Culture as a Vocation: Sociology of career choices in cultural management

167 Pages·2015·1.06 MB·English

by  Vincent Dubois, Victor Lepaux, Jean-Yves Bart

Every year, thousands of talented young people aspire to careers in the arts.
Vincent Dubois’s brilliant sociological analysis of French careers in cultural
management reveals the challenges – and often disappointments – which lie in
their way. This book will be essential reading across the globe for those interested
in how career patterns in the cultural sector are changing.
Professor Mike Savage,
Head of Sociology Department and Chair,
London School of Economics, UK
Many have wondered: what is arts management? Few answers truly satisfy.
Vincent Dubois poses a set of fresh questions and manages to answer this and
far more in his well-researched, highly readable volume. It should be required
reading in our field.
Professor Constance DeVereaux,
Director, LEAP Institute for the Arts,
Colorado State University, USA
Culture as a Vocation focuses on the social space of cultural managers, who
play a crucial role in the contemporary cultural world. Superbly researched
in a Bourdieusian framework, this book provides an insightful view on this
occupational universe. Thanks to the nuanced analysis of this strategic case, he
sheds light on the changing social settings of culture in contemporary societies.
Professor Arturo Rodríguez Morató,
University of Barcelona, Spain
This persuasive and challenging analysis of the changing realities in cultural
professions offers insightful understanding of the aspirations and motivations of
professionals engaged in arts and culture. Dubois’ book is a must read for all those
involved in education and training of cultural professionals, whether in academia
or in centres for lifelong learning.
Professor Milena Dragicevic Sesic,
UNESCO Chair in Cultural Policy and Management,
University of Arts, Belgrade, Serbia
Serious researches on management in the cultural field are rare and still rarer are
conceptually sophisticated ones. With his usual mastery Vincent Dubois manages
to match in this unique book the seriousness of a solid empirical study on would-be
cultural managers with the imaginative insightfulness of the best social theory to
provide a must reference for future research and a valuable reading for aspiring as
well as practicing professionals in the culture sector.
Professor Marco Santoro,
Head of Sociology,
University of Bologna, Italy
Culture, Economy and the Social
A new series from CRESC – the ESRC Centre for Research on
Socio-cultural Change
Editors
Professor Tony Bennett, Social and Cultural Theory, University of Western Sydney;
Professor Penny Harvey, Anthropology, Manchester University; Professor Kevin
Hetherington, Geography, Open University
Editorial Advisory Board
Andrew Barry, University of Oxford; Michel Callon, Ecole des Mines de Paris;
Dipesh Chakrabarty, The University of Chicago; Mike Crang, University of
Durham; Tim Dant, Lancaster University; Jean-Louis Fabiani, Ecoles de Hautes
Etudes en Sciences Sociales; Antoine Hennion, Paris Institute of Technology; Eric
Hirsch, Brunel University; John Law, The Open University; Randy Martin, New
York University; Timothy Mitchell, New York University; Rolland Munro, Keele
University; Andrew Pickering, University of Exeter; Mary Poovey, New York
University; Hugh Willmott, University of Cardiff; Sharon Zukin, Brooklyn College
City University New York/ Graduate School, City University of New York
The Culture, Economy and the Social series is committed to innovative contem-
porary, comparative and historical work on the relations between social, cultural
and economic change. It publishes empirically-based research that is theoretically
informed, that critically examines the ways in which social, cultural and eco-
nomic change is framed and made visible, and that is attentive to perspectives that
tend to be ignored or side-lined by grand theorizing or epochal accounts of social
change. The series addresses the diverse manifestations of contemporary capital-
ism, and considers the various ways in which the ‘social’, ‘the cultural’ and ‘the
economic’ are apprehended as tangible sites of value and practice. It is explicitly
comparative, publishing books that work across disciplinary perspectives, cross-
culturally, or across different historical periods.
The series is actively engaged in the analysis of the different theoretical tradi-
tions that have contributed to the development of the ‘cultural turn’ with a view
to clarifying where these approaches converge and where they diverge on a par-
ticular issue. It is equally concerned to explore the new critical agendas emerging
from current critiques of the cultural turn: those associated with the descriptive
turn for example. Our commitment to interdisciplinarity thus aims at enriching
theoretical and methodological discussion, building awareness of the common
ground that has emerged in the past decade, and thinking through what is at stake
in those approaches that resist integration to a common analytical model.
Series titles include:
The Media and Social Theory (2008) Inventive Methods: The Happening
Edited by David Hesmondhalgh and of the Social (2012)
Jason Toynbee Edited by Celia Lury and Nina
Wakeford
Culture, Class, Distinction (2009)
Tony Bennett, Mike Savage, Elizabeth Understanding Sport: A Socio-
Bortolaia Silva, Alan Warde, Modesto Cultural Analysis (2012)
Gayo-Cal and David Wright By John Horne, Alan Tomlinson,
Garry Whannel and Kath Woodward
Material Powers (2010)
Edited by Tony Bennett and Patrick Shanghai Expo: An International
Joyce Forum on the Future of Cities (2012)
Edited by Tim Winter
The Social after Gabriel Tarde:
Debates and Assessments (2010) Diasporas and Diplomacy:
Edited by Matei Candea Cosmopolitan Contact Zones at the
BBC World Service (1932–2012)
Cultural Analysis and Bourdieu’s Edited by Marie Gillespie and Alban
Legacy (2010) Webb (2012)
Edited by Elizabeth Silva and Alan
Ward Making Culture, Changing Society
(2013)
