature, the visual arts, and the performing arts. His work
depicts artists as ‘workers’ whose creations, far from being the result of individual effort, are the prod-
ucts of collective action by often nameless collaborators. But the social nature of artistic production not
only refers to the way in which a variety of people are actually involved in the production of a work it-
self. Sociological research has also highlighted underlying processes and conditions; the conditions
which made the production possible, and those which determine its subsequent course. It has illuminated
how social developments and institutions affect, among other things, who becomes an artist, how they
become an artist, how they are then able to practice their art, and how they can ensure that their work is
produced, performed, and made available to a public. Furthermore, it has shown that judgments and
evaluations of works and schools of art, determining their subsequent place in literary and art history, are
not simply individual and ‘purely aesthetic’ decisions, but socially enabled and socially constructed
events. It should be noted, however, that this could not have been achieved without the work that has
been done in various other fields of sociology, especially on stratification, work and occupations, and
organizations, as well as in the humanities and other social sciences. For example, (art) historians have
provided excellent documentation on the changing nature of artistic occupations, emphasizing the role of
patronage, the relation between the artist and the public, and the shift from craft roles to art roles. Psy-
chologist have illuminated the personality traits and skills involved in artistic creativity, while cultural
economists have shed light, among other things, on the characteristics of artistic labor markets. Hence,
although work done in the (empirical) sociology of literature and the arts serves as the main point of de-
parture, this article will liberally draw on insights and data provided by other disciplines as well.
2. Support structures for the arts
Unless they create or perform only for their own pleasure, writers and other artists depend directly or
indirectly on the social structures that support their work. No matter how much they claim to be uncon-
cerned about these, they are obliged to gain their favor in order to obtain some compensation for their
efforts.
3
Audiences are only one of several different types of support structures for the arts, and are not
always the most important. Support structures may encompass a gamut of mechanisms, processes, insti-
tutions, or agencies that reward or penalize artistic work. They enable some artists to earn a livelihood
and to gain other types of recognition while denying such material and symbolic rewards to others. The
allocation of rewards for artistic work may be monopolized by a single structure or may be realized
through a plurality of structures. These structures range from simple, direct relations between artist and
patron to complex systems involving mediators, networks, and audiences. Support structures provide
avenues for obtaining jobs or commissions and for recognizing talent and innovations; moreover, they
spread such new knowledge to broader constituencies, including the publics or audiences for the arts that
have become pervasive in modern society. Historically, in Western European society, their concrete
For a comparison of the ‘production of culture’ perspective and the ‘institutional’ or ‘field’ approach, see, for
example, Van Rees (1985). Bourdieu et al. (1989) and Dörner and Vogt (1994: Chapter 5) consider the
differences between ‘field’ and ‘systems’ theory.
3
Here, following Zolberg (1990), the term ‘support structures’ is used. Others have coined them ‘distribution
and reward systems’ (Albrecht et al. 1970) or simply ‘reward structures’ (Crane 1976; Rosengren 1983).
3
forms include guilds, (church, royal, municipal, and private) patronage, academies, state bureaucratic
administration, and the market.
A large body of research has shown how these structures, in different ways, affect artistic careers
as well as the art styles and forms that are produced and disseminated for public consumption. It lies out-
side the scope of this article to detail the subsequent support structures on which writers and other artists
have depended to gain material and symbolic compensation for their work. Individual European coun-
tries show important variations both in the degree of control exercised by certain support structures and
as regards the exact time frame in which they developed and dominated the allocation of rewards for ar-
tistic work.
4
However, roughly, the scenario was similar for most of Europe: patronage declined and the
market grew.
5
Increasingly, publishers and book sellers took over from literary patrons
6
as facilitators
for the writer,
7
and the patrons of art, as well the academic system, were displaced by the dealer-critic
system in painting.
8
Everywhere new publics for art and literature changed their very nature.
Implications of the transformation from patronage to market
As an obvious paradox, as the market began the develop, writers and artists found themselves able to
affirm the irreducibility of the work of art to the status of single article of merchandise and, at the same
time, the singularity of the intellectual and artistic condition. Bourdieu (1985) argues that the emergence
of the work of art as a commodity, and the rise of a distinct category of producers of cultural goods spe-
cifically intended for the market, to some extent prepared the ground for a pure theory of art, i.e., the idea
of art as art. It did so by dissociating art-as-commodity from art-as-pure-symbolism that was intended
for purely symbolic appropriation. The end of the dependence upon patrons and direct commissions,
with the development of an anonymous market, increased the liberty of writers and artists. However, as
Bourdieu points out, this freedom was only relative, as it entailed their submission to the laws of the
market of symbolic goods, that is, to a form of demand which necessarily lags behind the supply of the
commodity. Writers and artists could hardly fail to notice this demand though the sales figures and other
forms of pressure, explicit or diffuse, exercised by publishers, theater managers, and art dealers. In this
line of argument, the ‘inventions’ of Romanticism - culture as representation of a superior reality and the
4
Although, for example, the academic structures of France were widely imitated in other European countries,
they achieved not the same central position as in France. While the Académie Francaise (1634) dominated
French literary life for centuries, its English counterpart, the Royal Society (1662), never regimented English
letters (Parkhurst Clark 1987).
5
Compared to Europe, the relationships among state, market, society and the arts developed differently in the
United States (Parkhurst Clark 1987; Zolberg 1990). The tradition of and kinds of support structures that had
been established in Europe were absent. There was no established aristocracy; until well into the twentieth
century, the state was relatively weak; and there existed no single religious institution as prominent as the
Roman Catholic Church on the European continent. On the whole, what public sources there were tended to be
allocated for cultural institutions such as museums, and came from municipalities and states, controlled by local
elites. See, among others, DiMaggio (1982).
6
Viala (1985) and Parkhurst Clark (1987) provide analyses of the role of literary (state) patronage in seventeenth
and eighteenth century France, while Griffin (1996) considers the role of literary patrons in England between
1650 and 1800.
7
For the developments in England, c.f. Laurenson (1972), Gross (1991), Altick (1963), Watt (1957), and
Williams (1961). Gedin (1977) traces the development of the literary market in Denmark, Norway, Finland, and
Sweden, while Tebbel (1975 and 1978) sketches the development of the American publishing industry between
1865 and 1940. Rarisch (1976) details the development of the literary market in nineteenth-century Germany.
Berman (1983) and Parkhurst Clark (1987) provide interesting accounts of how the emergence of a literary
market affected the social status and work of writers in Germany and France, respectively.
8
White and White (1993), Moulin (1987), Lenman (1997), and Stolwijk (1998) detail the development of the art
market in nineteenth-century France, Germany, and the Netherlands, respectively.
4
notion of free, disinterested, spontaneous ‘creation’, founded on innate inspiration, appear to be just so
many reactions to the pressures of an impersonal market.
Thus, the appearance of an anonymous ‘bourgeois’ public, and the proliferation of new market-
ing strategies coincided with the rejection of bourgeois aesthetics and with the methodical attempt to dis-
tinguish the artist and the intellectual from other commoners by positing the unique products of ‘creative
genius’ against interchangeable commodities. Since that time, the production of culture has come to con-
sist of two differential systems: one of restricted production and one of large-scale production (Bourdieu
1985). The former field (for instance poetry) tends to evolve toward the model of a ‘reputational’ profes-
sion (where professional hierarchy is based on reputation), with the ultimate reward becoming part of the
‘canon’. On the other hand, large-scale production is similar to ‘market’ professions, where hierarchy is
based on market success (DiMaggio 1987a) .
From about the mid nineteenth century, different styles and movements began to follow each
other thick and fast, as innovation, originality, and breach of tradition became the norm. No longer
bound by a set of self-evident rules imposed upon them by one or another external authority, writers and
artists became subject to ‘aesthetic uncertainty.’ No longer did they agree on form, technique, substance,
and style, or on criteria by which to differentiate art from non-art or good works from mediocre ones.
The combined effect of this lack of generally accepted standards and the requirement for originality and
innovation was to reinforce aesthetic uncertainty among writers and other artists, and to turn critics and
other experts into the most qualified judges of aesthetic value.
Thus, writers and artists gradually faced a new situation, offering more freedom, but at the same
time rendering their lives more precarious and subject to impersonal market relations and uncertainties
(Pelles 1963; Sutherland 1976; Laurenson 1972; Pevsner 1970). In the twentieth century, increasingly
complex markets developed encompassing commercial producers, distributors, and outlets; economic
agents took many forms, including entrepeneurships, corporations, and conglomerates. At the same time,
technological developments, such as the radio, offset printing, TV, and advances in the electronic and
computer industries, empowered an already extraordinary complex institutionalized base for the produc-
tion and dissemination of the arts and altered significantly the nature of their consumption.
Modern forms of patronage
It should not be overlooked, however, that certain modern forms of patronage have to some extent taken
over from the traditional relationship. Writers may write on commission for television, for example
(Bradbury 1971; Fohrbeck and Wiesand 1972; Sutherland 1978).
9
Another modern corporate patron for
writers is the university, especially the American university, which in the past decades has supported
many authors as ‘creative writers’ or ‘writers-in residence.’ The same holds mutatis mutandis for other
categories of artists. Photographers may be employed by newspapers or advertising agencies, instead of
relying on freelance earnings for ‘art’ photography (Rosenblum 1978). Painters are often commissioned
by industrial corporations to execute works, or employed as community artists or as ‘artists-in-residence’
at universities (Berry 1970; Braden 1978; Dubin 1987; Mennell 1976).
And perhaps the most important development in the twentieth century has been the growth of
government patronage of the arts (Minihan 1977; Pearson 1980; Useem 1976; DiMaggio and Useem
1978). In the nineteenth century, the state as an artistic patron more or less disappeared in most Western
countries, but with the postwar welfare state it returned, and in some areas - such as opera - became more
firmly entrenched than ever. In most of Europe and North America, state patronage operates at the mo-
ment through national and regional arts councils, funding bodies, and associations, in conjunction with
local institutions and authorities; through grants to artists and writers; and funding for projects. Although
one would not expect any direct intervention by the respective ‘patron’ in what the artist actually pro-
duces, it is clear that funding bodies are no more neutral than any social organization, and that the suc-
cess of some artists in gaining sponsorship and the failure of others is likely to be related to the type of
9
Bradbury (1971) notes that the BBC is probably the richest and largest patron in the history of literature.
5
work they do (Pearson 1979). That is to say, it is still true in our day that art which is successful in reach-
ing a public by being ‘bought’ achieves this through various social structures and processes, and not
simply because it is, in some sense, just good art.
