Sociology of the Arts

The sociology of the arts informs, teaches and conducts research in all areas of the arts in traditional high culture organizations (e.g. visual art, museums, theaters, opera houses, concert halls for classical music, etc.) and in popular culture organizations (popular music venues, socio-cultural centers, festivals, etc.). It also includes less institutionalized organizing of the arts by artists, artist networks and temporary arts events. Theoretical foundations are found primarily in the extensive reservoir of North American and French theories on cultural organization.

The first focus of teaching and research is the analysis of cultural organizations, i.e. the objectification and organization of the production, distribution and consumption of culture and the arts. This includes questions of political influence, commercialization, technologization, participation, the significance of socio-political environments and cooperation within and between cultural organizations.

Secondly, the causes, functions and meanings of the arts and culture in the city are researched and taught. Cultural organizations in their many facets have a latent and manifest effect on the urban at the levels of the physical (firstspace, e.g. urban planning), the cognitive-mental (secondspace, e.g. city image) and the political (thirdspace, e.g. culture as a municipal political goal). Arts and cultural organizations in the city are perceived and examined in the face of the ubiquity of late capitalism in our society.

Thirdly, individual areas of cultural production, especially museums, but also music venues and artist groups, are examined in terms of their influence on the shaping of society.

Overall, questions of institutionalization, globalization, mediamorphosis, social identity, power and hegemony play a central role from a macrosociological perspective. Other topics in this field of teaching and research include:

• social legitimacy and outreach of cultural organizations,
• the role of cultural organizations in the face of social crises,
• culture and sustainability, i.e. the importance of culture for the socio-ecological transformation of society,
• discourses on diversity, racism, gender, ethnicity, and the affirmation and opening of target groups in and by cultural organizations,
• cultural policy, in particular questions of the political legitimation of state funding of culture and the potential of culture and the arts in times of crisis,
• comparison of and interactions between the life worlds of artists and the requirements of their cultural fields (art worlds).

In doing so, emphasis is placed on the teaching and application of empirical competence, i.e. on embedding empirical methods in a complex web of theories, on deductive and inductive approaches, and on the application of qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis.