The analysis of cultural policy in the last decade suggests that creativity and the arts in general are extensively used in political agendas as means of capitalizing on the forecasted socio-economic potential of creative/artistic activities (e.g. Flew, 2005; Garnham, 2005; Hartley, 2005; Hesmondhalgh, 2007). Although some critical studies have highlighted instrumentalism, short-sidedness and practice/practitioners’ averse policy-making and intervention planning (Belfiore, 2004, 2009; Caust, 2003; Oakley, 2009; Newman, 2013), so far only very few studies have exposed the experiences and voices of particular groups of creative workers in the different national (country-specific) contexts to support this criticism. There has been a significant lack of studies that aim to understand how creative workers experience and cope with the changing policy context in their work. In particular, the voice of non-artists has rarely been considered when seeking a better understanding of the sector’s dynamics. This thesis explored the Scottish cultural sector through the eyes of cultural leaders. The study was carried out during a time of significant transformation to the funding structure, processes and relationships in the sector, catalysed by the establishment of a new funding agency (the funder). It focuses on cultural leaders’ understandings of an increasingly politicised cultural landscape that constitutes the context of their work. The thesis also looks at the influence of these understandings on the leaders’ role responsibilities, as well as the essence and the sustainability of the cultural sector. The empirical work for the thesis followed a qualitative research approach and focused on 21 semi-structured interviews with cultural leaders and industry experts based in Scotland. These individuals were purposefully chosen as a group of stakeholders who are able to engage in discussions about the cultural sector in the context of recent changes in the governance and financial subsidy of Scottish (publically funded) arts. The research findings illustrated the importance of leaders’ values and beliefs, which reflect the purpose of their work and shape their enactments in the sector. In particular, the intrinsic motivation, artistic ambitions, social and civic responsibilities of leaders emerged as crucial qualities of their work roles. The findings revealed a discrepancy between these artistic and civic concerns of cultural leaders and the socio-economic expectations of the funder, which contributed to a great deal of unproductive ('inorganic') tensions for which leaders had to find coping mechanisms. Bourdieu’s (1977, 1992) theoretical concepts were used as a starting point in understanding the cultural sector as a cultural field, and cultural leaders as actors enacting their work-related practices in the evolving socio-political and economic system of cultural production. However, upon further analysis of the data, the notions of a ‘worldview’ and ‘stewardship’ emerged and were used to better explain the greater complexity of work in today’s cultural sector. This thesis thus builds upon Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’ and ‘artistic logic’ and explains the changing cultural sector as a holistic cultural field where cultural leaders enact their stewardship-like work responsibilities from within a strong and dynamic artistic worldview.

This thesis explores how the Institut für Literatur ‘Johannes R. Becher’, an East German institution for the training of writers, negotiated tensions that arose from the conflicting demands between literary and political values. The Institute had the objective to foster emerging literary talents according to the socialist ideal of a working writer, but often found students and staff drawn towards more autonomous literary values that were incompatible with the views of the East German Socialist Unity Party. As a result, the Institute’s practices fluctuated between toeing the party line and pursuing literary ambitions. An overview of the existing scholarship shows that the Institute and its function have been highly politicised and hardly subjected to analyses that allow for a more nuanced appraisal of its practices. As a result, the study of the Institut has not been able to transcend the binary differentiation between assent and dissent and the Institute is either presented as a liberal haven or an orthodox academy with little artistic value. This thesis addresses this issue by applying Bourdieu’s’ theory of cultural production, more specifically his notion of field, capital and habitus, to the study of the Becher Institute. Three case studies that form the core of this dissertation investigate how cultural capital in its institutionalised, embodied, and objectified form was accumulated, converted and exchanged by the Institute, how it tried to reconcile the tensions between cultural policy and creative aspirations and how these tensions affected the Institute’s common habitus. The first case study will show how the Institute’s founding shaped the institutionalised capital it represented and question the importance that has been attributed to prominent political figures during the founding process. The second case study examines the role of the lecturer and the influence their embodied capital had on the Institute. Two lecturers, working writer Werner Bräunig and poet Georg Maurer, and their representation of the Institute’s multiple habitus will be the focus of the analysis. The third and final case study is dedicated to objectified cultural capital in the form of the Institute’s publications during the 1970s. The Institute’s orthodox publications have so far been overlooked by scholars in favour of its more controversial literary output, which gives a misleading impression of the Institute’s literary output that I aim to amend. By developing a sociological framework for the study of the Institute, this thesis is able to investigate the Institute and its practices as a social and literary space under the watchful eye of the Socialist Unity Party, without denying its pedagogical and cultural dimensions. The findings will reveal a deeply conflicted institution that struggled throughout its existence to resolve the tensions between literary ambitions and political restraints as well as the contradictions within the literary field itself.

