Daniel B. Cornfield
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691160733
- eISBN:
- 9781400873890
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691160733.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This chapter presents a new sociological theory of artist activism that addresses the question of how artist activists fashion their roles as artist activists. Specifically, the theory addresses how ...
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This chapter presents a new sociological theory of artist activism that addresses the question of how artist activists fashion their roles as artist activists. Specifically, the theory addresses how individual subjective orientations shape the repertoire of individual and collective actions and roles assumed and enacted by artist activists. The theory attributes individual variations in role assumption and enactment to artist orientations toward success, audience, risk, and career inspiration. This is a theory-building project of the new sociology of work. Research in the new sociology of work has addressed individual risk-management strategies for advancing individual careers and social mobility of free agents. In contrast, the sociological theory of artist activism presented here addresses how artist activists build a peer community for sustaining the livelihoods of individuals and the whole occupation.Less
This chapter presents a new sociological theory of artist activism that addresses the question of how artist activists fashion their roles as artist activists. Specifically, the theory addresses how individual subjective orientations shape the repertoire of individual and collective actions and roles assumed and enacted by artist activists. The theory attributes individual variations in role assumption and enactment to artist orientations toward success, audience, risk, and career inspiration. This is a theory-building project of the new sociology of work. Research in the new sociology of work has addressed individual risk-management strategies for advancing individual careers and social mobility of free agents. In contrast, the sociological theory of artist activism presented here addresses how artist activists build a peer community for sustaining the livelihoods of individuals and the whole occupation.
Daniel B. Cornfield
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691160733
- eISBN:
- 9781400873890
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691160733.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This chapter describes how artist activists from Nashville are creating a “mechanically solidary” community of entrepreneurial artists alongside and partly from the ranks of an older, organically ...
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This chapter describes how artist activists from Nashville are creating a “mechanically solidary” community of entrepreneurial artists alongside and partly from the ranks of an older, organically solidary corporate-era artist community. Nashville entrepreneurial musicians constitute themselves as a community by producing and performing for one another, showing up to each others' showcases, and extending mutual aid during trying moments in their lives. Here, the Nashville musician community has a tendency to “cross-promote,” and the chapter reveals how the community is largely very supportive of each other's art. In addition, the chapter also discusses the background of the present study and the approaches the author has taken in studying Nashville's artist community.Less
This chapter describes how artist activists from Nashville are creating a “mechanically solidary” community of entrepreneurial artists alongside and partly from the ranks of an older, organically solidary corporate-era artist community. Nashville entrepreneurial musicians constitute themselves as a community by producing and performing for one another, showing up to each others' showcases, and extending mutual aid during trying moments in their lives. Here, the Nashville musician community has a tendency to “cross-promote,” and the chapter reveals how the community is largely very supportive of each other's art. In addition, the chapter also discusses the background of the present study and the approaches the author has taken in studying Nashville's artist community.
Daniel B. Cornfield
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691160733
- eISBN:
- 9781400873890
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691160733.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
At a time when the bulwarks of the music industry are collapsing, what does it mean to be a successful musician and artist? How might contemporary musicians sustain their artistic communities? Based ...
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At a time when the bulwarks of the music industry are collapsing, what does it mean to be a successful musician and artist? How might contemporary musicians sustain their artistic communities? Based on interviews with over seventy-five popular-music professionals in Nashville, this book looks at artist activists—those visionaries who create inclusive artist communities in today's individualistic and entrepreneurial art world. Using Nashville as a model, the book develops a theory of artist activism—the ways that artist peers strengthen and build diverse artist communities. The book discusses how genre-diversifying artist activists have arisen throughout the late twentieth-century musician migration to Nashville, a city that boasts the highest concentration of music jobs in the United States. Music City is now home to diverse recording artists—including Jack White, El Movimiento, the Black Keys, and Paramore. The book identifies three types of artist activists: the artist-producer who produces and distributes his or her own and others' work while mentoring early-career artists, the social entrepreneur who maintains social spaces for artist networking, and arts trade union reformers who are revamping collective bargaining and union functions. Throughout, the book examines enterprising musicians both known and less recognized. It links individual and collective actions taken by artist activists to their orientations toward success, audience, and risk and to their original inspirations for embarking on music careers. The book offers a new model of artistic success based on innovating creative institutions to benefit the society at large.Less
At a time when the bulwarks of the music industry are collapsing, what does it mean to be a successful musician and artist? How might contemporary musicians sustain their artistic communities? Based on interviews with over seventy-five popular-music professionals in Nashville, this book looks at artist activists—those visionaries who create inclusive artist communities in today's individualistic and entrepreneurial art world. Using Nashville as a model, the book develops a theory of artist activism—the ways that artist peers strengthen and build diverse artist communities. The book discusses how genre-diversifying artist activists have arisen throughout the late twentieth-century musician migration to Nashville, a city that boasts the highest concentration of music jobs in the United States. Music City is now home to diverse recording artists—including Jack White, El Movimiento, the Black Keys, and Paramore. The book identifies three types of artist activists: the artist-producer who produces and distributes his or her own and others' work while mentoring early-career artists, the social entrepreneur who maintains social spaces for artist networking, and arts trade union reformers who are revamping collective bargaining and union functions. Throughout, the book examines enterprising musicians both known and less recognized. It links individual and collective actions taken by artist activists to their orientations toward success, audience, and risk and to their original inspirations for embarking on music careers. The book offers a new model of artistic success based on innovating creative institutions to benefit the society at large.
