Culture and Society: Veridical, Material and Compositional

PerspectivesTONY BENNETT

CENTRE FOR CULTURAL RESEARCHUNIVERSITY OF WESTERN SYDNEY

Compositional perspectiveToews, David (2009) “The new Tarde: sociology after the end of the social,” Theory, Culture & Society 20, no. 5.

Michel Callon, Chains of translationThere isn’t a reality on the one hand, and a

re-presentation of that reality on the other. Rather, there are chains of translation. Chains of translation of varying lengths. And varying kinds. Chains which link things to texts, texts to things, and things to people. And so on.

Australian tastes and social position

Australian space of lifestyles2 – λ2 = 0.1163

-0.8 -0.4 0 0.4 0.8

-1.0

-0.5

0

0.5

1.0

Bk<1w eek

Film+

Film-

F.drama

F.w esterns

Rock.yes

Rock.no

Orch.yes

Orch.no

Opera.yes

Live.yes

Live.no

M+Rock

M+Country/Folk

M-Country/Folk

Bk>1year

Writing.yesTheatre.yes

Theatre.no

B.novels

Surf0

B-no

Gallery-

Gallery+

Museum+

Draw ing.noDraw ing.yes

Painting.no

Painting.yes

ArtPoster.no

ArtPoster.yes

ArtEdition.yesEatOut+

EatOut-Guest.usual

Guest.specialAerob0

Wine

Softdrink

Sport.regularly

Sport.neverNoSport

WaterSport

AthleticSport

Sw im>=1

Sw im0

Walkcyc0Aerob>=1

Surf>=1

WorkOut>=1

WorkOut0

British tastes and social position

Distribution of Australian classes across the space of lifestyles

-0.5 0 0.5 1.0

-0.8

-0.4

0

0.4

0.8

Axe 1

Axe 2

Employers

Small Employers

Ow n Account Workers

Managers

Professionals

Para-professionals

Supervisors

Sales and Clerical W

Manual Workers

Distribution of British classes across the space of lifestyles

12 Occupational Classes, Plane 1-2

-1.0 -0.5 0 0.5 1.0

-0.75

0

0.75

1.50

Factor 1 - 5.33 %

Factor 2 - 3.86 %

12 occupational classes, Plane 1-2

Employers large orga

Higher professional

Low er profes/high te

Low er managerial

Higher supervisory

Intermediate occupat

Employers small orga

Ow n account w orkers

Low er supervisory

Low er technician

Semi-routine occupatRoutine occupations

Michel Foucault, Hermeneutics of the SubjectFirst, there has to be a set of values ‘with a minimum

degree of coordination, subordination and hierarchy’ ;

Second, these values have to be ‘given both as universal but also as only accessible to a few’ so as to produce ‘a mechanism of selection and exclusion’.

Third , ‘a number of precise and regular forms of conduct are necessary for individuals to be able to reach these values,’

Fourth, the techniques for acquiring those values have to be taught, transmitted, and validated as parts of the operation of a ‘field of knowledge’

Ontological politicsLaw, John and John Urry (2004) ‘Enacting the social’, Economy and Society, 33 (3), 390-410.

Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose (2008) ‘Populating sociology: Carl Saunders and the problem of population’, Sociological Review, 56 (4), 552-578

Bruno Latour, Reassembling the SocialCulture does not act surreptitiously behind

the actor’s back. This most sublime production is manufactured at specific places and institutions, be it the messy offices of the top floor of Marshal Sahlins’s house on the Chicago campus or the thick Area Files kept in the Pitts River (sic) museum in Oxford.

The ‘material turn’

Museums and materialities

The relational museumMuseums emerge through thousands of relationships …;

through the experiences of anthropological subjects, collectors, curators, lecturers, and administrators, among others, and these experiences have always been mediated and transformed by the material world, by artefacts, letters, trains, ships, furniture, computers, display labels, and so on. No one person or group of people can completely control the identity of a museum. Museums have multiple authors, who need not be aware of their role nor even necessarily of being willing contributors. But, however else each person’s involvement differs, all of their relationships cohere around things. It is objects that have drawn people together, helped to define their interactions, and made them relevant to the Museum.

Object biographies and Indigenous agency

Shape of the world (1)

Shape of the world (1)

Bildung and aesthetic technologiesReinhart Koselleck, (2002) ‘On the

anthropological and semantic structure of Bildung’6, in The Practice of Conceptual History: Timing History, Spacing Concepts. Stanford, C.A.: Stanford University Press.

The ‘cultural city’

Electricity, culture, and the city

Jane Lydon (2005) Eye Contact: Photographing Indigenous Australians, Duke University Press

Culture/natures