A General Theory of Artistic Legitimation How Art Worlds Are Like Social Movements

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A general theory of artistic legitimation:How art worlds are like social movements

Shyon Baumann *

Department of Sociology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 2J4, Canada

Available online 7 August 2006

Abstract

In this article I develop a general theory for explaining how cultural products are legitimated as art,

whether high or popular art. The theory generalizes from the large body of existing sociological research on

art world development while integrating ideas from the sociology of social movements and from social

psychology. I argue that there is an analogy between social movement success and recognition as art, so that

the major concepts that explain the paths of social movements also apply to art worlds: political opportunity

structures, resource mobilization, and framing processes. In addition, I incorporate the social psychological

perspective on legitimacy to specify the process by which art worlds achieve artistic legitimation.# 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

A central question within thesociology of art concerns how cultural products are legitimated

as art, whether high or popular.1 A large and growing number of studies have convincingly

documented that recognition of art is a social process that cannot be reduced to a reflection of

artistic merit. These studies help to clarify why some culture receives this recognition while some

does not, and why this recognition can wax and wane.

How can we generalize between these studies to understand artistic legitimation as a generalprocess? In this paper I bring together work from social psychology on legitimation with the

sociological literature on social movements to offer a general theory to explain how some cultural

productions achieve legitimation as art. I contend that the processes by which social movements

succeed and culture is recognized as art are parallel processes of legitimation that share

www.elsevier.com/locate/poeticPoetics 35 (2007) 4765

* Tel.: +1 416 978 8262.

E-mail address: [email protected] The distinction of interest here is between cultural products recognized as art and cultural products that are considered

non-art, rather than between high and popular art. Hierarchy between art worlds is a worthy, but separate, phenomenon to

be studied.

0304-422X/$ see front matter # 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2006.06.001
mailto:[email protected]://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2006.06.001http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2006.06.001mailto:[email protected]


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fundamental similarities. I review the literature on social movements and on artistic recognition

to show how three main explanatory factors are present in each.

Because social movements have received a vast amount of sociological attention over the last

several decades, the area has matured into a well-organized field of study. A 1996 book edited by

some of the most influential scholars in the field synthesized decades of social movementsresearch to create a comprehensive perspective on social movement development (McAdam

et al., 1996a). This perspective identified three broad explanatory factors: political opportunity

structures, resource mobilization, and framing processes. More recent work on social

movements has elaborated on these factors (Almeida, 2003; Benford and Snow, 2000; Jenkins

et al., 2003; Meyer, 2004; Meyer and Minkoff, 2004; McAdam et al., 2001 ), demonstrated

how they influence one another or work in concert (Cress and Snow, 2000; Einwohner, 2003;

Ferree, 2003; Koopmans and Olzak, 2004; Soule, 2004), and built bridges between one or more

of them to bodies of knowledge outside social movements (Dixon and Rosigno, 2003; Hedstrom

et al., 2000; Ingram and Rao, 2004). While moving the research forward, this work

simultaneously recognizes the value of the three factors as a basic agenda for social movementanalysis.

Within the sociology of art, Baumann (2001, p. 405)argues that studies of art worlds have

likewise relied on three explanatory factors: a changing cultural opportunity space, the

institutionalization of resources and practices, and alegitimating ideology. I argue that with due

elaboration, the social movement theoretical perspectives can be mapped onto Baumanns

categorization of art world studies. The payoff of this mapping is (1) an outline of a general

theory of art world legitimation, and (2) a foundation for explaining legitimation processes

outside art and protest, in other collective enterprises with ideological commitments.

1. Legitimation as a process

The sociology of art addresses a wide array of questions about cultural production,

content, and reception. Many studies have explored how art is implicated in inequality, politics,

identity, markets, organizations, and other social phenomena. One strain of research within the

sociology of art has focused on understanding how some cultural productions are legitimated. In

this work, legitimation is a process whereby the new and unaccepted is rendered valid and

accepted.

Zelditch (2001, p. 4)notes that [l]egitimacy is one of the oldest problems in social thought.

Accordingly, scholarship on legitimacy has developed in various directions across socialscientific disciplines. Within sociology, there is a great deal of work on legitimacy that is

concerned with different forms of legitimation. For example, social-psychologically oriented

work on interpersonal relations examines the legitimacy of authority, justice, and prestige in face-

to-face settings (Berger et al., 1998; Ford and Johnson, 1998; Hegtvedt and Johnson, 2000;

Mueller and Landsman, 2004; Zelditch, 2001). In this case, legitimation refers to the acceptance

of personal claims for status and authority as valid. Likewise, much of the work within political

sociology on the legitimacy of political regimes (Diamond, 1997; Kluegel et al., 1999; Tarifa,

1997; Weil, 1989) discusses a similar form of legitimacy at the society level, explaining the

acceptance of group claims for authority. Yet another body of work on legitimacy examines how

self-concepts develop to rationalize various social conditions such as class position (Della andRichard, 1980, 1986) or single parenthood (Bock, 2000) to the self.