3. The formative role of mediators
With the development of the market as the most important structure for artistic creation and distribution,
people and institutions who are in effect mediators have taken on an increasingly crucial place in the ca-
reers of writers and other artists. They became vital agents to them, not only with respect to the immedi-
ate problem of economic survival, but also the valuation of their work and the establishment of their rep-
utations. The shaping influence of these mediators, in particular their legitimizing power, has led some
sociologists to coin them ‘co-producers’ of the work of art (Bourdieu 1980). For visual artists, mediators
include galleries, auction houses, curators, art journals, critics, and other artists. Counterparts for writers
include agents, publishers, editors, critics, reviewers, book sellers, libraries, and fellow writers. The in-
terplay among them structures the individual and collective situations of writers and artists.
Other institutional systems serve less obviously as instruments of mediation. During the 1970s,
books began to be developed in conjunction with movie and television presentations. The Hollywood
movie industry had used literature from its inception (Tebbel 1978), but in the late 1970s, the simultane-
ous development of a work in print, movie, and television became widespread practice. Thus, book sales
were tied in directly to the success of non-print presentations. Today, film companies and television net-
works are capable of greatly enlarging novelists’ audiences (Whiteside 1981; Brasey 1987) and keeping
their work in the public eye long after their death (Rusch 1999). Educational institutions also mediate the
relationship between writers and readers. School books tell students whom to read and what kinds of
things to say about texts.
10
Curricula emphasize some works to such an extent that they become institu-
tionalized as canonical literature. All the while, educators’ book orders help to determine which books
stay in print and which enjoy repeated printing.
The past decades witnessed a flood of research on how mediators in the field of art and culture shape
individual works and whole careers. Much attention has been paid to two interrelated aspects of the work
of mediators and their effects on artistic careers and products: gatekeeping and decision-making.
11
These
concepts originate primarily from research into news production (White 1950; Breed 1955; Tuchman
1978), but they can be applied more or less equally to other areas of cultural production (Hirsch 1977;
Peterson 1994). With respect to news, the chain extends from ‘noticing’ an event in the world, through
writing about or filming it, and preparing a news item for transmission. In the case of a book, a movie, a
television show, or a piece of popular music, a similar chain extends from an idea in someone’s head,
through an editorial selection process and many phases of transformation, to the final product.
Both feminist thinking and the deconstructionist concern with the artificiality of the canon have
drawn attention to the selectivity of publishers and other gatekeepers and a number of studies on the fate
of female artists have been carried out form the perspective of gatekeeping or decision-making.
Tuchman (1989), for example, provides a fascinating study of invasion and inclusion. She shows how
Victorian women writers were ‘edged out’ of their dominant authorship position, once men had caught
on to how profitable writing fiction could be. Male editors and literary critics worked together to elevate
the aesthetic status of the novel form in part by denigrating the contributions of the early female novel-
ists.
10
For an analysis of the part played by the educational system in the production of consumers endowed with a
propensity and aptitude to consume canonical works and in the reproduction of the unequal distribution of this
propensity and this aptitude, and, hence, of the distinctive value of these works, see Bourdieu and Darbel (1969)
and Bourdieu (1984).
11
These activities can also be described as ‘selecting’ and ‘processing’ (McQuail 1994: 212).
6
Gatekeeping
The term ‘gatekeeping’ has been applied when the focus is on judgments whether to admit persons or
works into a cultural field; it has to do with accepting or rejecting works or their creators and the conse-
quences of these choices for subsequent works and creators. Gatekeepers in the arts can exercise their
function at different stages, inspired or forced by a variety of considerations and constraints. In the case
of literature, publishers can prevent manuscripts from reaching the market, as can censorship of the type
which demands pre-publication licensing. On the other hand, gatekeepers may play their selective part
once books have been published; their fate depends in part upon the decisions made by critics, distribu-
tors and, again, censors - although this time of the post-publication variety. Driving forces behind gate-
keepers’ decisions range from political and moral concerns, commercial interests, to ‘purely’ aesthetic
motives. In most cases, they consist of a mixture of these.
Censors, publishers, editors, and dealers
The effects of political and legal constraints on artists’ work and careers has been one of the pervasive
themes in the sociology of the arts.
12
Numerous studies have demonstrated how government bodies and
laws, either through the carrot of support or the stick of censorship, accomplish exclusion and channeling
in literature and other cultural domains. Understandably, the focus has been on how censorship operates
to reduce freedom of expression, but, as Speier (1977) notes, censorship may also provide the stimulus
for more complex symbol expression, illusion, euphemism, analogies, and the like.
In-depth analyses of publishing houses have shown that their capacity to exclude or promote can
hardly be overestimated (Powell 1985). Coser et al. (1982), in their comprehensive study of the contem-
porary American publishing industry, argue that writers are only the ‘junior partners’ in a world where
publishers and editors reign supreme. Working from in-house observations and hundreds of interviews,
they describe in detail what gets into print and why and how publishers and editors in their roles as gate
keepers of culture more or less decide what ideas enter the mainstream of society. In their studies of ro-
mance novel publishing, Markert (1984) and Thurston (1987) show that editors sometimes play a much
more active role than is implied in the concept of gatekeeping, which can be described as ‘gatemaking.’
In the 1970s, the editors of a number of American romance publishing houses consciously articulated a
new formula for romance novels, and thus provided opportunities for a whole new set of authors. In the
nineteenth century, there is a good deal of evidence that writers took into account the demands of the
powerful mediators of that time in actually writing their novels. Some examples of this are documented
in Sutherland (1976). For instance, the demand by the extremely powerful circulating libraries for the
three-decker novel forced writers to comply with this form. Novels intended for serial publication in
weekly issues were written in that form, for example, with cliff-hanging endings for each episode.
Research into the world of the visual arts has revealed how art dealers, gallery owners, and cura-
tors play a similar part as publishers and editors, determining to a large extent which works, artists, and
schools come before the public as well as urging artists to produce certain types of work (Bystryn 1978;
Moulin 1987; Greenfeld 1988; Alemann 1997). Simpson (1981) details the role of professional dealers
or gallery owners in Soho who act as gatekeepers to the contemporary New York art world and whose
major activity consists of matching collectors and painters. Like independent agents spanning organiza-
tional boundaries in the recording industry, dealers seek artistic ‘talent’ in one group and corresponding
buyers in a different group. Successful Soho artists are the ones who recognize the privileged ‘entrepre-
neurial’ position of their dealer and listen to his/her feedback about clients’ aesthetic sensibilities.
12
Watt (1957); Lowenthal (1961); Thomas (1969); Swayze (1962); Boyer (1968); Clor 1969; Griswold (1981);
Davis (1984); Dubin (1992).
7
Critics and reviewers
Another line of research has shed light on the formative role of criticism in the establishment and surviv-
al of artistic reputations. Writers/artists and their critic-advocates seeking recognition make claims of
creativity, quality, innovativeness, excellence - that is genius. While sociological theory and method are
not useful in identifying ‘genius’ in works or their makers, they have proved very helpful in demystify-
ing canon formation, the processes by which claims of ‘genius’ or ‘quality’ come to be agreed upon and
reputations established. A number of specific studies can be cited: Van Rees (1983a) details how texts, in
order to be regarded as being of high quality, have to pass through the selection filters of three distinct
types of critics: reviewers, essayists, and academic critics. Their complementary activities determine to a
great extent which texts are regarded as legitimate forms of fiction; what rank they are supposed to occu-
py within the hierarchy of literary works; and what statements count as proper and relevant ways of
characterizing these texts. Among these three types of criticism, the day-to-day reviewing of new literary
books has the lowest status. Nevertheless, the daily reviewers have one important advantage. They are
the first gatekeepers to evaluate the literary text after its publication. It is true that the readers and editors
of the publishing houses come before them, but it is also true that the essayists and academics arrive on
the scene later on - sometimes very much later (Verdaasdonk 1985). Janssen (1997) examines the selec-
tion Dutch reviewers made from the supply of new fiction titles in the 1970s and 1990s and sheds light
on the conditions under which they decided whether to review or ignore certain works. Rosengren (1987)
shows that reviewers may have a considerable influence over the literary frame of reference of later gen-
erations of reviewers, essayist and academic critics (just as their own frame of reference has largely been
shaped by previous generations of critics). The question of how the value and nature of literary works
come to be agreed upon by critics and writers’ reputations established is illuminated in a number of case
studies (Van Rees 1987; Rodden 1989; Van Dijk 1994; Janssen 1994).
A comprehensive study of the contemporary French art market (Moulin 1987) demonstrates how
critics ‘discover’ new artistic geniuses all the time in a promotional role that plays a critical part in the
distribution of paintings to sophisticated buyers who would not dream of being influenced by advertis-
ing. Other studies of the contemporary art market in Israel (Greenfeld 1989) and New York (Wolfe
1975; Crane 1987) underline the promotional capacity of critics as well as their leading role in the con-
struction of aesthetic value.
Cross-cultural exchange
Gatekeepers are also important when artistic expressions created in one art world are introduced in an-
other (Griswold 1992; Nies 1996; Voorst 1997). Griswold (1992) shows how English publishers, acting
as gatekeepers for the work of Nigerian novelists, have strongly affected the work that these novelists
produce. In selecting novels that fitted an outmoded model of tradition-versus-modernity, they have cre-
ated a very influential genre which is at odds both with the reality of Nigerian life and with the intentions
of most Nigerian novelists. In another study, Griswold (1987) considers the export of meaning beyond
national borders and the transformations of meaning which occur through this process. Comparing
American, British, and West Indian reviews of the work of the Barbadian novelist George Lamming, she
finds stunning cross-cultural divergences. Race is highlighted in American reviews of Lamming’s nov-
els, yet virtually ignored in British discussions, which focus instead on the novels’ language and literary
qualities. In contrast to both, West Indian reviewers concentrate on questions of personal and national
identity. Lowenthal (1964) details how Dostojevski has been reevaluated by German literary critics to fit
with the changing moods of the German intelligentsia. Rollin (1976) outlines mechanisms by which
works of popular culture are transevaluated as literature.
In one way or another, all of these researchers show that the evaluation of works and their mak-
ers depends on the (shifting) standards and tastes of various sorts of gatekeepers.
8
Decision-making
The concept of gatekeeping refers to the capacity of mediators to exclude or promote. However, cultural
industries from book publishing to television regularly make decisions other than choose/reject, altering
or recontextualizing works at different stages of the production process. When the focus is on the way
that works are changed as they move from being ideas to being finished products, the term decision
chain is more appropriate (Ryan and Peterson, 1982). Ryan and Peterson have drawn a model of the de-
cision chain in the popular music industry, which consists of a number of separate links: from song writ-
ing to publishing; from demo tape to recording (where producer and artist are selected); from recording
to manufacturing and marketing; from there to consumption via radio, TV, juke-box, live performance or
direct sales. In this case, the original ideas of song-writers are filtered through music publishers’ ideas
concerning presentation (especially artist and style), which then play a part in promoting the product in
several different markets. Processing takes play on the basis of a prediction about what the next ‘gate-
keeper’ in the chain will think, the key being the overall product image. The authors note that at each
decision point, the question is not so much ‘What have I got to say?’, or even ‘What does the music fan
want to hear?’ but rather, ‘What changes need to be made to get the song accepted by the next node in
the decision chain?”. So, for example, in the field of country music, the question for the record producer
in the early 1980s was how to shape a song so it would be played by virtually all male disk jockeys, even
though the majority of country music record buyers where then women.
