Evaluating Culture

Abstract

I laving probed into matters of taste, let us now consider the evaluation of culture. This chapter surveys a number of existing contributions to the debate concerned with sociology and aesthetic value and explores the difficult task of formulating an alternative approach. It argues that sociology can inform an approach that is attentive to how people evaluate, and can consider the dynamic interplay between the individual or group or community and the cultural object. Awareness of the socio-historical context in which our judgements are formulated exposes the myth of aesthetic universalism, and institutional approaches highlight the ways in which certain cultural objects are imbued with value. However, by paying attention solely to contextual factors, there is a danger that the cultural object disappears. Therefore, in surveying the field, this chapter calls for a more balanced approach that considers value in terms of context, one which combines reflexive awareness of the position from which judgement is formulated with a renewed attention to the cultural object and, importantly, the dynamics of the evaluative moment, Pierre Bourdieu suggests that we should value cultural objects that have emerged as a kind of ‘historical quintessence’ from the ‘merciless clash of passions and selfish interests’ that is played out in the field of cultural production (Bourdieu 1996[1992], p. xviii).