Art: System, field and network

Art: system, field and network

Instead of choosing one contemporary social theory to study art from a sociological point of view, my aim in this paper is to show the possibilities that arise when we go beyond one particular theory and take the reduction of contingency as reference problem of sociological analysis. This reference problem allows us to compare and to complement several of the most important sociological approaches that had been used in the sociology of the arts. Among the approaches that will be compared and complemented are: Howard S. Becker’s analysis of art as a (cooperative) world, Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Practice, Niklas Luhmann’s Social Systems Theory, Raymonde Moulin’s study of the art market and the Actor Network Theory developed mainly by Bruno Latour. In this perspective art appears simultaneously as a communication system, a programmatic field and a material network made up by humans and not-humans.