In the same vein, Cantor and Cantor (1991) detail how the basic character of a television series
can be altered even after it appears on the air. Gitlin (1983) and D’Acci (1987) offer absorbing case stud-
ies of the twisting fate of a relatively unknown series entitled American Dream and the popular 1980s
police series Cagney and Lacey. Their studies demonstrate how the numerous changes in both shows -
from plot line and casting to locale and tone - were also made to meet the needs and interests of people
along the decision chain.
4. Occupational characteristics and their implications
4.1. The arts: a profession?
Owing to the personal commitment writers and artists typically have, and the considerable autonomy
they apparently enjoy in their work, they are often considered to be professionals. This is also reflected
in the occupational categories that are distinguished in the sociology of work and in government statis-
tics. For example, the U.S. Bureau of the Census counts ‘writers, artists, and entertainers’ among the cat-
egory of ‘Professional, technical and kindred workers’ together with, among others, accountants, archi-
tects, engineers, dentists, doctors, lawyers, college and university teachers, scientists, and librarians (Hall
1994). However, the occupation of writer or artist differs from other professions in important ways and
is not in the strict sense a profession at all. This becomes clear when we consider two key characteristics
of professions that have frequently been mentioned in the sociology of work and occupations: the exist-
ence of a systematic, certified knowledge base and a high degree of occupational control.
No systematic body of certified knowledge
A high degree of generalized and theoretical knowledge is considered to be one of the distinctive charac-
teristics of professions: expertise and skills, based on a systematic body of certified knowledge, serve as
the practitioners’ claim to professionalism and autonomy (Barber 1963; Goode 1960; Wilensky 1964;
Greenwood 1966; Hall 1994). However, in the case of writers and other artists, it is impossible to define
the optimal knowledge base to substantiate their claim to expertise. In the first place, it is doubtful
whether such systematic knowledge exists, though there are technical skills. Secondly, unlike the
9
knowledge base of the established professions, ‘the knowledge’ of the artistic professions is neither cu-
mulative nor codified. Thirdly, some believe that the knowledge involved in art making is inherent and
that the main difference between laymen and professional artists is that the latter are trained to develop
techniques and regard them as their specialized domain. Moreover, the skills involved in, for example,
creative writing, are not normally supposed to be ones that can be directly taught, although the past dec-
ades have witnessed all sorts of attempts to teach them – from the writing courses and handbooks adver-
tised in the media to the growth, particularly in the United States, of the ‘creative writing class.’ But
writing is still primarily viewed as an activity which depends very much upon intuitions and imaginative
gifts that may be stimulated and encouraged, but which cannot normally be easily passed on. In journal-
ism, one of the expanding trades of the last two centuries, some instruction exist; and in certain forms of
writing - like television script writing - a good deal of the practice has become codified so that instruc-
tion could occur. But a distinction is normally made between such ‘practical’ forms of writing and ‘im-
aginative’ writing, with the latter regarded as a matter of personal quality, inspiration, and self-acquired
skills. Finally, one of the inherent problems of the artistic professions is how to define artistic talent or
artistic skills. In the arts, the skills presumably indicating talent and necessary for professional achieve-
ment are neither specific nor clear.
Relative absence of occupational control
The concept of ‘occupational control’ refers to ‘the collective capability of members of an occupation to
preserve unique authority in the definition, conduct and evaluation of their work’ (Child and Fulk 1982:
155). Such control is exercised by only a handful of professions that are able to restrict access to the pro-
fession’s knowledge base. Both law and medicine provide services based on the authority of expertise -
on keeping their professional knowledge at arm’s length from their clients. This practice differs both
from ‘people-working’ professionals, who share their knowledge with clients, and from other profes-
sionals, such as accountants, whose work activities are directed toward serving the goals of the admin-
istration of the organization that employs them. Artists generally do not possess a monopoly of access to
the knowledge that is needed to perform their tasks. The same applies to the evaluation of artistic work.
Although artists are often in a position to pass judgments on artistic talent and their fellow-artists’ work
(Oosterbaan Martinius 1990), they by no means have a monopoly of evaluation: audiences and, especial-
ly, mediators such as critics and other qualified experts have the right and power to make value judg-
ments about artistic work as well.
Occupational control also includes the capacity to determine the conditions of entry to and exit
from the practice of an occupation. The closed professions, such as medicine or law, maintain registers
of certified practitioners. Peer-control determines, most often by means of qualifications, who can enter
or pursue the profession and use the title: in the case of misconduct, they can also annul this entry. The
arts are clearly different: anybody at all is free to enter the trade and call him/herself an artist without a
formal degree or any officially recognized demonstration of competence. This has not always been the
case. In some countries and during some eras, the arts were characterized by fairly tight occupational
control, both in the number of recruits and in the course of their careers. During the guild era in Europe,
for example, no apprentice could change masters unless his first teacher agreed to break his contract, and
all apprentices had to remain with their master for three years. However, in twentieth-century Europe and
the United States, the arts were characterized by a relative absence of centralized occupational control,
compared, for example, to the medical profession in these countries, with its institutional self-awareness,
its standards of competence and discipline, and its relatively stabilized recruitment.
Other indicators of incomplete professionalization
Also by other standards, the artistic occupations hardly qualify as a profession. According to Wilensky
(1964) an occupation can be counted among the professions if it has the following characteristics: most
practitioners have a full-time job; there are special institutes for vocational training as well as profession-
10
al associations; the occupation is recognized and protected by the state and it has a code of ethics. On
each of these scores, artists are clearly the inferiors of professionals such as doctors, lawyers, or archi-
tects. Many artists combine their art work with a second job. Most art forms have institutes for vocation-
al training but autodidacts have always taken an important place in all art fields. Although there are pro-
fessional associations, many writers and artists do not join them and membership is not a prerequisite for
practicing the occupation. The absence of prescribed vocational training and professional associations
implies that recognition and protection of the artistic professions are not practicable, while an ethical
code only exists in a very abstract sense.
Aesthetic uncertainty and status indeterminacy
As mentioned earlier, modern art and literature are characterized by the absence of both generally ac-
cepted criteria for evaluating artistic products and clear guidelines as to how to create them. As a result
of this lack, writers and other artists find themselves in a position of aesthetic uncertainty. Moreover, as
Anheier and Gerhards (1991) point out, the absence of a formal professional structure, in conjunction
with the unpredictability of the market, imply that the social position of writers and other artists is char-
acterized by status indeterminacy. Their social prestige and income are subject to great variation, so that
today it is nearly impossible for sociologists to assign the artistic occupations a prestige score.
4.2. Economic position of artists
Having established that the arts differ from other professions in a number of ways, what can be said
about the economic position of contemporary artists as an occupational group?
Since the 1960s, an important line of research has emerged into the social and economic condi-
tions of living and practising artists, which can be summarized under the heading of ‘Status-of-the-Artist
studies’ (Kartunen 1998). These studies are usually commissioned by public arts administration bodies
or artists’ associations, who naturally attach their own policy-related objectives to them, and who often
expect to gain legitimacy through them. In most cases, they are carried out by social scientists in the
form of massive surveys of statistically valid samples taken from the total population of artists (or from
the population of practitioners of a specific art form.) Their approach is typically ‘hard’, quantitative, the
aim being to asses artists’ conditions of life and the effects of public policies on them. In the 1960s and
1970s, in particular, these studies were carried out in the spirit of the positivist sociology of art, aiming at
practical applications in cultural policy. Typical examples include the extensive reports on the social sta-
tus of writers (Fohrbeck and Wiesand 1972) and artists in Germany (Fohrbeck and Wiesand 1975). In
recent years, both the sociology of culture and the emerging discipline of cultural economics have yield-
ed important contributions to this area of research (Moulin et al. 1985; Throsby 1986; Jeffri 1988; Finn-
ish Arts Council 1988-1996; Throsby and Mills 1989; Wassall and Alper 1992; Throsby and Thompson
1994; Towse 1996).
Status-of-the-artist studies have produced a mass of statistical data on artists’ position in the
United States, Canada, Australia, Great Britain, Germany, Finland, and other European countries, i.e.,
figures about artists’ earnings; about the effect of education and training on artists’ incomes; about un-
employment rates among artists; about time allocation between artistic work and work in the non-arts
sector and about artists’ social characteristics. They have also provided data on artists’ attitudes: satisfac-
tion or otherwise with the promotion of their work; why they work less than they would like in their cho-
sen artistic profession; what support they would like from funding bodies, etc. Drawing on this rich body
of research, a number of observations can be made as to how artists fare in comparison to other occupa-
tional groups.
11
Labor force of artists
We have already noted that the arts in twentieth-century Europe and the United States are characterized
by a relative absence of centralized occupational control. Moreover, in these countries, the market for
literature and for other art forms has been rapidly and vastly expanding in the postwar period. This com-
bination of an expanding market and an absence of tight controls suggests that the arts - fine and com-
mercial - must recruit in a very generous, if not excessive fashion. Census data from the United States
confirm this. The U.S. Bureau of the Census defines ‘artist’ quite generally. The category includes actors
and directors; architects; authors; dancers, designers; musicians and composers; painters, sculptors, craft
artists and printmakers; photographers; radio and TV announcers; teachers of art, drama and music in
higher education; and other artists (Heilbrun and Gray 1993). In the 1980 federal census, the number of
people who defined themselves as being a member of one of these occupational groups was about
1,020,000, which represented an increase of about 46% over the total reported in the 1970 census. While
it is widely known that the professional and technical professions are increasing dramatically (the growth
of the labor force of these categories in U.S. was 40% in the 1970s), artistic occupations are increasing at
an even faster rate. Artists have comprised an increasing proportion of the U.S workforce over the last
forty years, rising from 0,73% in 1950 to 1,31% in 1990 (National Endowment for the Arts 1992).
Census data also indicate that U.S. artists are relatively young (the median age in 1980 was 34),
predominantly male (57% in 1991), and predominantly white (92%).
13
Working conditions and employment
The occupational structure of most arts activities is such that there are relatively few regular jobs. Only a
minority of artists have full-time, long-term contracts. Creative artists making things for sale (writers,
painters, sculptors, composers, craftspeople) mainly work as independent, self-employed contractors,
while performers (actors, musicians, dancers) are mostly employees without job-security when they
work for money. Hence, as Towse (1996) notes, the level of employment in the arts cannot by measured
by the number of jobs, nor can unemployment be measured by the gap between jobs and vacancies.
