Reflexivity makes life hard. Once upon a time it was legitimate to study the arts in society as if the arts were a known quantity. Today this is no longer intellectually viable. Scholars have discovered the socially constructed nature of art, cultural institutions, artists, and publics. Rather than assume that these complex phenomena are explained by simple causes, we find it necessary to incorporate heterogeneity, processes of discovery, evaluation, history, and the creation of traditions in the very categories that once were taken for granted.

The theoretical underpinnings of this perspective have been derived from both literary and sociological disciplines. Because I believe that the sociology of art needs to keep the arts themselves at the center of its concern, as much as possible I focus on the arts in their social and historical context, in a manner informed by theory, rather than on metatheoretical elaboration and analysis. Instead of taking art as a convenient device around which to drape existing theories, I propose a sociology of the arts that continues and elaborates the work in which art forms, styles, objects, and ideas are integrated with theoretical formulations and methodological orientations in such a way as to enhance the strengths of aesthetic, humanistic, and social scientific fields. Accordingly, these are the ideas that constitute the guiding themes of this book.