What’s the Matter with Jarrettsville? Genre Classification as an Opportunistic Construct

The study of genre classifications within creative industries typically orients  toward the maintenance of order within organizational and institutional contexts. This study takes up the case of Jarrettsville, a work of fiction published in the United States in Fall 2009 to highlight prevalent disorders and debates in the development of a work of fiction. What looks like a clear and ordered process of genre assignment after-the-fact may actually contain a wealth of negotiations, strategic practices, and decisions to be made. In short, the assignment of genres can be conflicted, debated and opportunistic. As a work of culture is transmuted into a piece of commerce, cultural workers must navigate the interplay between text and context, and sometimes with competing agendas. When texts don’t fit a preferred context, the text itself may change. And when the context of the texts’ fabrication as a piece of commerce does not fit the text, contexts must be mediated as well. This case study highlights these processes in action

Evolutions in the literary field: the co-constitutive forces of institutions, cognitions, and networks

"Using the case-study of Odyssey Editions, an e-book publishing imprint created by literary agent Andrew Wylie, this work examines recent developments in the U.S. literary field. In lieu of a technologically deterministic focus on the effects of digital transitions within the book industry, the evolution of relations within the field's interdependent network structure, shifts in cognitive approaches to tasks and roles, and fieldwide institutional orientations toward 'blockbuster' texts and 'brand-name' authors are highlighted. These three co-constitutive forces have created structural holes within the literary field that entrepreneurial players such as Wylie have worked to fill." (author's abstract

The Production of Culture Perspective in Historical Research: Integrating the Production, Meaning and Reception of Symbolic Objects

Historians have analyzed films, novels, records, theater plays etc. primarily in reference to their meaning and reception. This article makes a case for moving the focus to the actors, structures and processes that shape symbolic objects before these are consumed. To this end, we present a framework established in US sociology to study the fabrication, distribution and evaluation of symbolic content. We discuss the production of culture perspective as an approach that appears to be particularly useful for historical research and, by reviewing selected works from the sociological literature, demonstrate how this perspective can be applied to phenomena like popular music and literary fiction. We focus on genres as bundles of conventions as one lens through which historians may analyze the creation, reproduction, evaluation and consumption of culture

The MFA in Creative Writing: The Uses of a “Useless” Credential

Over half of today’s Masters of Fine Arts programs in creative writing in the United States were founded after the year 2000. Has the MFA-CW become a necessary credential for novelists? Relying on participant observation field research in the American literary field and interviews with authors, publishers, MFA graduates, and instructors, this work focuses on a paradox: Despite widespread agreement that the credential doesn’t “teach” enrollees to be a good writers or open up a pathway to a professional writing career, many involved in the literary field hold an MFA-CW. In this paper, we look at the uses of the MFA-CW, finding that although the degree serves little if any jurisdictional or closure-related functions it is made useful in a variety of ways: for students as a symbolic resource for artistic identity, for working writers as a source of income and community, and for editors in publishing houses as a signal for possible marketing and publicity potential. Keywords: Credentialism, Professions, Literature, Books, Publishing, MFA  &nbsp

I Don’t Make Objects, I Make Projects: Selling Things and Selling Selves in Contemporary Artmaking

Gerber, Alison and Clayton Childress. 2017. “I Don’t Make Objects, I Make Projects: Selling Things and Selling Selves in Contemporary Artmaking.” Cultural Sociology 11(2):234–54

The Economic World Obverse: Freedom Through Markets After Arts Education

What role does arts education play in artistic activity and income? In light of the rise of university arts education and its effects, especially the changing role of teaching in artistic careers, this paper questions key assumptions of both winner-take-all and economic-world-reversed analyses of artistic careers. While almost all studies of remuneration in the creative arts find that income is highly skewed, these dominant perspectives take an object-oriented view of artistic life that neglects the vast majority of activities that underpin and compose contemporary arts practices. Looking at arts practices more holistically and using the changing status of art teaching as an exemplar of the expanded field of artistic practice, we document the challenges that the rise of arts education present to traditional analyses of artistic careers, income, and success

The MFA in Creative Writing: The Uses of a “Useless” Credential

Over half of today’s Masters of Fine Arts programs in creative writing in the United States were founded after the year 2000. Has the MFA-CW become a necessary credential for novelists? Relying on participant observation field research in the American literary field and interviews with authors, publishers, MFA graduates, and instructors, this work focuses on a paradox: Despite widespread agreement that the credential doesn’t “teach” enrollees to be a good writers or open up a pathway to a professional writing career, many involved in the literary field hold an MFA-CW. In this paper, we look at the uses of the MFA-CW, finding that although the degree serves little if any jurisdictional or closure-related functions it is made useful in a variety of ways: for students as a symbolic resource for artistic identity, for working writers as a source of income and community, and for editors in publishing houses as a signal for possible marketing and publicity potential. Keywords: Credentialism, Professions, Literature, Books, Publishing, MFA  &nbsp