Moreover, self-employed artists cannot, from an official point of view, be unemployed, as self-
employment is viewed as a business-like activity, which either yields sufficient income for the ‘firm’ to
survive or it closes down. Towse argues that many artists, in a number of ways, are indeed like business-
es: they must invest resources in preparing whatever it is they supply (developing skills, practising, re-
hearsing, making sketches), and they spend time and money promoting themselves, showing their work,
going to auditions, approaching agents, dealers, and publishers. Such preparatory and promotional activi-
ties do not constitute hours of employment.
Many surveys of artists have gathered information both on the numbers of hours spent on artistic
activity and on paid employment, and about periods of unemployment. Artists have been shown to spend
long hours at their art work, part of which is unpaid (performers practising to maintain their skills, other
creative artists spending time producing work that is not for sale). For example, in Australia, about 70%
of artists work longer in total than the standard full-time working week. In the United States, only about
25% of artists work more or less full-time at arts work, and it would appear that a majority of those
working less than full-time in their chosen professions would prefer to spend more time in the arts but
are deterred from doing so by the need to earn an income elsewhere (Throsby 1994). Thus, many artists,
in effect, are under-employed: they are unable to obtain as many hours of paid arts work as they would
be willing to do at the going rate of pay.
13
Cf. National Endowment for the Arts (1982/1992). Throsby (1994) notes that these proportions are found to be
somewhat smaller in surveys targeted specifically at practising professional artists.
12
Multiple job-holding
As many writers and artists cannot earn enough from their principal artistic occupation, they engage in
other kinds of work to support themselves. The usual break-down of this ‘multiple job-holding’ of artists
is one between arts work, arts-related work, and non-arts work. Arts work concerns work directly related
to the artistic profession, such as sales, commissions, and subsidies for writers and visual artists. Arts-
related work concerns activities such as teaching, reviewing, translating, and giving advice on artistic
matters. Non-arts work includes all labor-market activities outside the arts sector (Throsby 1994 and
1996). Wassall and Alper (1992) review a number of surveys which document the extent of multiple job-
holding by artists, including their own 1981 survey of over 3,000 New England artists which found only
24% of artists holding no non-artistic job. They observe that as artists’ careers solidify as they grow old-
er, more time is devoted to arts work, though it is not clear whether this results from greater career suc-
cess of existing artists or from the less successful dropping out.
Artists’ earnings
A comparison of artists’ incomes with those of the average worker using census data may not reveal a
substantial difference, in particular if total (arts and non-arts) income is used as the measure of artists’
earnings. Comparisons with more specific occupational groups, however, do indicate a substantially
lower level of mean and median earnings among artists than among workers of similar educational and
professional standing. Thus, in 1990, the median weekly earnings of all full-time workers in the United
States was $415, while that of all full-time artists was $499. In the same year, however, the median
weekly earnings of all full-time managerial and professional workers, a group broadly comparable with
artists in terms of educational attainment, was $615 (Throsby 1994). Heilbrun and Gray (1993) note that
the earnings of U.S. artists with a college degree tend to be no higher than the earnings of professional
workers who only have a high school diploma.
The finding that the earnings of writers and other artists tend to lag considerably behind those of
comparable workers is robust over several countries and holds for almost all art disciplines. While such
comparisons are seriously hampered by all sorts of definitional problems (Who is an artist and who is
not?, see Kartunen 1998) and do not control for other systematic differences between occupational cate-
gories, they are at least consistent with analyses of survey data which indicate that most artists suffer a
significant income penalty. Artists’ earnings also prove to be more unequally distributed than those of
other groups. Some artists do earn high incomes from artistic activity but they are a minority. The major-
ity earn considerably less than they would outside the arts, and the sums involved frequently fluctuate
from year to year.
So artists’ earnings are not only lower on average than those of comparable workers, but they
are also more variable, both across time for an individual artist, and across artists at a given point in time.
The pay-off of education and other human capital variables
Considering the relation between education and income, a mainstay of human capital theory, the arts also
differ from other occupations. Within any group of workers, we would normally expect that more highly
educated individuals would earn higher incomes. There is mounting evidence, however, that the returns
to education are in general much lower in the arts than elsewhere. The same holds for other ‘human capi-
tal’ variables such as (on-the job) training and experience or age. Towse (1992) estimated ‘earnings
functions’ using data from a survey among artists in Wales. An ‘earnings function’ shows the effects of a
number of variables, such as hours of work, level of education, length of training, and experience, on
income. The only statistically significant influence on arts earnings proved to be the time artists (of all
types) spent on arts work. Experience or level of education apparently exercised no influence on arts
earnings. Throsby (1992) established that Australian artists’ earnings were also affected by gender. In-
come from both arts and non-arts work was lower for female artists, even after all other sources of varia-
13
tion (hours worked, age, educational attainment) were accounted for. The gender-effects on arts income
were considerably stronger for creative artists than for performing artists, suggesting that females were
discriminated less in the performing arts in Australia than in other artistic fields.
Disaggregation of artists’ earnings decomposes the effect of education for the three relevant
markets to which artists supply their labor (Throsby 1996). This shows that the effect of schooling is
greater for arts-related work and non-arts work than for arts work. The same holds for the effect of (on-
the-job) training and experience.
4.3. Coping with uncertainty
Summarizing the previous paragraphs on the arts as an occupation, we can conclude that artists’ contem-
porary position is characterized by economic uncertainty, status indeterminacy, and aesthetic uncertain-
ty. The difficulties and dilemmas that modern writers and artists face are complex and numerous: the
danger of ‘selling out’ in an effort to acquire financial security; increasing specialization that is counter
craft and art traditions; intense competition for scarce resources; the absence of a credentialing system,
which makes it impossible to control the terms and conditions of entrance by aspiring artists; and the
unpredictability of changing styles and fashions. Hence, the question arises how writers and artists man-
age to cope with such uncertainties, for many prove indeed capable of sticking to their chosen fields of
art work. Research into their careers suggests that social ties or networks play an important part in this
respect.
We have already seen that many artists, apart from their primary artistic work, have second jobs.
In part, this multiple job-holding explains how writers and other artists survive financially and cope with
economic uncertainty.
14
It allows them to meet a minimal income constraint and to spread the risk of
income uncertainty. Although second jobs entail that many writers and artists can spend less time on
their arts work, arts-related jobs (such as advising on artistic matters, critical writing for the press, etc.)
have one big advantage that should not be overlooked. They help to establish and maintain social rela-
tions with relevant agents in their chosen art field (fellow-artists, publishers, editors, dealers, curators,
etc.) and thus to increase what can be called their ‘social capital’ (Bourdieu 1983): ‘the whole range of
resources that flow from the possession of a more or less institutionalized enduring network of relations
of mutual acquaintance and recognition.’
Of course, social ties or networks are generally important for people. Family members, friends,
acquaintances, and colleagues provide individuals with social, emotional, and financial support. Through
their linkages with a variety of other people and groups they obtain valued resources, including infor-
mation, advice, critical feedback, and acknowledgment for a job ‘well done.’ Research into people’s po-
sition in the labor market shows that involvement in social networks considerably facilitates their careers
(Granovetter 1995; Boxman 1992; Flap and Tazelaar 1988; Bernasco 1994).
Thus, social networks have universal significance for the life and work of individuals, but they
have a special significance for writers and other artist, who must operate in a world where most activities
take place on a freelance basis and are not controlled by formal organizations, agreements, or criteria. In
many situations, they cannot, therefore, appeal to a higher, impartial authority, but have to rely primarily
on each other for the fulfillment of their needs and ambitions.
In the arts, as in other fields of incomplete professionalization, largely informal social networks
fulfill several functions that in other occupations would be served by formal, institutionalized mecha-
nisms. In general, such networks may reduce economic uncertainty, status indeterminacy, and aesthetic
uncertainty for their members:
• they regulate access to power, resources, institutions, and persons (Kadushin 1976; (Coser et al.
1982; Faulkner 1983; Ridgeway 1989; Verdaasdonk 1994) and promote members’ monopolistic
control over scarce job opportunities (Peterson and White 1989);
14
For many writers and artists, parents or partners also provide essential financial support (Towse 1996).
14
• they channel information, give support and advice, and provide service and resources (DiMaggio
1987a; Powell 1985);
• they provide rituals, such as ‘name-dropping’ which help to construct a shared identity (Douglas and
Isherwood 1979);
• they help establish an artist’s self-image, social position, reputation, and prominence (Anheier and
Gerhards 1991 and 1991b; Anheier, Gerhards, and Romo 1995; Janssen 1998).
• they help to maintain standards artistic standards for insiders (Peterson and White 1989) and provide
ideas about styles and techniques, sources of criticisms, and validations for an aesthetic approach or
artistic innovation (Meyer 1967; Crane 1989; Ridgeway 1989).
5. Recruitment, socialization, and career development of artists
A final topic that has received a lot of attention from social scientists is the question of how people be-
come (successful) artists.
Choosing a career is one of the most important, and perhaps most difficult tasks, faced by indi-
viduals. Why would anyone choose a career that entails notoriously low earnings, long and uncertain
hours, and arduous preparation and training. Why choose a job that forces the majority of practitioners to
have second jobs, and in which fame and fortune are only reserved to a tiny minority? We have seen that
careers in the arts tend to have just such characteristics, but we have also seen that the arts recruit in an
almost excessive fashion. In many occupations, the process of recruitment can be readily understood, but
there is much vagueness concerning the recruitment of artists. A number of models of career choice in
the arts have been proposed, but sound data to substantiate them are in short supply.
Nonetheless, as Griff (1970) notes, this does not imply that people ‘somehow drift into art.
There exists a whole set of social paraphernalia for getting persons committed to their artistic identities.’
The question of how people become artists, in more than one respect, is and always has been a structured
affair, and this was particularly true in earlier centuries. It is true in some obvious ways: for example,
becoming a full-time writer involves literacy (and therefore education, not always available to all sec-
tions of the population) and leisure (and therefore some kind of secure income or means of support). In
the light of this, it is not surprising to learn that in the nineteenth century most writers were of middle
class origin (in most cases from a professional family) and had gone to public school or a university
(Williams 1961; Altick 1962; Bradbury 1971; Laurenson 1972). It is also understandable that a large
proportion of novelists in that century were women, the newly leisured wives of the wealthy middle clas-
ses (Laurenson 1972; Tuchman 1975; Bonham-Carter 1978).
