Arts and Power

Concepts of power and domination are central for sociology since its beginnings. Classical theorists such as Marx, Weber, Gramsci, Adorno, Foucault, Bourdieu etc. developed these concepts as fundamental sociological terms; there is almost no (macro-)sociological discourse that does not draw from these notions. In general sociology, more abstract and theoretical concepts of power and domination are discussed, divesting from empirical explorations. Dispositifs, constraints and violence are relational concepts that are defined by the enforcement of volition against resistance (Weber). We are convinced that this "enforcement of volition" is also well suited for the explanation of structures and processes in the arts, in their production, imagination, communication, distribution, critique, and consumption. In addition, the arts are means for enforcing power and domination (see among others Adorno's notion of cultural industry more than 70 years ago, or Bourdieu's theory of distinction). Theoretically and empirically, the notion of policies is at the center of the conference. Policies in and by the arts are results of the struggle between the structures of social constraints and the agencies, capabilities, and possibilities of arts and artists to shape society. In this sense, the sociology of arts looks at the political alternations between structure and agency in the arts.