In contrast to these other fields, the study of legitimation within the sociology of art is

concerned with how cultural productions are repositionedboth institutionally and

S. Baumann / Poetics 35 (2007) 476548


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intellectually. This repositioning allows the productions to be redefined; from merely

entertainment, commerce, fad, or cultural experimentation or randomness to culture that is

legitimately artistic, whether that be popular or high art.

Although his work on legitimation concerns small-group interactions, Zelditch (2001)

provides a useful set of concepts for specifying the components of legitimation as a processwithin the sociology of art. Legitimation occurs when the unaccepted is made accepted through

consensus. This consensus will never be absolute, as there is never complete consensus within a

society about anything. For this reason, consensus needs to be defined minimallyit is issue-

specific, near-consensus counts as consensus, and it need only exist at the collective level and not

necessarily at the individual level (Zelditch, 2001, p. 10). For the purposes of art, consensus can

be measured at various levels within an art world (Becker, 1982). Crane (1976) provides a

typology of reward systems that distinguishes between how innovations are evaluated in

different kinds of art worlds, with attention to who functions as gatekeepers in different art

worlds.2 The systems vary from those where cultural innovations are produced for an audience

of fellow innovators (independent reward system) to those in which cultural innovations areproduced for heterogeneous audiences composed of members of a variety of subcultures

(heterocultural reward system) (Crane, 1976, pp. 721722). One way of labeling the audiences

among whom consensus must be reached in these different systems is to distinguish between

internal and external audiences. For external legitimacy, consensus must exist among the general

public. For example, for sculpture to be considered art, there must be consensus among artistic

consumers, broadly defined, that this is the case. For internal legitimacy, consensus must exist

among the inner members of an art world. For example, for abstract sculpture to be considered a

valid genre of sculpture, consensus must exist among sculptors and art scholars and critics that

this is the case.

Consensus is achieved through justification (Zelditch, 2001, p. 10). A justification is an

argument made to explain how the unaccepted is in fact acceptable because it conforms to

existing, valid norms, values, or rules. The justification, for example, for literature as art is so

familiar that it is practically invisible. It is an expressive work, created by an artist the author ,

that can be studiously examined and analyzed, and in which audiences can find beauty,

enjoyment, and a message or philosophy. Literature fits the existing and accepted category

of art.

Legitimacy, of course, is not a dichotomous variable, but rather can be present in widely

varying amounts and among various constituencies. The legitimacy of rap music when it was first

created was quite low, for example, especially among white, middle-class audiences. Rapslegitimacy has steadily increased so that it now enjoys recognition as a legitimate popular art.

This recognition reflects a fairly wide, though by no means absolute, consensus that the

justifications for rap as art are valid. That is to say, the justifications are found by various

audiences to be convincing arguments for the case for rap as popular art. Should the art world for

rap make claims that rap is a legitimate high art form, it remains to be seen how successful such

claims would be. In contrast, opera is highly legitimated as a high art form. The art world for

opera makes claims that opera is high art, and the justifications for these claims are widely

accepted. AsZelditch (2001, p. 10)notes, [l]egitimacy requires consensus only somewhere, not

S. Baumann / Poetics 35 (2007) 4765 49

2 Cranes article explains how reward systems are common across art, science and religion. Although we are interested

especially in art worlds, further development of Cranes insight about the parallels between these cultural realms offers

the potential for expanding the scope of this paper to legitimation processes in these realms as well.


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everywhere, a condition which helps us to understand variations in degrees of legitimacy that

cultural productions might have.

There have been numerous studies of the legitimation of cultural productions. Some of the

studies have explained how cultural forms gained widespread legitimacy as popular or high art

(Ardery, 1997; Baumann, 2001; Bowler, 1997; Cherbo, 1997; DiMaggio, 1982, 1992; Levine,1988; Lopes, 2002; Peterson, 1972; Rachlin, 1993; Sussman, 1997; Watt, 2001; White and

White, 1965; Zolberg, 1997). Other studies have examined how cultural productions that had

legitimacy in one field gained legitimacy in a new field (Molnar, 2005; Rawlings, 2001), or how

cultural productions that had some legitimacy gained yet more (Corse and Westervelt, 2002;

DeNora, 1991; Ferguson, 1998; van Rees, 1983).