In the twentieth century, the recruitment of artists became less rigidly structured. The class
background of writers became less homogeneous than it once was (Bradbury 1971; Laurenson 1972),
and much the same can be said for music and painting, where it was once almost a prerequisite or at least
an advantage to have been born into a musical or artistic family (Nochlin 1973; Tuchman 1975; Greer
1979). Nonetheless, in the twentieth century as well, familial values and pressures have been found to
play an important part, both in the initial choice for a career as a painter (Griff 1970; Getzels and
Csikszentmihalyi 1976; Top 1993), composer (Nash 1989), dancer (Sutherland 1989), or actor (Levy
1989) and in the choice for a specific artistic career path or trajectory. The same holds for experiences in
grammar and high school (Griff 1970; Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi 1976), peer groups, and occupa-
tional role models (Levy 1989). There have also been studies on how, having chosen this career, art stu-
dents are taught, and on the role of the art school and mentor-protege relationships in ‘shaping’ artists
(Strauss 1970; Tas 1990; Heilbron 1992).
Thus, the way in which artists and writers take up their careers and the particular values and atti-
tudes they bring to them from their family and class backgrounds affect their career choice and the kind
of work they do as artists. And if specialized training is involved, the processes of the institutions of
15
training are also likely to ‘form’ the artist and influence the direction of his or her development. Of
course, artists’ training and socialization is not finished once they have left school and have entered the
occupation. Occupational practice confronts them with the norms, conventions, and practices current in
their chosen art field and it is ‘on the job’ that they gradually acquire and develop the ability to function
in accordance with them.
Parameters of success
The question of what determines success or failure in the arts has puzzled many scholars. Some of their
answers have already been presented in the previous sections. Most social scientists agree that artistic
talent is only one variable and not the most important. Artists’ fame and fortune is assumed to be largely
dependent on the workings of the complex ‘cultural apparatus’ of producers, distributors, and promotors
standing between them and their audiences. Gatekeepers, such as publishers, decide whether their work
becomes available to a public, while its meaning and value are constructed by qualified interpreters and
judges such as peers, critics, and post-processors (see section 3). Moreover, the possession of an exten-
sive and varied network of personal relations is believed to foster artists’ careers, for example, by facili-
tating access to influential art world members and institutions (cf. section 4.3). In addition, artists’ family
members and partners have been found to play a significant part in their careers. For example, Simpson
(1981) has shown that the quality of relationships with partners tends to be quite different for successful
artists on the one hand and unsuccessful artists on the other. The former tend to have supportive partners,
while the latter have partners that are overprotective and smothering.
But artists’ fate is not totally dependent on such other agencies and forces. Comparative studies of
successful and less successful writers have shown that the former tend to take a far more active part in
the image-building around their work (Janssen 1994 and 1998; Van Dijk 1999). They are the ones who,
whenever there is an opportunity, express their views on the nature and function of art; reveal their own
artistic intentions and premises; comment on critical interpretations of their works; provide criticism with
new material for interpretation by pointing to ‘neglected’ aspects or themes of their work; explain their
relationship to contemporary colleagues and predecessors, etc. Moreover, successful writers and artists
tend to engage more often in all kinds of arts-related activities (reviewing, advising on artistic matters,
etc.) than their less successful counterparts (Janssen 1998). As a result, they have at their disposal more
elaborate social networks in their chosen art field and they enjoy all the advantages and opportunities that
wide-ranging networks offer their members.
Other studies suggest that whether or not artists take such an active part and whether their self-
promotional efforts have the desired effects, among other things, strongly depends on their familiarity
with the existing conventions, opinions, and relationships in a particular field. Becker (1982) argues that
with no professional training and no contact with the conventional art world, ‘naive artists’ do not learn
the conventional vocabulary of motives and explanations for their work. Since they cannot explain what
they are doing in conventional art terminology, naive artists frequently have trouble with people who
demand an explanation. On the other hand, ‘integrated professionals' have the technical abilities, social
skills, and conceptual apparatus necessary to make it easy to produce art. Because they know,
understand, and habitually use the conventions on which their world runs, they fit easily into all its stan-
dard activities. Bourdieu (1983a: 341) also emphasizes the relation between such knowledge and skills
and the success with which artists operate in a specific art field:
'in an artistic field which has reached an advanced stage of this history, there is no place for naifs; more
precisely, the history is immanent to the functioning of the field, and to meet the objective demands it
implies (...) one has to possess the whole history of the field. Here it would be appropriate to point to the
ideal-typical opposition between Rousseau and Duchamp. Rousseau, the painter as object, who does
something other than what he thinks he is doing, because he knows nothing of the field he stumbles into,
of which he is the plaything (...) By contrast, Duchamp, born into a family of painters, (...) has all the
tricks of the artist’s trade at his fingertips, i.e. an art of painting which (subsequently) implies not only the
art of producing a work but the art of self-presentation.'
In Bourdieu's view, the question of whether artists possess the prerequisites for successful functioning in
16
(a specific position within) a given artistic field is also closely associated with their social origins. He
argues that those origins determine to a large degree their 'habitus’
15
, while the latter in turn steers them
in the direction of a certain position. At the same time, the habitus determines largely whether artists are
able to achieve and maintain a specific position. Bourdieu (1983a) argues that cultural analysis has to
examine the relation between the positions a cultural field objectively has to offer at a given stage and
the dispositions of the actors involved. Depending on the distribution of power at a certain moment, a
field will have specific objective career opportunities. Actors in that field appraise and make use of those
opportunities in accordance with their habitus. What is more, a successful career will only be reserved
for those who reach the 'right' place, in other words, who take a position that accords with the
dispositions they have acquired through upbringing and education. Thus, according to Bourdieu, artists
who possess a considerable amount of economic and social capital are more inclined to choose for and
maintain themselves in an avant-garde position in a particular field than others. The reason for this is that
possession of economic capital frees them from the necessity 'to work for money,' but also that certain
characteristics are more highly developed in artists with money and social relations than in others
(Bourdieu 1983a: 349):
'self-assurance, audacity, indifference to profit – dispositions which, together with the flair associated with
possession of a large social capital and the corresponding familiarity with the field, i.e. the art of sensing
the new hierarchies and the new structures of the chances of profit, points towards the outposts, the most
exposed positions of the avant-garde and towards the riskiest investments, which are also, however, very
often the most profitable symbolically, and in the long run, at least for the earliest investors.’
16
Pursuing Bourdieu's insights, a series of studies have been conducted of the French literary field, which
have also highlighted the influence of the social background and dispositions of writers on their career
paths (‘trajectories’).
17
This research into the complex relations between the social origin, mental
characteristics and the careers of writers has yielded interesting observations and suggestions. Subject to
debate, however, is their reference to specific dispositions of writers to explain the positions they
assumed or their success. The broad description usually given to these dispositions makes it hard to
determine decisively whether an author possessed them or not. The attribution of specific dispositions to
writers seems in many cases no more than an interpretation after the fact. Thus the conclusion that
certain authors had dispositions such as ‘a sense of investment’ or ‘indifference to profit’ is only based
on the fact of their successful literary career or their choice of an economically risky vocation as avant-
garde writer.
Besides pioneering in the study of artistic creativity, the work of Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi
(1976) overcomes one of the central difficulties in most research on artists’ careers by going beyond post
factum study. Instead of confining themselves to acknowledged artists, they looked at subjects who were
in the process of becoming artists (art school students) and investigated how their careers developed in
the course of time. They find that talent alone by no means accounted for their subjects’ success. Their
longitudinal study confirms the crucial importance of family background and certain personality features
15
And his 'dispositions', which arise from and form part of this habitus. In his work, Bourdieu does not clearly
distinguish between habitus and disposition, but uses them as more or less interchangeable concepts. Bourdieu
considers the habitus to be an system of classification operating unconsciously in individuals, in other words a
system of schemes of observation and evaluation that is applied to a broad range of areas and situations and thus
brings the countless actions of individuals into agreement with one another.
16
For Bourdieu an ideal typical example of an artist who discovered his ‘natural place’ too late is the
nineteenth-century French writer Léon Cladel. Coming from the provincial petty bourgeoisie he did not possess
the required disposition for the position he set his sights on (the Parisian Parnassus movement). This is said to
have led him after years of disappointment and frustration to return in more than one sense to his origins and
thereafter devote himself to writing regional novels ‘in which rehabilitation gives way to self-indulgent depiction
of peasant savagery (Ibid.: 349-351).’
17
Cf., among others, Ponton (1977); Charle (1981); Viala (1985); Boschetti (1985); Gamboni (1989); Peru
(1991); and Pinto (1991). See also Bourdieu's own studies (1992 and 1993) of the literary careers of Flaubert,
Baudelaire, and their contemporaries.
17
- such as the ability to attract attention from teachers and peers and flexibility in responding to demands -
in the career development of artists.
6. Concluding comments
Over the past thirty years, the study of careers in literature and the arts has developed into a flourishing
and diverse field of research, which has addressed all kinds of questions that surround arts work from a
variety of disciplinary and theoretical angles. Nonetheless, there are still areas that have been largely
neglected up to now, while many other issues require further analysis.
One issue that, in my view, deserves closer attention is the role of the habitus (or dispositions) in
the recruitment and career development of artists.Various authors have argued that this key concept in
the work of Bourdieu and others is neither theoretically nor empirically sufficiently underpinned (see, for
example, DiMaggio 1979; Gartman 1991). They point out that the habitus is assumed to be formed in a
person's parental milieu and to involve a long-lasting relationship between people and their environment,
but at the same time is said to be subject to change as a result of accumulated experiences. The question
of how these two characteristics are related is, however, insufficiently elaborated. The same applies to
the contention that differences in peoples’ habitus are directly related to differences in their socio-
economic living conditions. Closer research on the nature, development and working of peoples’ habitus
or dispositions has not been conducted. For the time being we lack a reliable instrument for determining
the extent to which writers and other artists have certain dispositions
18
and how these are related to their
social origins on the one hand, and their career paths on the other. At present, therefore, simply the
question itself of the interconnection of social background and the choice and subsequent course of a
particular (artistic) career calls for further investigation.
More or less a blind spot in the study of production and profession in the arts, already mentioned
in the introduction to this chapter, is the ‘para-artistic’ or ‘arts-related’ occupations and the careers of
their practitioners, such as publishers, reviewers, dealers, agents, impresarios, and curators. Only the
occupation of journalist has received a lot of attention, from mass communication researchers and
sociologists of work in particular (Tunstall 1971; Shoemaker and Reese 1996: chapter 5), but art
journalists and reviewers have been largely neglected in such studies. Most research on other arts-related
occupations (publishers, editors, dealers, etc.) has either highlighted their role as facilitators for or
mediators of artistic work, or has focused on organizational aspects of individual firms (publishing
houses, galleries, etc.), or entire sectors (the publishing industry, the art market, etc.).