Milk, Modernity and the Making Tony Bennett
of the Human (2010)
Richie Nimmo Interdisciplinarity:
Reconfigurations of the Social and
Creative Labour: Media Work in Natural Sciences (2013)
Three Cultural Industries (2010) Edited by Andrew Barry and Georgina
Edited by David Hesmondhalgh and Born
Sarah Baker
Objects and Materials: A Routledge
Migrating Music (2011) Companion (2013)
Edited by Jason Toynbee and Byron Edited by Penny Harvey, Eleanor
Dueck Conlin Casella, Gillian Evans,
Hannah Knox, Christine McLean,
Sport and the Transformation of Elizabeth B. Silva, Nicholas Thoburn
Modern Europe: States, Media and and Kath Woodward
Markets 1950–2010 (2011)
Edited by Alan Tomlinson, Christopher Accumulation: The Material Politics
Young and Richard Holt of Plastic (2013)
Edited by Gay Hawkins, Jennifer
Gabrys and Mike Michael
Theorizing Cultural Work: Labour, Industry and Work in
Continuity and Change in the Contemporary Capitalism: Global
Cultural and Creative Industries Models, Local Lives?
(2013) Edited by Victoria Goddard and
Edited by Mark Banks, Rosalind Gill Susana Narotzky
and Stephanie Taylor
Lived Economies of Consumer
Comedy and Distinction: The Credit: Consumer Credit, Debt
Cultural Currency of a ‘Good’ Collection and the Capture of Affect
Sense of Humour (2014) By Joe Deville
Sam Friedman
Cultural Pedagogies and Human
The Provoked Economy: Economic Conduct
Reality and the Performative Turn Edited by Megan Watkins, Greg Noble
(2014) and Catherine Driscoll
Fabian Muniesa
Culture as a Vocation: Sociology
Rio de Janeiro: Urban Life through of Career Choices in Cultural
the Eyes of the City Management
Beatriz Jaguaribe By Vincent Dubois
The Routledge Companion to Topologies of Power (forthcoming)
Bourdieu’s ‘Distinction’ By John Allen
Edited by Philippe Coulangeon and
Julien Duval Unbecoming Things: Mutable
Objects and the Politics of Waste
Devising Consumption: Cultural (forthcoming)
Economies of Insurance, Credit and By Nicky Gregson and Mike Crang
Spending
By Liz Mcfall
Culture as a Vocation
Vocational occupations are attractive not so much for their material rewards as
for the prestige and self-fulfillment they confer. They require a strong personal
commitment, which can be subjectively experienced in terms of passion and
selflessness. The choice of a career in the cultural sector provides a good example
of this. What are the terms of this calling? What predisposes individuals to answer
it? What are the meanings of such a choice? To answer these questions, this book
focuses on would-be cultural managers. By identifying their social patterns,
by revealing the resources, expectations and visions of the world they invest
in their choice, it sheds new light on these occupations. In these intermediary
and indeterminate social positions, family heritages intersect with educational
strategies, aspirations of upward mobility with tactics against downward mobility,
and social critique with adjustment strategies. Ultimately the study of career
choices in cultural management suggests a new take on the analysis of social
reproduction and on the embodiment of the new spirit of capitalism. The empirical
findings of this research conducted in France are set in a broader comparative
perspective, at the European level and with the USA.
Vincent Dubois, sociologist and political scientist, is currently Professor at the
Institute for Political Studies in Strasbourg (France). His research fields include
cultural sociology and policy, language policy, poverty and welfare. He belongs to
the SAGE research unit and to the University of Strasbourg Institute for Advanced
Study, and is associate member of the Centre for European Sociology founded
by Pierre Bourdieu in Paris. He is a former member of the Institute for Advanced
Study in Princeton, NJ, USA, school of social science (2012–3) and of the Institut
Universitaire de France (2007–12). He has published 8 books, 2 of which have
been published in English translation (The Bureaucrat and the Poor, Ashgate,
2010; The Sociology of Wind Bands, Ashgate, 2013). He has published around
80 scientific contributions in edited volumes and journals including International
Journal of Cultural Policy, Cultural Sociology, Poetics, Social Analysis, Current
Anthropology, Critical Policy Studies, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales.
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Culture as a Vocation
Sociology of career choices in
cultural management
Vincent Dubois
with the collaboration of Victor Lepaux
Translated from the French by Jean-Yves Bart
First published 2013
by Liber/Raisons d’agir, Paris
English language edition 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2013, 2016 Vincent Dubois and Liber/Raisons d’agir
The right of Vincent Dubois to be identified as author of this work has been
asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Dubois, Vincent, 1966–
[Culture comme vocation. English]
Culture as a vocation / by Vincent Dubois.
pages cm
1. Arts administrators–France. 2. Arts–Management–Study and teaching–
France. 3. Occupations–France. 4. Arts and society–France. I. Title.
NX770.F7.D8313 2015
706–dc23
2015019910
ISBN: 978-1-138-81998-6 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-74402-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Sunrise Setting Ltd, Paignton, UK
Contents
List of illustrations x
Foreword xi
Preface xiv
Acknowledgements xx
Introduction 1
1 Culture in the space of career choices 12
How cultural occupations became attractive 12
Training and the genesis of vocations 25
2 Who wants to be a cultural manager? 38
A largely feminine vocation 38
Higher social backgrounds 42
Educated applicants 45
Well-rounded applicants 48
The space of applicants 50
3 The meanings of a career choice 56
Leaving doors open 56
A third way between art and teaching 73
The social rationales of a career choice 81
4 Intermediate dispositions and adjustment strategies 97
Between cultural legitimism and eclecticism 97
Reinventing the artist’s life 106
Conclusion 119
Appendix 123
Bibliography 131
Index 142