These studies of widely divergent artistic forms show how a certain amount of consensus was

achieved regarding their legitimacy. In each case, legitimacy, to greater and to lesser extents, is

generated through a process of collective action. I argue that these case studies of artistic

legitimation can be understood according to a general theory of legitimation. Moreover, I argue

that this theory has been articulated and developed in the sociological literature on socialmovements. In the following sections I first explain why several key similarities allow us to apply

insights from social movements to art worlds. I then describe the main components of a general

theory of legitimation opportunities, resources, and framing and show how these concepts are

employed within research on social movements and also how they accurately represent existing

work in the sociology of art on legitimation. I conclude by contrasting my argument with other

recent work on collective enterprises with ideological commitments and by suggesting paths for

future research.

2. How are social movements like art worlds?

Social movements are similar to art worlds in several important aspects. Since the pioneering

work of bothBecker (1974, 1982)andBourdieu (1993), we have understood that art worlds and

cultural fields are sites of collective action. In order to understand the nature of cultural

production and evaluation, and the aesthetic characteristics of culture, we need to analyze the

institutional and social relations of the field or world. Cultural production and reception are acts

that are inherently collective, and the legitimation of culture is always achieved collectively.

Similarly, although there are inconsistencies in the literature concerning some aspects of what

constitutes a social movement, there is consensus that social movements are collective activity

(Olzak and Uhrig, 2001, p. 694).Most importantly for the purposes at hand, social movements are similar to art worlds in the

goalsof their collective action. I argue that social movementsuccessis a process of legitimation

that is parallel to artistic legitimation. There are, of course, many kinds of social movements and

they seek to achieve a variety of goals. Nevertheless, the social movements literature most often

focuses on movements that contain an ideological element to them, in the sense that the

movement strives to promote a counter-hegemonic idea.3 The civil rights movement, for


3 Eyerman and Jamison (1991)make a strong case for focusing the analysis of social movements on what they call

cognitive praxis. They argue that social movements must be understood according to their symbolic and

expressive significance, because social movements are the social action from where new knowledge originates

(Eyerman and Jamison, 1991, p. 48). This perspective on social movements, as a social space where new ideas or

knowledge are formulated and promoted, makes salient a crucial similarity with art worlds, namely the creation and

legitimation of new ideas.


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example, sought wider acceptance of the idea that minorities should enjoy the same legal rights

as the majority. The same characterization can be made of gay rights movements and the

womens movement. Many environmental movements seek to legitimate ideas that overturn

prevailing notions about the subservience of nature to social needs.4 In these and other social

movements, one important goal is to legitimate make accepted an idea that was initially notwidely accepted. This acceptance is key to the further change in the social structure, system of

rewards, or political system (Olzak and Uhrig, 2001, pp. 694695) that social movements seek.5

Ambiguity exists concerning what constitutes social movement success (Andrews, 2001;

Bernstein, 2003; Gamson, 1990; Giugni, 1998). What counts as adequate change? Consider, for

example, how despite many obvious successes of the civil rights movement, there are

lingering inequalities. There are various ways of measuring success for social movements. For

the purposes of this paper, success is conceived as the attainment of legitimacy. This conception

is supported by Gamsons (1990) category of acceptance as a social movement outcome,

whereby targeted audiences come to regard the movements ideas and goals as legitimate.

For a successful outcome, then, the central ideas championed by a movement must gain acommon sense, taken-for-granted character (McLaughlin and Khawaja, 2000, p. 423) among

a target public, either policy-makers or the public at large.6 In the terms of legitimation outlined

above, there must be consensus that the ideas championed by the social movement are justified.

Art world success can also be equated with the attainment of legitimacy. A cultural field is

structured around agents producing belief in the value of goods in question ( van Rees and

Dorleijn, 2001, p. 332). While artists themselves work to create art, there are many agents within

cultural fields who assign value to cultural productions and also work to sustain the legitimacy of

those assignments. Art worlds, in this sense, can be said to be doubly concerned with legitimacy.

Not only do the claims about artistic status need to be justified, but the right to make claims, and

the bases on which those claims are made, need to be justified as well.

