About the project
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Project summary
Title
Cultural Classification Systems in Transition. The Social Valuation of Cultural Goods in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United States, 1955-2005.
Term
2003-2012
Summary
The comparative study of cultural classification systems - that is, the ways in which members of particular societies classify cultural products and develop corresponding rules of behavior and practices - constitutes a very challenging, emerging field of research. It can greatly improve our understanding of the social nature of artistic valuation processes and practices, and, moreover, it can shed light on underlying, broader processes of social and cultural change.
Since the 1950s, cultural classification systems in western societies appear to have become more international, less universally shared, more differentiated, less hierarchical, and more strongly guided by commercial values and practices. This research program aims at clarifying and qualifying the changes that seem to have occurred in the classification of cultural products in (different) western societies. This will be achieved by means of (i) a comprehensive comparative study of newspaper coverage of arts and culture in France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United States between 1955 and 2005 and (ii) a subsequent analysis of how overtime changes and crossnational differences in newspapers' treatment of (various) cultural products arts relate to broader social and cultural conditions in these countries.
The program aims at developing a new, integrative theoretical framework for the study of contemporary processes of cultural change. Distinctive features of the project are its multidimensional approach, its fundamentally comparative design, and its linkage of more general questions of cultural change to concrete empirical questions regarding the making and use of cultural classifications in the public sphere and the social embedding of such processes.
Funding
VICI-grant, NWO Innovative Research Incentives Scheme
Institutional Setting
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Dept. of Arts and Culture Studies / Dept. of Media & Communication
ERMeCC- Erasmus Research Centre for Media, Communication and Culture
