Systems, Bubbles, Fragments: How Society Challenges Arts Management and Cultural Policy

Societies and the reception of arts and culture have been studied by (cultural) sociology for many years. Pierre Bourdieu, Paul Gilroy, Antoine Hennion, Eva Illouz, Niklas Luhmann, Richard A. Peterson, Andreas Reckwitz or Gerhard Schulze and many more give examples for how societies can be de- and reconstructed in terms of artistic reception and production. Recently, both the analytical tools and modes to describe societies, and societies themselves, have become more and more fragmented, with social media accelerating this transformation. Emerging, isolated social “bubbles” are forming unconnected and parallel structures, and manifest – at the same time – social multivocality and diversity.

This fragmentation poses new challenges for arts and culture organizations and cultural policy. What role can arts organizations play in singularized societies? Do traditional civic ideals promoted by Schiller, Humboldt, and Dewey still hold true today, or have cultural organizations merely become a self-loving, self-absorbed folklore movement seeking to preserve high cultural inventory? How could, and should, arts and culture organizations change in order to avoid musealization and to create social resonance and relevance, especially in light of socio-demographic shifts? What role can cultural policy play in this transformation process?

This issue welcomes contributions from historical, cultural sociological, organizational theoretical, political scientific and interdisciplinary perspectives.