Ambiguity also exists concerning what constitutes art world success. This ambiguity derives

in part from the fact that different art worlds have different goals and different measures of

success. For some art worlds, particularly new art worlds that are experimental or radical, merely


4 Environmental movements are one example of what are termed new social movements (NSMs) in social movements

research (Larana et al., 1994). NSMs are generally distinguished from other social movements because they are based on

ideology, identity, and values rather than on class-based politics (Bernstein, 2005). As a specific form of social movement,

NSMs are particularly similar to art worlds through their focus on the importance of the acceptance of ideas. However,

NSMs are also largely about identity politics, and it is beyond the scope of this paper to theorize about the role thatidentity politics plays in art worlds. Because it is possible to point to examples of legitimation in art worlds involving a

link to identity politics (as in jazz and in rap), future research should incorporate work on identity into studies of art world

development and legitimation.5 One way of describing the boundaries of a social movement is to say that it includes those participants who would

consider themselves as members. This description is often employed to define other kinds of group membership as well.

For art worlds, though,Beckers (1982)analysis extends the boundaries of art worlds to audience members who merely

know the conventions of an art form. Such audience members are unlikely to consider themselves part of that art world. In

this sense, art worlds differ from social movements. However, to the extent that the legitimation process is driven

primarily by core, as opposed to peripheral, members of the art world, and these members would consider themselves part

of that art world, there exists more similarity than difference between art worlds and social movements on this point.6 In some social movements literature, especially that which bridges the sociological literature on organizations

(McLaughlin and Khawaja, 2000; Minkoff, 1994; Olzak and Uhrig, 2001), legitimacy often refers to the acceptance of the

tactics or organizational forms that social movements adopt. Although clearly related, perhaps even causally related, the

legitimacy of tactics and organizational forms is analytically distinct from the legitimacy of social movement ideas or

goals. It is the legitimation processes of ideas that are argued to be parallel to the legitimation processes in art worlds.


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producing anything at all might be considered success. However, most art worlds exist with an

audience in mind, whether that be a restricted, elite audience, or a mass audience.7 Acceptance by

an audience that the art worlds activities are legitimate culture, high or popular art, constitutes

the main measure of an art worlds success.8

3. Success in social movements and art worlds: three explanatory factors

In this section I describe the three concepts from social movements research that are employed

to explain social movement success. I show how each concept has analogs within the body of case

studies that comprise the work in the sociology of art on artistic legitimation. I achieve two goals

simultaneously: (1) I bridge these two disparate areas of research to show how the sociology of

art can benefit from social movements research, and (2) I synthesize work in the sociology of art

to show that independent studies complement one another to support a general theory of artistic

legitimation.

3.1. Opportunity: exogenous factors facilitate success

Sometimes labeled political opportunities and sometimes opportunity structures as well

as several variants thereof, this perspective has developed in the social movements literature to

refer chiefly to characteristics of the political environmentin which movements operate. Having

been in use for several decades, the concept has achieved near canonical stature in the study of

social movements (Almeida, 2003, p. 345).

As it has been employed by researchers, the concept has been criticized for being

overextended (Gamson and Meyer, 1996) as well as for being imprecisely or uselessly

conceptualized (Goodwin and Jasper, 1999). Nevertheless, the concept endures in the literature,

and it is the subject of both theoretical fine tuning and empirical testing. The core of the concept is

that context matters. We can better understand how social movements emerge, evolve, and most

importantly for the present discussion how they succeed if we understand what is going on in

the wider society that influences them. For example,Almeida and Stearns (1998)argue that the

likelihood of success of local grassroots environmental movements in Japan was influenced by

the presence of a national anti-pollution movement. Once established, this national movement

could lend financial, strategic, and ideological assistance to local movements, thereby helping

them to succeed. Another example comes fromMeyer (2003)who argues that the success of the

anti-nuclear movement in New Zealand was facilitated by the political context specific to NewZealand. The state was more loosely nested within the Western security alliance, and there were

no existing US bases that would have required removal. As such, the political costs for adoption

of a ban in New Zealand were relatively low, helping the movement to succeed.

Within the sociology of art, the analogous idea was labeled by DiMaggio (1992, p. 44)as an

opportunity space, referring to the existence of competitors, commercial substitutes, or

publics and patrons of new wealth. The core idea is that certain exogenous factors can affect the


7 The elite, restricted audience corresponds more closely to the internal legitimacy of an art world, and the mass

audience corresponds to the external legitimacy of an art world, as discussed above.8 Although this paper emphasizes work on the legitimation of innovations new productions in art worlds, it is worth

noting that the process of artistic legitimation applies equally to the rediscovery of artistic works and art worlds. Just as

social movements may be revolutionary or reactionary, artistic legitimation may involve the embrace of culturally

innovative work or a positive reevaluation of formerly rejected or disputed art.


