Academic Identity
I am assistant professor of Sociology at Barnard College. My book (and my dissertation research) is a comparative study of technology and futures trading, an ethnography of open outcry and electronic traders. My current research is on how art specialists price cultural commodities, particularly how categories and commensuration work in the secondary/resale fine arts market. I teach courses in economic sociology, organizations, and gender.
Professional Identity
I occasionally consult, focusing on organizational change, the future of technology and financial markets, and environmental markets. I do strategic assessments of markets, technology and organizational design, with qualitative and quantitative components. If you are interested, please email me.
Personal Identity
I grew up outside Chicago, and went to school(s) at Wesleyan University, USC, and Northwestern University. I currently live in New York, with a partner who is a marketing manager for an educational nonprofit. I love movies, like to cook, and I can do a mean lindy swing out. I am INTP.
December 12, 2006
Thoughts on entanglement
Filed under: Art — Peter @ 7:54 am
A conversation with a student got me thinking about ‘entanglements’ and the role of specialists in dis-entangling art world participants. Michel Callon has done work looking at the theoretical role of economics (as a discipline) on the creation of markets (as real-world instances of economic theory). He argues, with examples, that one of the things that needs to happen is that normal people have to be transformed into economic actors, just as commodities have to be formed from things-in-the-ground to discrete commodities. He argues that one of the main ways economics affects markets is to make more possible these ‘calculative agencies’ - two good examples are cost-benefit analysis and William Cronon’s chapter from Nature’s Metropolis on the making of wheat futures.
As I said to the student, the presentation last week on embeddedness made me think about the creation of market actors in our case. In the Art world, museums have to be made from places-where-we-appreciate-Art to publicity/provenance makers; buyers from appreciators to either patrons or speculators or collectors; etc. All these actors have to have the pieces of them that think about Art (temporarily) downplayed, and the pieces that are part of the market-making machinery foregrounded. Specialists link all these pieces of buyers, advisors, galleries, museums, and consignors together. It only appears as though they are just estimating prices.
This is just first-pass speculation…
2 Responses to “Thoughts on entanglement”
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This site is hand-woven, and heavily borrows from the wonderful blueprint framwork. Rock on, grids!
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December 14th, 2006 at 7:26 pm
This is a really interesting take on the question that I hadn’t considered previously. Art is to be enjoyed, but also consumed (commodified) and that jump has to be made. Those, whose livlihoods depend on getting the collector/speculator/consignor to buy what they’re offering, will try to turn appreciators into market actors, but this would have to be a gentle dance; museums won’t put price tags on the works displayed… even galleries won’t do that, and they are more ostensibly about getting people to buy. Anyway, I found a Becker quote that supports this:
pp.112-113: “Critical writing is especially influential when it explains clearly what the previous standard was, and how the new work shows that that standard was too constricted and that there are in fact other things to enjoy… Critics frequently make the same discoveries gallery owners make, and the two groups collaborate to promote those painters and sculptors whose innovations they find attractive and critically acceptable. The dealers show the work, and the critics provide the reasoning which makes it acceptable and worth appreciating… Dealers need people who will not only appreciate the work they present, but also buy it and keep it—collectors… Dealers try to train appreciators to be collectors. That means adding to appreciation of the work such elements as pride and confidence in displaying one’s taste, the confidence showing in the expenditure involved and the willingness to let others know you have made it. Raymonde Moulin (1967, pp. 190-225) outlines the diversity of collectors’ motives, from cultural snobbery and sheer financial speculation to a deep engrossment in painting for its own sake, as well as the collecting mania…”
December 14th, 2006 at 7:34 pm
Here’s another quote from Becker.
pp. 94: “Distributors [of art] want to make a messy process more orderly, ensuring the stability of their own businesses and also creating stable conditions under which art can be produced on a regular basis. This often leads them to deal with works on some basis other than their artistic merit, however that is judged.”