Daniel B. Cornfield
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- October 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780691160733
- eISBN:
- 9781400873890
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691160733.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This chapter considers the pathways to becoming an artistic social entrepreneur. Previous research on social entrepreneurs has emphasized the impact of one's stock of human, social, and cultural ...
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This chapter considers the pathways to becoming an artistic social entrepreneur. Previous research on social entrepreneurs has emphasized the impact of one's stock of human, social, and cultural capital on one's mobilization of requisite resources for launching and sustaining a social enterprise. Less sociological attention has been given to the influence of career-biographical factors, such as family, religion, education, and pivotal career turning points that may inspire and compel one to become a social entrepreneur and to envision and shape one's social enterprise, let alone an artistic social enterprise. The profiles of four artistic social entrepreneurs in this chapter illustrate how their strategic and risk orientations and career pathways shape the social enterprises they envision and influence their assumption and enactment of their roles as artist activists.Less
This chapter considers the pathways to becoming an artistic social entrepreneur. Previous research on social entrepreneurs has emphasized the impact of one's stock of human, social, and cultural capital on one's mobilization of requisite resources for launching and sustaining a social enterprise. Less sociological attention has been given to the influence of career-biographical factors, such as family, religion, education, and pivotal career turning points that may inspire and compel one to become a social entrepreneur and to envision and shape one's social enterprise, let alone an artistic social enterprise. The profiles of four artistic social entrepreneurs in this chapter illustrate how their strategic and risk orientations and career pathways shape the social enterprises they envision and influence their assumption and enactment of their roles as artist activists.
Richard Iton
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195178463
- eISBN:
- 9780199851812
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195178463.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, American Politics
Because those who are of African descent are at times considered somehow as outcasts in society, and because this line of thinking has become hegemonic over other Americans, African Americans are ...
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Because those who are of African descent are at times considered somehow as outcasts in society, and because this line of thinking has become hegemonic over other Americans, African Americans are going to great lengths just to establish their credentials as true American citizens privileged with equal treatment. A number of events like the separation of the civil rights movement from the Left, the independence of the civil rights movement from other anticolonial movements, the resistance to feminism, and other such events have aided in portraying the situation of black politics during the Cold War. This chapter aims to examine the developments during the Cold War and the civil rights and post-civil rights eras in order to have a further understanding of the artist-activist roles that blacks held and their attempts to formally represent the interests of the black community.Less
Because those who are of African descent are at times considered somehow as outcasts in society, and because this line of thinking has become hegemonic over other Americans, African Americans are going to great lengths just to establish their credentials as true American citizens privileged with equal treatment. A number of events like the separation of the civil rights movement from the Left, the independence of the civil rights movement from other anticolonial movements, the resistance to feminism, and other such events have aided in portraying the situation of black politics during the Cold War. This chapter aims to examine the developments during the Cold War and the civil rights and post-civil rights eras in order to have a further understanding of the artist-activist roles that blacks held and their attempts to formally represent the interests of the black community.
Michael Godby
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780199744473
- eISBN:
- 9780190268183
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199744473.003.0018
- Subject:
- Music, Ethnomusicology, World Music
This chapter explores the politics of photographing the HIV/AIDS pandemic in South Africa by focusing on Gideon Mendel, a photojournalist entirely committed to biomedical treatment of the pandemic. ...
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This chapter explores the politics of photographing the HIV/AIDS pandemic in South Africa by focusing on Gideon Mendel, a photojournalist entirely committed to biomedical treatment of the pandemic. Mendel has spent much of his career documenting the impact of HIV/AIDS on the people of South Africa, his native country. More than merely documenting, however, Mendel has served for many as a prototypical model for artist-as-activist, using his photography to effect social change in arenas such as advocacy for access to antiretroviral therapies, and contributing to or fostering broader political campaigns (such as those related to the Treatment Action Campaign). This chapter considers Mendel’s attempt to change the balance of power that exists between photographers and their subjects.Less
This chapter explores the politics of photographing the HIV/AIDS pandemic in South Africa by focusing on Gideon Mendel, a photojournalist entirely committed to biomedical treatment of the pandemic. Mendel has spent much of his career documenting the impact of HIV/AIDS on the people of South Africa, his native country. More than merely documenting, however, Mendel has served for many as a prototypical model for artist-as-activist, using his photography to effect social change in arenas such as advocacy for access to antiretroviral therapies, and contributing to or fostering broader political campaigns (such as those related to the Treatment Action Campaign). This chapter considers Mendel’s attempt to change the balance of power that exists between photographers and their subjects.
