Janet Wolff

A valuable introduction to the central issues in the sociology of the arts, this work draws on sociology, art history, feminism, and literary and media studies, to explain the social nature of the arts, their production, distribution, and reception. This second edition is the result of the author's chapter-by-chapter review and updating, taking into account not only her own re-thinking on these issues but also the work that has been done in cultural studies and the sociology of the arts since the first edition appeared in 1984. Wolff considers changes in sociology, literary studies, and cultural studies, and their implications for the project of the sociology of art: the relevance of post structuralist theory for an understanding of the author/artist; and the current, and perhaps unfounded, rejection of the concept of ideology. The author also assesses the question of cultural politics in relation to debates about postmodernism, as well as the matter of identity politics with regard to gender and ethnicity. Containing a wealth of information about both past and present thinking on the sociology of art, this book will be of particular interest both to students of the arts and students of sociology.

Second Edition

The Social Production of Art

Martin Dodge

John Ayshford

Diana Leitch

Stuart Jones

The Simons of Manchester revives the history of one of Manchester’s most influential families, the Simons. The book investigates the lives and public work of Henry and Emily Simon, and Ernest and Shena Simon. Through philanthropy and work in social reform, the two generations of the Simons greatly enriched Manchester’s cultural and civic institutions, worked to improve the lives of its citizens, and helped to spearhead profound national reforms in health, housing, planning and education. While many people in Manchester are familiar with the Simon name through Shena Simon College, Simonsway, and the Simon Building at the University of Manchester, there is scant public knowledge of who the Simons were and their legacy. As such, this edited volume of collected essays aims to illuminate their fascinating lives and public service to rehabilitate the Simons and examine their local and national significance. An electronic edition of this book is freely available under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND) licence.

How one family shaped a city and a nation

The Simons of Manchester

This new book integrates material drawn from a variety of sources - feminist theory, cultural and literary analysis, sociology and art history - in an original discussion of women's relationship to modern and post-modern culture. The essays in the book challenge the continuing separation of sociological from textual analysis in cultural (and feminist) theory and enquiry. They address critically the question of women's writing, exploring the idea that women may begin to define their own lives and construct their identities in a patriarchal culture through the very process of writing. They also present a cogent defence of a feminist cultural politics, including a politics of the body.

Essays on Women and Culture

Feminine Sentences

Jane Routh

Theoretical Approaches

The Sociology of Literature

El presente libro contiene una revisión general de los estudios y teorías en Socilogía de la Cultura. Planteando un debate sobre las aproximaciones sociológicas, históricas, literarias y de género (ahondando en la temática femenina) realiza una aproximación original al estudio concreto de la obra de arte, incidiendo en cuestiones centrales como la del papel de la lectura-visión, la naturaleza del concepto de y la posibilidad de una política cultural.

La producción social del arte

Annette Kuhn

Michele Barrett

Philip Corrigan

Originally published in 1979, Ideology and Cultural Production examines the contribution to the debate surrounding ‘culture’, ‘ideology’, and ‘representation’, in this collection of essays. Originally presented as papers at the 1978 British Sociological Conference on the theme of culture, the collection is tied together under the argument for a definition, which emphasizes the material and ideological conditions of cultural production. The volume discusses key issues, such as the break with ‘super-structural theory’, the question of economism, and the argument between culturalism and structuralism, as well as the central debates of determinism and autonomy.

Routledge Revivals: Ideology and Cultural Production (1979)

Professor Emerita in the School of Arts Languages and Cultures Janet Wolff

In this book of critical writings, Janet Wolff examines issues of exile, memoir, and movement from the perspective of the female stranger. Wolff, born in Great Britain but now living and working in the United States, discusses the positive consequences of women's travel; the use of dance (another form of mobility) as an image of liberation; whether exile or distance provides a better vantage point for cultural criticism than centrality and stability; the place of personal memoir in academic writing; and much more.

Feminist Cultural Criticism

Resident Alien

Early twentieth-century art and art practice in Britain and the United States were, Janet Wolff asserts, marginalized by critics and historians in very similar ways after the rise of post-Cubist modern art. In a masterly book on the sociology of modernism, Wolff explores work that was primarily realist and figurative and investigates the social, institutional, political, and aesthetic processes by which that art fell by the wayside in the postwar period. Throughout, she shows that questions of gender and ethnicity play an important role in critical, curatorial, and historical evaluations. For example, Wolff finds that the work of the artists central to the development of the Whitney Museum was relegated to a secondary status in the postwar period, when realism was labeled "feminine" in contrast to the aggressive masculinity of abstract expressionism. The three key periods considered in AngloModern are the early twentieth century, when modernist art and existing and new realist traditions coexisted in a certain tension; the postwar period, in which modernism claimed superiority over realism; and the late twentieth century, when a retrieval of the realist and figurative traditions seemed to occur. Wolff concludes by considering this re-emergence, as well as the limitations of earlier discussions of the struggles of realist and figurative art to endure the currents of modernism.

Painting and Modernity in Britain and the United States

AngloModern

Abstract:. - http://www3.openu.ac.il/ouweb/owal/new_books1.book_desc?in_mis_cat=115669.

The Aesthetics of Uncertainty

This new book integrates material drawn from a variety of sources -feminist theory, cultural and literary analysis, sociology and arthistory - in an original discussion of women's relationship tomodern and post-modern culture. The essays in the book challenge the continuing separation ofsociological from textual analysis in cultural (and feminist)theory and enquiry. They address critically the question of women'swriting, exploring the idea that women may begin to define theirown lives and construct their identities in a patriarchal culturethrough the very process of writing. They also present a cogentdefence of a feminist cultural politics, including a politics ofthe body.

Explores sociocultural influences on the construction of traditional aesthetic theories and judgments

Aesthetics and the Sociology of Art

John Seed

Art, Power and the Nineteenth-Century Middle Class

The Culture of Capital

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Austerity Baby might best be described as an ‘oblique memoir’. Janet Wolff’s fascinating volume is a family history – but one that is digressive and consistently surprising. The central underlying and repeated themes of the book are exile and displacement; lives (and deaths) during the Third Reich; mother-daughter and sibling relationships; the generational transmission of trauma and experience; transatlantic reflections; and the struggle for creative expression. Stories mobilised, and people encountered, in the course of the narrative include: the internment of aliens in Britain during the Second World War; cultural life in Rochester, New York, in the 1920s; the social and personal meanings of colour(s); the industrialist and philanthropist, Henry Simon of Manchester, including his relationship with the Norwegian explorer, Fridtjof Nansen; the liberal British campaigner and MP of the 1940s, Eleanor Rathbone; reflections on the lives and images of spinsters. The text is supplemented and interrupted throughout by images (photographs, paintings, facsimile documents), some of which serve to illustrate the story, others engaging indirectly with the written word.

Janet Wolff

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