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likelihood that an art world will succeed in attaining legitimacy. Although not always labeled as

such, various studies of art worlds have pointed to important elements of an opportunity space.

Some of these elements are broad changes in the wider society. Peterson (1972, p. 147), for

example, notes that the ideological interpretation of jazz in the cultural media has closely

paralleled official attitudes towards blacks in this country. That is to say that jazz, a culturalproduction that was strongly African American in its practitioners and audiences, was more

readily elevated to artistic status after the reduction in discriminatory attitudes about blacks

among the public and elites, a relationship documented byLopes (2002)as well.DeNora (1991)

contends that an ideology of serious classical music was formulated in the late 18th century by

the Viennese aristocracy when the bourgeoisie became wealthy enough to threaten the

aristocracys monopoly on classical music concerts. The distinctions that were drawn between

the composers claimed by aristocrats and the large number of other composers created status

differences between musical geniuses and the average composer. In this case, a new art world

was prompted by economic change among the group who comprised the art world. In their

studies of the establishment of cultural hierarchy in the United States, bothDiMaggio (1982)andLevine (1988) cite class and ethnic conflict during a time of rapid industrialization and

urbanization as important to the timing of the elevation of the high arts. The need for elites to

culturally segregate themselves created an opportunity for certain cultural productions to serve as

high art mechanisms of distinction. Watt (2001)connects the rise of the novel in 18th century

England with changing socioeconomic conditions that created a reading public with the time and

propensity to read long fiction.Baumann (2001)argues that films elevation to an art form in the

US was facilitated by the drastic growth in the number of people with post-secondary education,

which created a pool of potential patrons.

Other elements of the opportunity space can be more specific to the art world in question. For

example, in their study of the rise of Impressionism in France,White and White (1965)cite the

inability of the Royal Academic system to provide work for the growing number of painters

centered in Paris as a reason why an alternate system developed for painting and its distribution

and evaluation. Also, advances in paint technology opened the door to amateur painters by

increasing the locations where painting could be done and the colors available and by decreasing

the need for some of the artisan skills in preparing materials. Both developments were significant

in making possible the rise of Impressionism. DiMaggio (1992) reasons that when movies

became popular, they in effect diverted much of the working class audience for serious theater,

helping to legitimate theater as art. In a similar vein, Baumann (2001) cites the advent of

television as a lower status dramatic alternative to film as a factor in films artistic legitimation.The idea that exogenous factors are relevant in explaining legitimation processes is common

in the study of social movements and art. However, the sociology of art can benefit from recent

advances in social movements research that clarify and refine the concept of an opportunity

space.Meyer and Minkoff (2004)argue that analysts need to make a set of distinctions when

examining the role of the political environment, including: (1) structural factors versus signaling

factors that work at a symbolic or communicative level; (2) general factors within the political

environment versus factors that are specific to the movement under study; (3) factors that

influence mobilization versus factors that influence social movement success; and (4) factors that

movement members are cognizant of versus those factors of which they are unaware.

While the second of these distinctions has already been taken into account above, the first,third, and fourth must be applied to art worlds to explain how different factors have different roles

to play within legitimation processes. Regarding the difference between structural factors and

symbolic factors, existing studies of artistic legitimation often group these kinds of factors



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together. By noting this distinction in the kinds of exogenous factors at play, research would

better emphasize the two different causal mechanisms they imply. For example, the

organizational changes in the French art world studied by White and White imply a causal

mechanism of resource provision: the changes in the artistic environment influenced the

availability and distribution of resources in ways that favored the growth of Impressionism. Incontrast, the evolution of widely-held values and beliefs about race and racial differences cited in

the studies of jazz by Peterson and Lopes points to a different mechanism. In that case, an

exogenous factor is relevant because it created prestige and status for an artistic form, quite

helpful for legitimation. Future research on artistic legitimation should be careful to maintain this

distinction by specifying which types of exogenous variables are at work, structural or symbolic.

Regarding the distinction between factors influencing mobilization and factors influencing

legitimation, this difference should be noted in future research because it allows for a clearer,

more nuanced, and more accurate depiction of the legitimation process. For example, the socio-

economic changes cited by DeNora the bourgeoisies threat to the economic supremacy of the

aristocracy in accounting for the formation of an art world for serious classical music speaksin the first instance to the formation or initiation of that art world. In contrast, the changes in

attitudes towards race cited by Peterson and Lopes speak directly to the acceptance, not

formation, of an art world for jazz. So why include environmental factors that influence art world

formation in this discussion? Since there can be no legitimation unless there has been a prior

initiation, it makes sense to think of art world formation as an essential part of the legitimation

process. What is needed is not to excise from studies of legitimation those exogenous factors that

are significant primarily for their influence on art world formation. Instead, future research

should be careful to specify at which point in the legitimation process environmental factors are

operating.