19
Our knowledge
about the working conditions and characteristics of the occupational groups involved is mainly of an
(auto)biographical and often anecdotal nature. Systematic comparisons of the ‘job’ of artist with ‘arts-
related’ occupations, and of the characteristics and career paths of the individuals who engage in one or
the other line of work, could shed further light on the critical features of the whole gamut of occupations
in the arts and on those of their practitioners. Moreover, as many case studies hint at a close relationship
18
In this regard it can be remarked that experimental research such as has been carried out by psychologists, for
example, on the question of whether and to what degree the personality characteristics of artists differ from those
of non-artists has produced rather contradictory results. While some maintain that ‘no differentiation of the artist
as a distinct personality type has been found in evidence offered by psychological tests, which shows that artists
are not temperamentally unlike other persons and that they differ among themselves more than they differ from
unselected groups’ (B.T. Eidusun, quoted in Zolberg 1990: 122), other researchers conclude on the basis of a
comparison of students of art academies with students in other programs that ‘young artists, compared to college
students of their age and sex, are socially reserved, introspective, alienated, imaginative, radical and self-suffi-
cient’ (Getzels and Csikszentmihalyi 1976).
19
Of course, there are exceptions. The comprehensive study of the contemporary publishing industry by Coser et
al. (1982) includes substantial chapters on ‘the people who make books’ and ‘key-outsiders in the booktrade.’
DiMaggio (1987b) details the backgrounds, schooling, career experiences, attitudes, and opinions of managers
of the arts in the United States.
18
between artists’ careers and those of their critic-advocates, publishers, editors, or dealers, a more
systematic account of such ‘coupled’ careers could provide us with a better understanding of the
professional fortunes of the people involved and of the parameters of success or failure in the arts.
But what is probably needed most are more advanced, comparative research models that
combine the various lines of research developed up to now, and that overcome the theoretical and
methodological shortcomings of many existing studies.
Longitudinal, comprehensive studies
A major problem in the study of artistic careers is the lack of both longitudinal studies and comprehen-
sive research models that take account of the various sets of variables affecting career development. Lit-
tle, if any, true longitudinal research has been done charting the progress of a sample of writers or other
artists over time. Most studies are cross-sectional; they use experimental, survey or census findings from
a particular moment in time. Hence, they fail to grasp how, for example, writing and reading ‘careers’
develop in the course of people’s lifetime, what forces and influences account for different career paths,
and how such forces and influences are interrelated and reinforce one another. Biographies and case-
studies of individual writers and other artists, of course, offer some insight into the development of artis-
tic careers, but these are first of all written about a handful of eminent figures, and secondly, they are not
systematic in their treatment. A number of studies have investigated the vicissitudes of a sample of artists
over a longer period of time, but in most cases they have focused on the workings of one particular set of
variables. Some studies, for example, have focused on the recognition of artists’ work by critics and oth-
er experts or on their involvement in networks over time (Van Rees and Vermunt 1996), but they have
provided little information as to how personality features or family values and other background varia-
bles affect the careers and reputations of those involved. Other researchers have considered the part of
personality traits and/or social background characteristics in the career development of artists (Getzels
and Csikszentmihalyi 1976; Top 1993), while paying little or no attention to institutional processes and
mechanisms. At this stage, it seems that the study of artistic careers can only progress by integrating the
various relevant clusters of variables into more sophisticated research designs, i.e. models of a multivari-
ate and longitudinal nature.
Comparative analysis
Most research into arts work and artistic careers has focused on particular cultural domains - such as the
field of literature or that of painting - in a particular period or country. Although in many studies refer-
ence is made to other cultural realms, times, or countries, their findings could be further specified and
enriched by systematically considering the conditions and processes of production in one domain, coun-
try, or period in relation with those in others. The previous sections suggest that artistic work and careers
should be viewed in connection with the support structures that enable artists to do their job, structures
which are in turn contingent on larger social constituencies and thus vary over time and in place. They
also indicate that a systematic comparison of arts work with other occupations can shed new light on crit-
ical features that might otherwise escape analysis. The same holds for systematic comparisons across
culture producing domains. Crane (1976), for example, suggests that the elements of reward systems
motivating and enabling specialists to be innovative are highly comparable in the realms of arts, science,
and religion, and she identifies four distinct reward systems that have been found historically in each.
Her observation that the same range of innovation processes can be found in all realms of culture does
not mean that innovations in science, the arts, and religion are similar in form, content, or intention. Ra-
ther, it means that the differences, to a large extent, can be explained by the conditions of production in
these realms. For example, as Peterson (1976) notes, contemporary American religious groups must
compete for ‘consumers’ in a free competitive market, and their assertions about the world are subject to
the test of science. On the other hand, knowledge in physics today is largely controlled by a self-
perpetuating elite of esoteric specialists. These differences, however, are not inherent in the nature of the
19
subject matter of these two realms as can be seen by reference to earlier times when the production sys-
tems of science and religion were very nearly just the opposite in Europe. Such observations suggest
how fruitful it could be to make more systematic comparisons across culture producing domains. Anoth-
er major challenge to future research, therefore, would be to develop a general scheme for making such
comparisons, as this is currently lacking.
Combining interpersonal, institutional, and societal levels of analysis
In the past decades, the production of literature and other cultural artifacts has been studied at the level of
personal (inter)action, relations among institutions and organizations, and the working of entire societies.
As the theoretical perspectives and research methods employed at the various levels are often quite dif-
ferent, research at each level tends to develop more or less separately. Thus, while ideally work at, for
example, the level of personal interaction complements work at the institutional or societal level, and
while this may happen in the best individual studies, researchers working at different levels do not learn
all they might from one another. Disciplinary boundaries also tend to hamper a fruitful exchange of ideas
and results among scholars who share a common interest in the conditions and processes of cultural pro-
duction.
20
Research that takes explicitly into account societal level conditions has the advantage that it may
enhance our understanding of how culture producing systems express and reinforce the sociopolitical
system of the larger society and the attendant systems of domination and subordination, including social
class, ethnicity, religion, and gender. On the other hand, such investigations are often so broad that they
reduce explanation to mere postulates about macrostructural phenomena. Another danger in looking
primarily from a macro perspective is that the workings of cultural (literary) production processes and
the trajectories of the individuals involved may be seen to follow automatically from the societal level
constraints (Peterson 1994; Bourdieu 1992). Such a ‘mirror’ or ‘reflection’ view ignores the institutional
factors involved in the production of literature and other artistic expressions, and in the actual processes
through which art and literature are constructed. Research conducted at the middle-range level of institu-
tional analysis suggests that culture producing systems and organizations operate within and maintain
their own boundaries, however permeable, and have some degree of autonomy. They have their own sets
of norms, conventions, ideologies, and practices as well as an internal power structure which to a large
extent guide artistic work and determine the careers of the individuals involved (Schmidt 1980; Bourdieu
1992). The strength of micro-analytical studies is that by more of less bracketing the societal and institu-
tional levels of analysis, they have been able to detail how the norms and conventions of aesthetic judg-
ment and collaboration allow artists of all types to create and to build careers in the process. In effect,
these studies shed light on the culture of production rather than illuminating the production of culture
(Fine 1992). In some cases, however, they can be criticized for unreflexively assuming the perspective
of the group or occupational category under study. This ‘going native’ as it were, may yield incomplete
and misleading readings of the field concerned (Clignet 1985; Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992). Moreover,
research at the micro-analytical level, however rich in texture, is often so narrowly focused that it verges
on the anecdotal and results in decontextualized cases which are of transitory interest and teach us little
about the historical and structural conditions of arts work (Zolberg 1990).
Hence, a final challenge to future research would be to reconcile approaches at the micro, insti-
tutional, and societal level and thus to overcome the particular weaknesses of work at each level of anal-
ysis. Although at the theoretical level, such connections have been established (Bourdieu 1992) empiri-
cal studies substantiating them are still very rare.
20
The same problems are present in the field of literary reception studies (Andringa 1998), which presents a wide
gap between detailed, qualitative studies on early literary socialization, on the one hand, and large-scale quantitative
research into changing reading patterns, on the other. A similar gap exists between the experimental research into
reading processes carried out by psychologists and the cultural participation surveys conducted by social scientists.
20
References
Acci, J.d' 1987. “The case of Cagney and Lacey.” In Boxed in: Women and Television, H. Baehr and G. Dyer (eds.),
203-226. London: Pandora.
Albrecht, Milton C., James H. Barnett, and Mason Griff (eds.) 1970. The sociology of art and literature. A reader.
London: Duckworth.
Alemann, Heinz von 1997. “Galerien als Gatekeeper des Kunstmarkts. Institutionelle Aspekte der
Kunstvermittlung.” In Soziologie der Kunst. Produzenten, Vermittler, Rezipienten, J. Gerhards (ed.), 211-
239. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Altick, Richard D. 1962. “The sociology of authorship: The social origins, education and occupations of 1,100
British writers 1800-1935.” The Bulletin of the New York Public Library 66:389-404.
Altick, Richard D. 1963. The English common reader. A social history of the mass reading public 1800-1900.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Andringa, Els 1998. “The empirical study of literature: Its development and future.” In Janssen and Van Dijk, 12-
23.
Anheier, Helmut K. and Jürgen Gerhards. 1991. “Literary myths and social structure.” Social Forces 69:811-830.
Anheier, Helmut K. and Jürgen Gerhards. 1991b. “The acknowledgment of literary influence. A structural analysis
of a German literary network.” Sociological Forum 6:137-156.
Anheier, Helmut K., Jürgen Gerhards, and Frank P. Romo. 1995. “Forms of capital and social structure in cultural
fields: Examining Bourdieu's social topography.” American Journal of Sociology 100:859-903.
Barber, Bernard. 1963. “Some problems in the sociology of professions.” Daedalus 92:669-688.
Becker, Howard S. 1982. Art Worlds. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Berman, Russell A. 1983. “Writing for the book industry: The writer under organized capitalism.” New German
Critique 29:39-56.
Bernasco, Wim. 1994. Coupled careers. The effects of spouse's resources on success at work. Amsterdam: Thesis
Publishers.
Berry, Ralph. 1970. “Patronage.” In The social context of art, J. Creedy (ed.). London: Tavistock.
Blau, Judith. 1988. “Study of the arts: A reappraisal.” Annual Review of Sociology 14:269-292.
Bonham-Carter, Victor. 1978. Authors by profession. Volume I. London: The society of authors.
