Sociología(s) del arte y de las políticas culturales

The proposal elaborated by Tomás Peters in Sociología(s) del arte y de las políticas culturales seeks to trace the transformation of the analytical models of the sociology of art. The first is to follow some theoretical clues that will allow us to locate the meaning of art in modernity. Through Luhmann, he constructs a macro-historical explanation of the differentiation of the art system up to the constitution of a specific system in modernity, and then, in the light of the Adorno-Benjamin dialectic, he concentrates on the contradictions of artistic experience in the modern world. The reflection continues with Howard S. Becker and Pierre Bourdieu, to introduce us to the artistic field itself and the current conditions of art in an ultra-technological world and artistic post-autonomy.

However, the most relevant contribution of this book is the dialogue it establishes between the sociology of art and cultural policies. The confrontation between the two would have constituted a virtuous circle from which emerged a sociological work that thinks of the work of art “as a critical-cultural device that intervenes in the social and that is possible to productivise from contemporary cultural policies”, and that ends up synthesising this search for new ways of thinking about the social in cooperation with the critical work of art.