Meyer and Minkoff (2004) also argue for a distinction between factors that movement

members are cognizant of from those factors of which they are unaware. Likewise, within the

sociology of art, we should distinguish between these factors because they imply very different

mechanisms within the legitimation process. Consider, for example, how the advent of television

might have created an opportunity for film (Baumann, 2001). Were film world participants

strategizing about how best to position film vis-a-vis television? Was televisions influence a

function of how audiences subconsciously evaluated films vis-a-vis television? As a feature of

the opportunity space for film, television could have functioned in both manners simultaneously.

There is no need to define one or the other outside the concept of an opportunity space. However,

there is value in specifying how a given factor operates in order to determine the kind of responsean opportunity generates within an art world. The degree to which art world participants are

acting strategically and with agency is an important dimension of the legitimation process. This

issue is the topic of the next section.

The usefulness of these distinctions is that they save the concept of an opportunity space from

doing too much analytical work on its own. To be useful, sociologists of art need a concept of

opportunity space that provides further guidance about how to understand the different roles

played by different kinds of exogenous factors.

3.2. Resources: endogenous factors facilitate success

The core of this concept is the inverse of political opportunities. Here, endogenous factors

matter. There is intuitive appeal to the idea that social movement success depends on the power

drawn from accrued resources.



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What do these researchers have in mind when referring to resources? Resources can be

tangible or intangible; they can take the form of money, labor, knowledge, experience, network

connections and institutionalized relationships, prestige and status, physical equipment or assets,

informal traditions, organizational forms, emotional energy, and leadership.9 The ability of a

movement to mobilize resources is crucial to determining its path. To see how resources arecentral in studies of movement success, consider the heavy emphasis scholars place on social

movement organizations (SMOs). The reason for this emphasis is the simple fact that movements

most often occur through the efforts of SMOs. SMOs not only generate and direct movement

resources, but they can also be conceived as resources in themselves. In this way, for example,

organizations that advocate on behalf of the homeless are both resource-seeking they need

money, office supplies, etc. to survive and a resource at the disposal of the movement to

ameliorate the conditions for the homeless (Cress and Snow, 1996).

Resources are also central to explanations of art world legitimation. The title of the relevant

chapter inBeckers (1982)seminal work on art worlds, chapter 3, is Mobilizing Resources.

The mobilization of resources is the grounding concept of an art world because it so stronglyshifts the perspective away from art as the creation of an individual artist toward art as collective

action. Mobilization is a necessary condition of success. To explain artistic legitimation, we need

to know which resources are mobilized and to understand the particular benefits brought by

particular kinds of resources.

Various kinds of resources are frequently involved in artistic legitimation. Some resources

take a physical form, such as institutional settings and venues and equipment or supplies. Other

resources do not take concrete form, such as organizational principles, labor, and prestige or

status. Both kinds of resources contribute to legitimation, but the distinction echoes the division

between structural and symbolic environmental factors. Physical resources help to accomplish

the practical work involved in art worlds while non-physical resources help to accomplish the

necessary symbolic work.

Different kinds of art worlds rely to varying extents on different kinds of resources. Opera, for

example, requires vast physical resources in terms of the construction of appropriate venues and

the provision of the equipment and supplies necessary to stage an opera. The cultural field of poetry,

however, requires less in the way of physical, financial, and personnel support. The lesson we learn

from Bourdieu and Becker, however, is that although poetry requires few resources in its physical

production, the symbolic production of its value is a larger enterprise altogether. The labor of

publishers, critics, and scholars involved in the evaluation and teaching of poetry are valuable

resources necessary for poetrys legitimation. The same is true of opera, in addition to its physicalresources.Becauseallartiscollectiveaction,thesuccessfulcreationanddeploymentofvarioustypes

of resources are required for any art world to endure and to attain recognition as art in the first place.

The resources inherent in art museums are perhaps the most commonly cited within the

sociology of art. Museums assist in art worlds in the provision of both physical and non-physical

resources. Their ability indeed their mission to collect, preserve, restore, display, and promote

art gives them an enormous amount of control over the value, visibility, and survival of cultural


9 Cress and Snow (1996, p. 1090)cite legitimacy itself as a resource. This is of course true insofar as the attainment of

legitimacy regarding initial claims can be used to win acceptance of later claims. Or legitimacy based on preexisting

institutional or personal authority can also be capitalized on by a social movement to advance its goals. However, if

legitimacy exists as a resource, it is nonetheless true that a movement is seeking to expand or to further that legitimacy by

gaining acceptance of its further goals.