Boschetti, Anna. 1985. Sartre et Les Temps Modernes. Paris: Editions de Minuit.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1980. “The production of belief: Contribution to an economy of symbolic goods [Extract from: La
production de la croyance. Contribution à une économie des biens symboliques. Actes de la Recherche en
Sciences Sociales 13, 1977: 3-43].” Media, Culture, and Society 2:261-293.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1983. “Oekonomisches Kapital, kulturelles Kapital, soziales Kapital.” In Soziale Ungleichheiten
(Soziale Welt, Sonderheft 2), R. Kreckel (ed.). Göttingen: Otto Schartz & Co.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1983a. “The field of cultural production, or: The economic world reversed.” Poetics 12:311-356.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984. Distinction. A social critique of the judgement of taste [Translation of La distinction. Paris:
Minuit, 1979]. London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1985. “The market of symbolic goods [Translation of Le marché des biens symboliques. L'Année
Sociologie 22, 1971, 49-126].” Poetics 14:13-44.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1992. Les règles de l'art. Paris: Seuil.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1993. The field of cultural production. Essays on art and literature. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre and Alain Darbel. 1969. L'amour de l'art. Les musées d’art européens et leur public. Paris: Minuit.
Bourdieu, Pierre, Kees van Rees, Siegfried J. Schmidt and Hugo Verdaasdonk, 1989. “The structure of the
literary field and the homogeneity of cultural choices. Panel discussion.” In: Ibsch et al., 437-443.
Bourdieu, Pierre and Loïc D.J. Wacquant. 1992. An invitation to reflexive sociology. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Boxman, Edward A.W. 1992. Contacten en carrière. Een empirisch-theoretisch onderzoek naar de relatie
tussen sociale netwerken en arbeidsmarktpositie [Contacts and careers. An empirical-theoretical
investigation of the relationship between social networks and labor market position]. Amsterdam:
Thesis Publishers.
Boyer, Paul S. 1968. Purity in print: The vice-society movement and book censorship in America. New York:
Scribner.
Bradbury, Malcom. 1971. The social context of modern English literature. Oxford: Blackwell.
Braden, Su. 1978. Artists and people. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Brasey, Edouard. 1987. L'effet Pivot. Paris: Ramsay.
Breed, Walter. 1955. Social control in the newsroom: A functional analysis, vol. 33.
Bystryn, Marcia. 1978. “Art galleries as gatekeepers. The case of the abstract expressionists.” Social Research
45:390-408.
Cantor, Muriel G. and Joel Cantor. 1991. Prime time television: Content and control. Beverley Hills, CA: Sage
Publications.
Charle, Christophe. 1981. “Situation du champ littéraire.” Littérature 44:8-20.
21
Child, John and Janet Fulk. 1982. “Maintenance of occupational control: The case of professionals.” Work and
Occupations 9:155-192.
Clignet, Rémi. 1985. The structure of artistic revolutions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Clor, Harry M. 1969. Obscenity and public morality: Censorship in a liberal society. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Coser, Lewis A., Charles Kadushin, and Walter W. Powell. 1982. Books. The culture and commerce of publishing.
New York: Basic Books.
Crane, Diana. 1976. “Reward systems in art, science, and religion.” American Behavioral Scientist 19:719-734.
Crane, Diana. 1987. The transformation of the avant-garde: The New York art world 1940-1985. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Crane, Diana. 1989. “Reward systems in avant-garde art: Social networks and stylistic change.” In Art and society.
Readings in the sociology of the arts, A. W. Foster and J. R. Blau (eds.), 261-272. Albany NY: State
University of New York Press.
Davis, Kenneth C. 1984. Two-bit culture: The paperbacking of America. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Dijk, Nel van. 1994. De politiek van de literatuurkritiek. De reputatie-opbouw van Menno ter Braak in de
Nederlandse letteren [Pragmatic considerations in literary criticism. The establishment of the reputation
of Menno ter Braak in Dutch literature]. Delft: Eburon.
Dijk, Nel van. 1999. “Top nor literary fringe. Careers and reputation of middle group authors. In Griswold et al.,
405-422.
DiMaggio, Paul. 1982. “Cultural entrepeneurship in nineteenth-century Boston: The organization of an institutional
base for high culture in America.” Media, Culture, and Society 4:33-50.
DiMaggio, Paul, 1979. “On Pierre Bourdieu. Review essay.” American Journal of Sociology 84:1466-1474.
DiMaggio, Paul. 1987a. “Classification in art.” American Sociological Review 52:440-455.
DiMaggio, Paul, 1987b. Managers of the arts. Careers and opinions of senior administrators of U.S. art
museums, symphony orchestras, resident theaters, and local arts agencies. Washington, DC and
Cabin John, Maryland: Seven Locks Press.
DiMaggio, Paul and Michael Useem. 1978. “Cultural property and public policy: Emerging tensions in government
support for the arts.” Social Research 45:357-389.
Dörner, Andreas and Ludgera Vogt. 1994. Literatursoziologie. Literatur, Gesellschaft, politische Kultur. Opladen:
Westdeutscher Verlag.
Douglas, Mary and Baron Isherwood. 1979. The world of goods: Toward an anthropology of consumption. New
York: Basic Books.
Dubin, Steven C. 1992. Arresting images: Impolitical art and Uncivil Actions. New York: Routledge.
Dubin, Steven C. 1987. Bureaucratizing the muse: Public funds and the cultural worker. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Faulkner, Robert R. 1983. Music on demand. New Brunswick: Transaction.
Fine, Gary Alan. 1992. “The culture of production: Aesthetic choices and constraints in culinary work.”
American Journal of Sociology 97:1268-1294
Finnish Arts Council. 1988-1996. The Finnish Arts Council project on the status of artists 1985-1996. Helsinki:
Finnish Arts Council.
Flap, Henk .D. and Frits Tazelaar. 1988. “De rol van informele sociale netwerken op de arbeidsmarkt:
Flexibilisering en uitsluiting [The role of informal social networks in the labor market: Flexibilization and
exclusion].” In De flexibele arbeidsmarkt. Theorie en praktijk [The flexible labor market. Theory and
practice], H. D. Flap and A. A. Arts (eds.). Deventer: Van Loghum Slaterus.
Fohrbeck, Karla and Andreas J. Wiesand. 1972. Der Autoren-report. Reinbek: Rowohlt Verlag.
Fohrbeck, Karla and Andreas J. Wiesand. 1975. Künstler-Report.. Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag.
Foster, Arnold W. and Judith R. Blau. 1989. Art and society. Readings in the sociology of the arts. Albany NY:
State University of New York Press.
Gamboni, Dario. 1989. La plume et le pinceau. Odile Redon et la littérature. Paris: Editions de Minuit.
Gedin, Per. 1977. Literature in the marketplace. Translated by George Bisset. London: Faber.
Getzels, Jacob W. and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. 1976. The creative vision: A longitudinal study of problem finding
in art. New York: John Wiley.
Gilmore, Samual. 1990. “Art worlds: Developing the interactionist approach to social organization.” In Symbolic
interaction and cultural studies, H. S. Becker and M. M. McCall (eds.), 148-178. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Gitlin, Todd. 1983. Inside prime time. New York: Pantheon.
Goode, William J. 1960. “Encroachment, charlatanism, and the emerging professions: Psychology, sociology, and
medicine.” American Sociological Review 25:902-914.
Gartman, David, 1991. “Bourdieu's distinction.” American Journal of Sociology 97:421-447.
Granovetter, Mark. 1995 [1974]. Getting a job. A study of contacts and careers. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Greenfeld, Liah. 1988. “Professional ideology and patterns of 'gatekeeping'. Evaluation and judgment within two
22
art worlds.” Social forces 66:903-925.
Greenfeld, Liah. 1989. Different worlds. A sociological study of taste, choice and success in art. Cambridge, MA:
Cambridge University Press.
Greenwood, Ernest. 1966. “The elements of professionalization.” In Professionalization, H. M. Vollmer and D. L.
Mills (ed.). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Greer, Germaine. 1979. The obstacle race: the fortunes of women painters and their work. London: Secker &
Warburg.
Griff, Mason. 1970. “The recruitment and socialization of artists.” In Albrecht et al., 145-158
Griffin, Dustin. 1996. Literary patronage in England 1650-1800. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Griswold, Wendy. 1981. “American character and the American novel.” American Journal of Sociology: 740-765.
Griswold, Wendy. 1987. “The fabrication of meaning: literary interpretation in the United States, Great Britain, and
the West Indies.” American Journal of Sociology 92:1077-1117.
Griswold, Wendy. 1992. “The writing on the mud wall: Nigerian novels and the imaginary village.” American
Sociological Review 57:709-724.
Griswold, Wendy, Susanne Janssen and Kees van Rees (eds.). 1999. Conditions of cultural production and
reception. Special issue of Poetics 26 (5/6).
Gross, John. 1991 [1969]. The rise and fall of the man of letters. English literary life since 1800. With a new
introduction and afterword. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Hall, Richard A. 1994. Sociology of work. Perspectives, analyses, and issues. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge Press.
Heilbron, Johan. 1992. Kunst leren [Learning art]. Rijswijk: Ministerie van Welzijn, Volksgezondheid en Cultuur.
Heilbrun, James and Charles M. Gray. 1993. The economics of art and culture. An American perspective.
Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Hirsch, Paul M. 1977. “Occupational, organizational, and institutional models in mass communication.” In
Strategies for communication research, P. M. Hirsch et al. (eds.), 13-42. Beverly Hills, CA and London:
Sage Publications.
Ibsch, Elrud, Dick Schram and Gerard Steen (eds.). 1989. Empirical studies of literature. Amsterdam and
Atlanta: Rodopi.
Janssen, Susanne. 1994. In het licht van de kritiek. Variaties en patronen in de aandacht van de literatuurkritiek
voor auteurs en hun werken [In the light of criticism: Divergences and patterns in the attention of literary
criticism for authors and their works]. Hilversum: Verloren.
Janssen, Susanne. 1997. “Reviewing as social practice: Institutional constraints on critics' attention for
contemporary fiction.” Poetics 24:275-298.
Janssen, Susanne. 1998. “Side-roads to success: The effect of sideline activities on the status of writers.” Poetics
25:265-280.
Janssen, Susanne and Nel van Dijk (eds.). 1998. The empirical study of literature and the media. Current
approaches and perspectives. Rotterdam: Barjesteh and Co's.
Jeffri, J. 1988. Information on artists. New York: Columbia University / Research Center for Arts and Culture.
Kadushin, Charles K. 1976. “Networks and circles in the production of culture.” American Behavioral Scientists
19:769-785.
Kartunen, Sari. 1998. “How to identify artists? Defining the population for 'status-of-the-artist' studies.” Poetics
26:1-19.
Laurenson, Diana. 1972. “The writer and society.” In The sociology of literature, D. Laurenson and A.
Swingewood, 91-166. London: MacGibbon & Kee.
Lenman, Robin. 1997. Artists and society in Germany 1850-1914. Manchester and New York: Manchester
University Press.
Levy, Emanuel. 1989. “The choice of acting as a profession.” In Foster and Blau, 111-131.
Lowenthal, Leo. 1961. Literature, popular culture, and society. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Lowenthal, Leo. 1964. “The reception of Dostojevski's work in Germany: 1880-1920.” In The arts in society, R.
Wilson (ed.), 124-147. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Markert, John. 1984. Beyond gatekeepers: Romance publishing and the production of culture. Nashville, TN:
Vanderbilt University.
McQuail, Denis. 1994. Mass communication theory. An introduction. Third edition. London: Sage Publications.
Mennell, Stephen. 1976. “Cultural policy in towns: A report on the Council of Europe's experimental study of
cultural development in European towns.” Council of Europe, Strasbourg.
Meyer, Leonard. 1967. Music, the arts and ideas. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Minihan, Janet. 1977. The nationalization of culture: The development of state subsidies to the arts in Great
Britain. London: Hamish Hamilton.
Moulin, Raymonde. 1987. The French art market. A sociological view [Abridged edition of Le marché de la
peinture en France. Paris: Minuit, 1967]. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press.
Moulin, Raymonde et al. 1985. Les artistes. Essai de morphologie sociale. Paris: La documentation francaise.
Nash, Dennison J. 1989. “The socialization of an artist: The American composer.” In Foster and Blau, 85-96.
National Endowment for the Arts. 1982/1992. A sourcebook of art statistics. Washington, DC: NEA.
23
Nies, Fritz (ed.). 1996. “Literaturimport und Literaturkritik: das Beispiel Frankreich.” . Tübingen: Gunter Narr
Verlag.
Nochlin, Linda. 1973. “Why have there been no great women artists?” In Art and sexual politics, T. B. Hess et al.
(eds.) London: Collier-Macmillan.
Oosterbaan Martinius, Warna. 1990. Schoonheid, welzijn, kwaliteit. Kunstbeleid en verantwoording na 1945
[Beauty, welfare, quality. Art policy and its legitimization after 1945. The Hague: Gary Schwartz / SDU.
Parkhurst Clark, Priscilla. 1987. Literary France. The making of a culture. Berkely, CA: University of California
Press.
Pearson, Nicolas M. 1980. The state and the visual arts: State intervention in the visual arts since 1760. London:
Macmillan.
Pelles, Geraldine. 1963. Art, artists and society. Origins of a modern dilemma. Painting in England and France
1750-1850. Englewoord Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Peru, J. 1991. “Une crise du champ littéraire francais. Le debat sur la 'littérature prolétarienne' (1925-1935).” Actes
de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales 89:47-65.
Peterson, Richard. A. 1976. “The production of culture. A prolegomenon.” American Behavioral Scientist:
19:669-684.
Peterson, Richard A. 1994. “Cultural studies through the production perspective: Progress and prospects.” In The
sociology of culture. Emerging theoretical perspectives, D. Crane (ed.), 163-189. Cambridge, MA: Basil
Blackwell.
Peterson, Richard A. and Howard G. White. 1989. “The simplex located in art worlds.” In Foster and Blau, 243-
259.
Pevsner, Nikolaus. 1970. “French and Dutch artists in the seventeenth century.” In Albrecht et al., 363-369.
Pinto, Louis. 1991. “Tel Quel: Au sujet des intellectuels de parodie.” Actes de la Recherche en Sciences Sociales
89:66-77.
Ponton, Rémy. 1977. Le champ littéraire de 1865 à 1905. Paris: EHESS.
Powell, Walter W. 1985. Getting into print. The decision-making process in scholarly publishing. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Rarisch, Ilse. 1976. Industrialisierung und Literatur: Buchproduktion, Verlagswesen und Buchhandel in
Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert in ihrem statistischen Zusammenhang. Berlin: Colloquium Verlag.
Rees, C.J. van. 1983. “Advances in the empirical sociology of literature and the arts.” Poetics 12:285-310.
Rees, C.J. van, 1983a. “How a literary work becomes a masterpiece: On the threefold selection practised by
literary criticism. Poetics 12:397-418.
Rees, C.J. van. 1985. “Editorial. Empirical sociology of cultural productions.” Poetics 14:5-11.
Rees, C.J. van. 1987. “How reviewers reach consensus on the value of literary works.” Poetics 16:275-294.
Rees, Kees van and Jeroen Vermunt. 1996. “Event history analysis of authors’ reputation: Effects of critics’
attention on debutants’ careers.” Poetics 23:317-333.
Ridgeway, Sally. 1989. “Artist groups: Patrons and gatekeepers.” In Foster and Blau, 205-220.
Rodden, John. 1989. The politics of literary reputation. The making and claiming of 'St. George' Orwell. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Rollin, Roger B. 1976. “Trash gratia artis: Popular culture as literature.” Intellect 105:191-194.
Rosenblum, Barbara. 1978. Photographers at work: A sociology of photographic styles. New York: Holms &
Meier.
Rosengren, Karl E. 1983. The climate of literature. Sweden's literary frame of reference 1953-1976.
Lund: Studentlitteratur.
Rosengren, Karl E. 1985. “Time and literary fame.” Poetics 14:157-172.
Rosengren, Karl E. 1987. “Literary criticism: Future invented.” Poetics 16:295-326.
Rusch, Gebhard. 1999. “The status of authors within literary systems: Challenging the canon. An explorative
investigation of Alfred Döblin's status within the German literary system in 1997.” In Griswold et al., 367-
384.
Ryan, John and Richard A. Peterson. 1982. “The product image: The fate of creativity in country music writing.”
Annual reviews of communication research 10:11-32.
Schmidt, Siegried J. 1980 and 1982. Grundriss der Empirischen Literaturwissenschaft. Frankfurt/M: Suhrkamp.
Schmidt, Siegfried J. 1993. Literaturwissenschaft und Systemtheorie. Positionen, Kontroversen, Perspektiven.
Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
Schmidt, Siegfried J. 1998. “How to balance open accounts? Some requirements for a further development of the
empirical study of literature.” In Janssen and Van Dijk, 92-108.
Shoemaker, Pamela J. and Stephen D. Reese. 1996 [1991]. Mediating the message: Theories of influences on mass
media content. White Plains, N.Y.: Longman.
Simpson, Charles. 1981. Soho: The artist in the city. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Speier, Hans. 1977. “The communication of hidden meaning.” Social research 44:471-501.
Stolwijk, Chris. 1998. Uit de schilderswereld. Nederlandse kunstschilders in de tweede helft van de negentiende
eeuw [From the world of painters. Dutch painters in the second half of the nineteenth century]. Leiden:
24
Primavera Press.
Strauss, Anselm. 1970. “The art school and its students: A study and an interpretation.” In Albrecht et al., 159-177.
Sutherland, David Earl. 1989. “Ballet as a career.” In Foster and Blau, 97-110.
Sutherland, John A. 1976. Victorian novelists and publishers. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sutherland, John A. 1978. Fiction and the fiction industry. London: Athlone Press.
Swayze, Harold. 1962. Political control of literature in the USSR 1946-1959. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Tas, Jaap van der. 1990. Kunst als beroep en roeping [Art as profession and vocation]. Zeist: Kerkebosch.
Tebbel, John. 1975. A history of book publishing in the United States. Vol. 2: The expansion of an industry, 1865-
1919. New York: Bowker.
Tebbel, John. 1978. A history of book publishing in the United States. Vol 3: The golden age between the two wars,
1920-1940. New York: Bowker.
Thomas, D. 1969. A long time burning. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Throsby, David. 1986. Occupational and employment characteristics of artists. Sidney: Australia Council.
Throsby, David. 1992. “Artists as workers.” In Cultural economics, R. Towse and A. Kakee (eds.), 201-208.
Heidelberg: Springer Verlag.
Throsby, David. 1994. “The production and consumption of the arts: A view of cultural economics.” Journal of
Economic Literature 32:1-29.
Throsby, David. 1996. “Disaggregated earning functions for artists.” Pp. 331-346 in Economics of the arts: selected
essays, edited by V. A. Ginsburgh and P. M. Menger. Amsterdam: North Holland.
Throsby, David and D. Mills. 1989. When are you getting a real job? An economic study of artists in Australia.
Sidney: Australia Council.
Throsby, David and B. Thompson. 1994. But what do you do for a living? Sidney: Australia council.
Thurston, Carol. 1987. The romantic revolution: Romantic novels for women and the quest for a new sexual
identity. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Top, Titia. 1993. Art and gender. Creative achievement in the visual arts. Groningen: University of Groningen.
Towse, Ruth. 1992. The economic and social characteristics of artists in Wales. Cardiff: Welsh Arts Council.
Towse, Ruth. 1996. The economics of artists' labor markets. ACE Research report 3. London: The Arts Council of
England.
Tuchman, Gaye. 1978. Making news. New York: Free Press.
Tuchman, Gaye. 1975. “Women and the creation of culture.” In Another voice: Feminist perspectives on social life
and social science, edited by M. Millman and R. M. Kanter (eds.). New York: Anchor.
Tuchman, Gaye. 1989. Edging women out: Victorian novelists, publishers, and social change. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Tunstall, Jeremy. 1971. Journalists at work. Specialist correspondents: their news organizations, news sources, and
competitor-colleagues. London: Constable.
Useem, Michael. 1976. “Government patronage of science and art in America.” American Behavioral Scientist
19:785-804.
Verdaasdonk, Dorothee, 1994. Marginality a characteristic of artistic product, the need of personal networks to
sustain an artistic career.' In Institution and innovation. Avant Garde Critical Studies, K. Beekman (ed.),
37-54. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Verdaasdonk, Hugo, 1985. Empirical sociology of literature as a non-textually oriented form of research. Poetics
14: 173-186.
Viala, Alain. 1985. Naissance de l'écrivain. Sociologie de la littérature a l'âge classique. Paris: Les Editions de
Minuit.
Voorst, Sandra van der. 1997. Weten wat er in de wereld te koop is: Vier Nederlandse uitgeverijen en hun vertaalde
fondsen 1945-1970. The Hague: SDU Uitgevers.
Wassall, Gregory H. and Neil O. Alper. 1992. “Towards a unified theory of the determinants of the earnings of
artists.” In Cultural economics, R. Towse and A. Khakee (eds.), 187-200. Berlin: Springer.
Watt, Ian. 1993 [1957]. The rise of the novel. London: The Hogarth Press.
White, David M. 1950. “The gatekeeper: A case-study in the selection of news.” Journalism Quarterly 27:383-390.
White, Harrison C. and Cynthia A. White. 1993 [1965]. Canvases and careers. Institutional change in the French
painting world. New York: John Wiley.
Whiteside, Thomas. 1981. The blockbuster complex. Conglomerates, show business and book publishing.
Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press.
Wilensky, Harold L. 1964. “The professionalization of everyone?” American Journal of Sociology 70:137-158.
Williams, Raymond. 1980 [1961]. The long revolution. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.
Wolfe, Tom. 1975. The painted word. New York: Bantam Books.
Zolberg, Vera. 1990. Constructing a sociology of the arts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
