The Research Network on the Sociology of the Arts (RN02) was formed in August 1999 during the Amsterdam General Meeting of the European Sociological Association (ESA).
Its first conference was held in Exeter in 2000, emerging thanks to the efforts of Tia DeNora, Anna Lisa Tota, Robert W. Witkin, Jan Marontate, and other founding members.
RN02 has grown steadily, exceeding 100 regular members by 2016. It has maintained close collaborations with the Arts Management Studies Research Stream (AMSRS) and RN07 (Sociology of Culture).
🔍 Core Areas of the Sociology of the Arts
RN02 explores a wide range of topics and approaches related to the production, mediation and impact of the arts in society. Key areas include:
- Artistic production and distribution: processes, professional roles, technologies, markets, valuation and theory-building
- Presentation and mediation: criticism, media, audience reception, education and institutional framing
- Professional development: training, amateur/professional distinctions, status, artistic recognition and career paths
- Arts organisations: museums, theatres, festivals, unions, programming, leadership, governance and institutional practices
- Cultural policy: regulation, public/private funding, lobbying, sustainability, classification of art, censorship, arts and sexuality, arts and racism
- Social and cognitive effects: embodiment, ethics, gender, identity, collective memory, aesthetic experience, urban change
- Macrosociological approaches: globalisation, digitalisation, cultural policies, cohesion, inequality, power
- Theoretical contributions: cultural production, field theory, system theory, structuralism, praxeology, methods
- Everyday aesthetics: embodied and multisensory practices, lived experience, cultural significance, interdisciplinarity