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productions. What is more, as centers of cultural authority, their decisions about which cultural

productions to sponsor are accepted as legitimate by other art world members as well as by the

wider art public for art (Bourdieu, 1993). Museums have played a role in legitimating painting

and sculpture as high art in 19th century Boston (DiMaggio, 1982) and the legitimation of

African religious and tribal artifacts as high art (Zolberg, 1997).Similarly, high status galleries provide a physical space to bring together works or art. These

works are then packaged to an art-buying public, often an early step in a process of

consecration where the actions of museums come near the end. These institutions also have the

cultural authority to persuasively label certain cultural productions as art. Studies of the art of the

insane (Bowler, 1997), African art (Rawlings, 2001), and Pop Art (Cherbo, 1997) convincingly

document the role played by private galleries. High status private auction houses such as

Sothebys and Christies in New York are another resource in art worlds. Association with these

houses is helpful in itself to provide prestige, but they also provide visibility, and by connecting

art works with new owners they participate in the preservation of art, such as was the case for

American folk art (Ardery, 1997).Yet another key provider of resources are universities. Like museums, they are one of the

legitimating organizations par excellence (Bourdieu, 1993). Universities serve as a resource in

diverse ways. Through their curricula, universities can preserve and disseminate knowledge of

cultural content while simultaneously bestowing legitimacy on that content by its very inclusion.

This same function can be achieved more intensively when a university creates a department or

research center devoted to an art. In this way, literature departments serve to sustain the place of

fiction and poetry among the arts, while departments of film and photography do the same for

those genres. The role of universities has been argued to have helped to legitimate modern dance

(DiMaggio, 1992; Sussman, 1997) and jazz (Peterson, 1972).

In order to work effectively, and in order to be in agreement with existing conceptions of what

art is, there must be a division of labor within art worlds. The internal dynamics of an art world, to

the extent that they create a sensible and working division of labor, can serve as a non-physical

resource. Battani (1999), for example, shows how the role of the photographer was socially

constructed into a useful resource within the art world of photography in the 19th century in the

US. The photographer developed as separate from the other, more practical and supporting, roles

needed in photographic practice. This division of labor was itself a symbolic resource, serving to

put forward an artist within this new art world. In contrast to this symbolic resource, physical

resources were provided by emergent firms supply houses to specialize in the production and

distribution of the materials necessary to carry it out, and by journals to disseminate knowledgeabout photographic techniques.

The sociology of art can especially benefit by borrowing an emphasis in the social movements

literature on a particular kind of non-physical resourcetactics and strategies. Existing studies

of the sociology of art tend not to characterize resource mobilization as strategic or tactical. The

acts of utilizing or creating resources are often conceptualized instead as contributions toward an

apolitical goal of art world development. This difference in emphasis is understandable.

Strategizing and tactical deployment are the conscious activities of social movement participants

because they come together precisely to influence the balance of power regarding a particular

issue. This self-concept is less salient for most art world members, who come together for

cultural production. Nonetheless, art world success depends on gaining power, and savvy artworld members will recognize the necessity of strategy and tactics. Studies that document and

explain tactical repertoires in social movements (Clemens, 1993; Olzak and Uhrig, 2001;

Rucht, 1990) can be adapted to the context of cultural production to demonstrate how art worlds



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might learn from or imitate one another.10 Because artists must demonstrate sufficient

disinterestedness to maintain credibility, their strategic and tactical behavior is not always

evident. Nevertheless, artists often are strategic. Moreover, supporting members of art worlds are

not held to the same standard of disinterestedness. Future research on artistic legitimation should

be sensitive to the extent to which art world building is indeed constituted by strategies andtactics, the existence of which are resources at the disposal of art world members.

3.3. Discourse, ideology, and frames: legitimation requires an explanation

A third main explanatory factor in social movement success points to the role of ideas.

Movements goals and tactics need to be framed (Snow et al., 1986) in order to be made

comprehensible, valid, acceptable, and desirable. This means that they need to be explained,

marketed, or packaged in a way that convinces or resonates with a target audience.