Attraverso un ampio studio di campo, il contributo propone un'analisi sociologica della fotografia in Italia e della sua parziale legittimazione artistica. Prendendo in considerazione sia lo sviluppo storico del campo della fotografia artistica in Italia che la sua condizione contemporanea, lo studio si concentra sui processi attraverso cui diversi attori e istituzioni promuovono la legittimità e lo status della fotografia come arte. Combinando la sociologia dell'arte e dei processi culturali con gli studi organizzativi, la ricerca sviluppa un quadro interpretativo che delinea la relazione tra legittimazione, categorizzazione sociale e processi di valutazione culturale. La ricerca, adottando la metodologia della Constructivist Grounded Theory, raccoglie e analizza diverse fonti: interviste faccia a faccia con fotografi, critici, storici, curatori, galleristi, direttori di musei e collezionisti italiani; note etnografiche raccolte durante l'osservazione partecipante di vari eventi di arte e fotografia, come festival, fiere, presentazioni, visite a musei e aperture di gallerie; risultati d'asta (2009-2020) e analisi di mercato disponibili; dati secondari, come libri di storia e opere critiche sulla fotografia italiana, documenti di archivio e comunicati stampa. I risultati mostrano che la fotografia in Italia sta ancora lottando per assicurarsi uno statuto di forma d'arte legittima a causa di processi storici e dinamiche socio-economiche che rafforzano il confine simbolico tra il mondo professionale della fotografia e quello legittimo dell'arte contemporanea. Rispetto ad altri paesi europei, il campo della fotografia artistica è emerso tardi, solo alla fine degli anni '70, in seguito all'emergere di tre spazi di opportunità favorevoli, in particolare la crisi del fotogiornalismo italiano. Di conseguenza, i membri del campo della fotografia artistica hanno sviluppato strategie di mobilitazione delle risorse e di teorizzazione di un'ideologia legittimante ancora in fase di sviluppo. Inoltre, il contributo teorizza tre processi di legittimazione che, agendo in combinazione tra loro, stabiliscono le condizioni per la completa legittimazione della fotografia come arte: differenziazione, emulazione e sublimazione. Questi processi, discussi alla luce di esperienze empiriche di legittimazione sia completa che parziale, mostrano che il campo della fotografia occupa una posizione di "inclusione segregata" all'interno delle istituzioni artistiche, poiché persiste ancora una contestata identificazione della fotografia come arte. / Through an in-depth field study, this thesis provides a sociological analysis of photography in Italy and its partial artistic legitimation. Taking into account both the historical development of the field of art photography in Italy and its contemporary condition, the study focuses on the processes through which different actors and institutions promote the legitimacy and status of photography as art. Combining the sociology of art and cultural processes to organisation studies, the study develops an interpretative framework that spells out the relationship between legitimation, social categorisation and cultural evaluation processes. Adopting the Constructivist Grounded Theory methodology, the research collects and analyses different sources: face-to-face interviews with photographers, critics, historians, curators, gallery owners, museum directors and Italian collectors; ethnographic notes collected during participant observation of various art and photography events, such as festivals, fairs, presentations, museum visits and gallery openings; auction data (collected from 2009 to 2020) and extant market analyses; secondary textual data, such as history and critical works on Italian photography, archival records and press releases. The results show that photography in Italy is still struggling to secure its status as a legitimate art form due to historical processes and socio-economic dynamics that reinforce the symbolic boundary between the professional world of photography and the legitimate world of contemporary art. Compared to other European countries, the field of artistic photography emerged late, only at the end of the 1970s, following the emergence of three favourable opportunity spaces, notably the crisis of Italian photojournalism. As a result, members of the field of artistic photography developed strategies of resource mobilisation and theorisation of a legitimising ideology that are still ongoing today. In addition, the contribution theorises three processes of legitimation which, acting in combination with each other, establish the conditions for the complete legitimation of photography as art: differentiation, emulation and sublimation. These processes, discussed in the light of empirical experiences of both full and partial legitimation, show that the field of photography occupies a position of "segregated inclusion" within art institutions, as a contested identification of photography as art still persists.

