Cultural Institutions and Community

The study of culture in sociology has typically bifurcated between, on one hand, a theoretical perspective that focuses on the symbolic dimensions of social life, and on the other, a subfield dedicated to the study of specific institutional domains such as fashion or film (Ghaziani, 2009). In the former approach, culture is often seen as providing collective identities, narratives, values, and symbolic boundaries that support the establishment and maintenance of communities or societies generally (e.g. Alexander, 2004). In the latter, sociologists often focus specifically on the organizational and institutional structures that enable the production and consumption of particular cultural products or practices (e.g. Peterson & Anand, 2004).

In an effort to bring both approaches to culture into dialogue, this session invites papers that examine the role of formal cultural organizations such museums, art galleries, or theatre companies in the establishment and maintenance of community. Cultural organizations, it has been argued, often "claim to speak for the community as a whole" (DiMaggio, 1982, p. 38; Larsen, 2016). However, exactly how they claim this voice and what they say with it continues to be a source of sociological investigation.