Art Worlds, Fields And Networks

60 political, economic, social and cultural relation that constitute the present conjuncture, by using the lens of Boudieu’s field of practice.

Taking into account these perspective, I argue that there have to be two layers of analysis: one referring to the networks of people activities and another referring to the theoretical construct of the researcher which need to be used at a level of abstraction.

Bourdieu’s conceptualization enables to consider this level of abstraction which is constituted by the field and by its interconnectedness with different fields and of the objective relations.

However Bourdieu’s relational theory doesn’t allow to consider the interconnectedness of concrete interactions in the different fields.

There has instead to be a recognition of the importance that situated interactions play together with a recognition of the role that power relations and structural constraints can play in affecting these situated interactions. The recognition of the importance of situated interactions is central to Becker’s interactionist perspective, but art world doesn’t provide a way of understanding these interactions more than in the descriptions and symbolic representations of its members. That’s why I will not point out the importance of using the notion of network as a way of theoretically understanding concrete interactions.

61 concrete interactions. Bourdieu’s theory does not provide a framework to understand the great variety of actions and of interactions taking place in the field.

Meanwhile Becker tends to flatten the level of discourse to the descriptions of the actual actions and interactions within the art world, without explaining how these interactions are enabled or inhibited by structural constraints and neglecting the emphasis to be given to the structural questions of power and resources (as I have discussed for the scene perspective). As Bourdieu suggests in his critic to Becker’s definition of art world, there’s a reduction of the art world to the sum of people and interactions that constitute it.

Besides both scene and art world are defined as fluid, flexible and with no boundaries, in order to encapsulate the complexity and mobility of individual practices. The point is that suggesting that scene and world are fluid and flexible by definition is a priori theoretical assumption exactly as saying that they are structured and bounded. Instead we could argue that people’s concrete actions and interactions are usually flexible and mobile and can’t usually be encapsulated within the music scene or the art world. Art world and scene, even though attempt to consider the mobile nature of interactions don’t provide any tool to understand how concrete interactions work.

That’s why we need a framework to better conceptualize concrete interactions. For this reason I suggest here that the notion of network has much powerful heuristic value to understand concrete interactions, because it transcends the level of those concepts which seek to explain collective entities, social formations.

For this reason, there has been a tendency in finding a meso-level of discourse in order to consider the actions and collaborations of the ‘art world’ debate and resources and forces of power of the ‘field’ debate. This has been a tendency particularly discussed in using the concept of ‘network’ and particularly of Social Network Analysis as a possible alternative to the art world or field perspective.

I’m here referring particularly to Crossley’s (2009, 2011) article investigating the network dynamics of the post punk scene (2009) and his later publications which compare art world and field (Bottero & Crossley, 2011) and which theorize the notion of “relational sociology”

(Crossley, 2011). In all these publication we can find reference to the relationship between Bourdieu’s notion of field and Becker’s notion of ‘world’ and to the need of integrating them with a meso level of analysis given by the network.

Crossley and Bottero (2009, 2011) suggest the need of using the network and particularly SNA in order to better conceptualizing both Becker’s and Bourdieu’s notions and in order to

62 understand the dynamics of formation of the punk music scene of Manchester. The authors point out how the study of networks have been underdeveloped in the art world and in the field approach In Becker (1982)’s analysis, the notion of art worlds is based upon the centrality of networks of interactions but without really developing the concept. We can often find reference to the term ‘network’ in Becker’s analysis who often defines art worlds as “the network of people whose cooperative activity, organized by their joint knowledge of conventional means of doing things, produces the kind of art works that the art world is noted for” (1982, p. x). However Becker never conceptualizes network as analytical tool and only considers actions and interactions of individuals cooperating within the fluid and flexible and no bounded art world. Becker uses conventions as a way of explaining how these interactions are coordinated, but never provides a clear explanation of how networks are enabled and inhibited. Becker reduces the constraints to the one given by the conventions and resources existing in the art world but neglects structural questions of power.

Bottero and Crossley (2011) criticize Becker (1982) of having not enough examined social relationships “because he does not focus on interpersonal interaction sufficiently systematically” (2011, p.106). For them, “Becker wants to avoid imbuing networks with a misplaced solidity, but the extent and stability of network interconnections are partly an empirical matter and one which SNA can address” (2011, p.106).

The authors (2011) apply SNA to Becker’s symbolic interactionist perspective, reducing cooperative activities in the conventions which characterize the art world to the systematic network structure of SNA. I will come back to the critics to the SNA later, for now I will look at Crossley and Bottero’s understanding of Bourdieu’s perspective.

Considering instead the field approach, for the authors, Bourdieu (1993) distinguishes in field between the objective relations and the concrete relationships omitting the importance of looking at social networks (Crossley & Bottero, 2011). The authors suggest that it’s not clear why Bourdieu makes this distinction and why Bourdieu rejects network analysis and symbolic interactionism because, exactly because they fail to distinguish objective relations from concrete interactions avoiding to consider the underlying forces (objective relations) which generate empirical social relationships. The authors criticizes the level of abstraction of Bourdieu’s model which implies that relations are not directly connected to concrete ties but to the positions agents occupy in the field.

The authors challenge Bourdieu by saying that he needs to take into account concrete relationships suggesting that “concrete relations and interactions, in the form of differential

63 association, form both habitus and the abstract social space of positions mapped by Bourdieu”

(Bottero & Crossley, 2011, p.103). To the distinction made by Bourdieu, the authors oppose

“the systematic analysis of empirical relations and interactions by means of SNA which allows us to derive a sense of social space and positions” (Bottero & Crossley, 2011, p.103).

For Crossley and Bottero, there’s instead a need of understanding the dynamics of networking and of pointing out the importance of looking at the significance of networks as analytical tool to understand concrete relations. I agree with this point but the authors imply that this assumption directly means the adoption of SNA. The following paragraph will make some critics to the SNA approach and will later suggest an alternative use of the notion of network which doesn’t imply the use of SNA.

64