Film As Sociology

Karl Mannheim once wrote that the fundamental science of culture was philosophy while the fundamental science of society was sociology, so that when sociology studies culture it does so from the outside, applying to the arts methods proper to the study of something else. If we accept that then the sociology of film would be the sociology of cinema - studio systems, finance, audience responses, cultural policy and so on - and not talk about what appears on screen. If we refuse Mannheim's distinction there are are several ways of proceeding. One is to say that the content of films is as open to sociological as it is to philosophical analysis. Once we have said that however, there is a choice, and most sociologists who have wanted to do more than the sociology of cinema have seen film as evidence for a theory of society they already subscribe to.

What though it we tried to get away both from a sociology of cinema and from a sociology of film that sees films as mere illustration, and see film itself is a source of sociological knowledge, and film makers as - theoretical as well as empirical - sociologists themselves? There have been efforts in this direction but they have often fallen back on the claim that film confirms what we already know.

This session welcomes papers that tackle this question, from those that argue that film can be a version of sociology to those that argue that it cannot.