Le « théâtre sur le théâtre », procédé par lequel le théâtre se prend explicitement pour objet, connaît en France, entre 1680 et 1762, une vogue inégalée : à l’exception de l’Opéra, il concerne plus du quart du répertoire comique créé sur les scènes publiques de Paris. Cette étude s’appuie sur plus de quatre cents pièces et se concentre sur une sélection de cent vingt-sept d’entre elles, jouées à la Comédie-Française : principalement des prologues dramatiques et des comédies en un acte, des « comédies de comédiens », des « comédies de spectateurs », des pièces allégoriques et des pièces d’actualité. Le théâtre autoréflexif, où s’exerce en action une conscience critique aux yeux du public, permet de retracer l’histoire d’un art, tel qu’il se donne à voir. Sur un plan pratique, il se fait le miroir des realia de la vie théâtrale en dévoilant les dynamismes de la conception d’un ! spectacle et de sa performance. Il aborde des enjeux qui touchent encore à la dramaturgie [conditions de représentation], à la poétique [apparition des genres nouveaux], à l’esthétique [fabrique de l’illusion] et à la vie institutionnelle des théâtres [querelles dramatiques]. Il interroge l’ancrage et la fonction du théâtre dans le monde en offrant un reflet prismatique de la société. L’étude présentée trace les contours de ce phénomène et de ses évolutions. Elle propose de repérer, en contexte, les enjeux idéologiques de ce répertoire, les effets qu’il provoque sur le spectateur, ainsi que les stratégies qu’il met en œuvre dans le fonctionnement du champ littéraire. / « Metatheatrical theatre » – theatre looking at itself and taking itself as its own object—flourished between 1680 and 1762, reaching unequalled proportions. More than a quarter of all the comic plays created in the Parisian public theatres of the time, apart from the Opera, consisted in metatheatre. Dealing with more than four hundred plays, this study focuses on a selection of one hundred and twenty-seven plays staged at the Comédie-Française—including mainly dramatic prologues, one-act comedies, comedians’ comedies, spectators’ comedies, allegorical plays and topical plays. Self-reflexive theatre allows us to retrace the history of an art which performed its critical consciousness before the spectator’s eyes. From a practical point of view, this repertoire mirrored the realia of theatrical life, by exhibiting the dynamics at work in the staging and acting of a play. From an aesthetic point of view, it raised central issues! related to the art of performance [the staging conditions], the institutional life of theatres [dramatic quarrels], poetics [the emergence of new genres] and aesthetics [the construction of theatrical illusion]. On an ideological level, they offered a prismatic reflection of society, thus developing a concrete questioning on the social inscription and function of theatre. The present study aims at mapping the modalities and evolution of this phenomenon. It seeks to bring out the ideological stakes of this repertoire, the effects it produced on the audience, as well as the strategies of its positioning in the literary field.

<p>The dissertation describes a crucial step in the development of a modern writer's identity in Sweden. It applies the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of the autonomous ”literary field” to the development in eighteen-eighties, one of the most important periods in Swedish literary history.</p><p>During this decade a large group of authors appeared, with August Strindberg in the front. In accordance with the dominating esthetical view of the nineteenth century, ”ideal realism”, the writers had an ethical responsibility. But they differed from their predecessors by not being loyal to the bourgeois society and its values, as codified in the concept of ”decency”, that contained, among other things, rules for what could be said in public. On the contrary, the new generation of authors attacked the bourgeoisie in novels, dramas and articles, especially in the singularly most controversial area, the regulation of sexuality and the ideals of bourgeois women.</p><p>This study argues that the new authors in their radical criticism aimed at the position of power in society traditionally upheld by the State church, which supervised education and ethical values. They did this by creating a role for themselves as young and oppressed, something that made it possible to deny any responsibility for the present state and furthermore to speak up, despite their own bourgeois background, for other oppressed groups like the working classes, the poor and women. But this also meant that they could not be successful in their ambitions to gain influence without loosing their identity. This was especially the consequence of the fact that an autonomous ”literary field” did not yet exist. That is, there were no internal literary institutions that, seemingly independent of the rest of society, decided what was ”good literature.” Instead, the singularly most important judge of interesting literature was the bourgeois public. Strindberg seems to have realised this early, and achieved an identity as ”uncontrolled”. He thereby lost his intellectual credibility, but gained a much bigger freedom to write and also got the attention of the large audience. At the same time, his writing undermined the values of decency by breaking the bourgeois society’s fundamental wall between the private and the public sphere, not least by writing what was regarded as facts about his own private life. </p><p>The conservative reaction accelerated towards the end of the decade while the authors grew more and more bitter about the public’s lack of understanding. At this point the author Verner von Heidenstam took the opportunity to declare a new literary era, dissociating his aesthetics from the one of the Eighties and proclaiming the necessity of an aristocratic, ethically indifferent literature (with himself as its leader). </p><p>Confronted with the new concept of what ought to be regarded as “modern”, the established male authors were generally quick to separate themselves from the female authors, and to identify the attacked literature solely with the one that critically discussed the situation of women in society - a description that has been largely adopted in the history of literature. A number of male authors also wrote novels separating themselves from the Eighties. Thus, they could continue into the new period, while female authors in general were silenced or forced to write in less esteemed genres (”popular literature”, children’s books). </p><p>Ultimately the result was a more distinct male domination coupled with a growing contempt for the large audience. This, in turn, created a need for internal institutions that could interpret, value and support literature - scholarships, elitist critics, and a writers’ union. These institutions subsequently were founded or developed during the nineties – all of them steps towards autonomy.</p>

The dissertation describes a crucial step in the development of a modern writer's identity in Sweden. It applies the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of the autonomous ”literary field” to the development in eighteen-eighties, one of the most important periods in Swedish literary history. During this decade a large group of authors appeared, with August Strindberg in the front. In accordance with the dominating esthetical view of the nineteenth century, ”ideal realism”, the writers had an ethical responsibility. But they differed from their predecessors by not being loyal to the bourgeois society and its values, as codified in the concept of ”decency”, that contained, among other things, rules for what could be said in public. On the contrary, the new generation of authors attacked the bourgeoisie in novels, dramas and articles, especially in the singularly most controversial area, the regulation of sexuality and the ideals of bourgeois women. This study argues that the new authors in their radical criticism aimed at the position of power in society traditionally upheld by the State church, which supervised education and ethical values. They did this by creating a role for themselves as young and oppressed, something that made it possible to deny any responsibility for the present state and furthermore to speak up, despite their own bourgeois background, for other oppressed groups like the working classes, the poor and women. But this also meant that they could not be successful in their ambitions to gain influence without loosing their identity. This was especially the consequence of the fact that an autonomous ”literary field” did not yet exist. That is, there were no internal literary institutions that, seemingly independent of the rest of society, decided what was ”good literature.” Instead, the singularly most important judge of interesting literature was the bourgeois public. Strindberg seems to have realised this early, and achieved an identity as ”uncontrolled”. He thereby lost his intellectual credibility, but gained a much bigger freedom to write and also got the attention of the large audience. At the same time, his writing undermined the values of decency by breaking the bourgeois society’s fundamental wall between the private and the public sphere, not least by writing what was regarded as facts about his own private life. The conservative reaction accelerated towards the end of the decade while the authors grew more and more bitter about the public’s lack of understanding. At this point the author Verner von Heidenstam took the opportunity to declare a new literary era, dissociating his aesthetics from the one of the Eighties and proclaiming the necessity of an aristocratic, ethically indifferent literature (with himself as its leader). Confronted with the new concept of what ought to be regarded as “modern”, the established male authors were generally quick to separate themselves from the female authors, and to identify the attacked literature solely with the one that critically discussed the situation of women in society - a description that has been largely adopted in the history of literature. A number of male authors also wrote novels separating themselves from the Eighties. Thus, they could continue into the new period, while female authors in general were silenced or forced to write in less esteemed genres (”popular literature”, children’s books). Ultimately the result was a more distinct male domination coupled with a growing contempt for the large audience. This, in turn, created a need for internal institutions that could interpret, value and support literature - scholarships, elitist critics, and a writers’ union. These institutions subsequently were founded or developed during the nineties – all of them steps towards autonomy.