Framing processes have been a central concept within the study of social movements for atleast the last two decades as scholars have utilized framing as a way of bringing a cultural element

back in to the area.McAdam et al. (1996b, p. 6)credit David Snow with a conception of framing

that they themselves employ: the conscious strategic efforts by groups of people to fashion

shared understandings of the world and of themselves that legitimate and motivate collective

action. While the role of framing in mobilization is interesting, it is the role of framing in

helping to achieve legitimation for the goals of a social movement that is of interest here.

Like political opportunity, the concept of framing has been criticized for being employed too

liberally and without sufficient coherence. Through its various incantations, framing is invoked to

represent fartoomany phenomenathat scholars wish to label as cultural. Oliver and Johnston (2000)

argue that framing is a valuable concept that should continue to be central in social movementresearch, buttobeuseful itshouldbeemployedin awaythatrespectspastworkon ideology.Ideology,

they explain, is a complex system of related ideas that combines an explanation of the world with

normativeprescriptionsforbehavior.Thecontrastwithframingliesinthedifferencebetweencontent

and process. Framing, as per Snows formulation cited above, is an activity that convinces audience

members about how to derive a correct understanding or meaning. Ideology, on the other hand,

contains those values and ideas to which framing appeals in order to be convincing.

AsOliver and Johnston (2000)explain, the analytic utility of separating frames and ideologies

can be seen in the case of abortion in the US. Various elements within the pro-choice and pro-life

movements in the US framed the issue differently in ways that invoked different ideologies. The

womens movement framed abortion as a womens issue, appealing to a feminist ideology thatupheld womens autonomy and rights. Religious groups, however, framed abortion as a religious

issue, appealing to a Christian ideology that upheld the value of the sanctity of all life. There are

two different frames invoking elements of two different ideologies. Frames and ideologies are

both necessary concepts.

Ferree and Merrill (2000) provide yet further sophistication to the thinking of framing by

explaining how the concept of discourse relates to frame and ideology. Discourses,Ferree and

Merrill (2000, p. 455)argue, are broad systems of communication that link concepts together in

a web of relationships through an underlying logic, and they point to the example of medical


10 This point is recognized byDiMaggio (1992)regarding the organizational forms available to art worlds. He argues

that theater, dance and opera in the US borrowed the preexisiting organizational form nonprofit trusteeship invented

for museums and orchestras.


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discourse as a way that doctors communicate about health through an underlying logic that

centers on diseases and cures. Ferree and Merrill embrace Oliver and Johnstons

conceptualization of ideology and frames, and envision the relationship between these concepts

and discourse as an inverted pyramid. Because it is the least analytically coherent and most

broad, discourses are at the top of the inverted pyramid, while ideologies are one level down.Ideologies are considerably more coherent than discourses because they are organized around

systematic ideas and normative claims (Ferree and Merrill, 2000, p. 455). At the lowest level,

then, is the concept of frame, which is a way of talking and thinking about things that links idea

elements into packages (Ferree and Merrill, 2000, p. 456).

In sum, discourses have a loose logic and provide the vocabulary and concepts needed for

communication; ideologies have a coherent logic that provides an understanding of the world as

well as norms and values; and frames are tight cognitive structures that direct thinking and

interpretation about a concrete issue, condition, event, or object. Framing is the discursive

process of applying frames. It is the work that seeks to convince a target audience about the

correct perspective to be used and the correct conclusions to be drawn, and it is done by applying(and sometimes inventing) a frame, which invokes the reasoning or values of an ideology,

through the tools made available in a discourse.

Within the sociology of art, ideas are accorded a central role in the legitimation of culture.

Compared to the social movements literature, however, there is far less agreement about how to

label and understand the role of ideas.Molnar (2005, p. 130), for example, shows how modernist

architecture was imported into Hungary and that interpretive schemes and strategies play a

decisive role in the reception and legitimation of internationally diffused foreign ideas and

cultural models. In explaining the elevation of great composers and serious works of classical

music in late 18th- and early 19th-century Vienna,DeNora (1991, p. 314)claims that aristocrats

developed an ideology of serious music and that this aesthetic was based on a hierarchical

scheme of evaluation in contrast to the more inclusive aesthetic that preceded it.Baumann (2001,

p. 405)argues that a legitimating ideology was developed within the art world for film and

disseminated through film reviews, and that this ideology was a key factor in films elevation to

art in the US. In his examination of how some literary works become consecrated as

masterpieces,van Rees (1983) assesses the fundamental roles of three different types of

critical discourse. In explaining the elevation of theater, dance, and opera as legitimate art

forms,DiMaggio (1992, p. 44)argues that these art worlds imitated the earlier high art worlds of

art museums and symphonies, and that the justifications developed by founders of the nations

first art museums and orchestras served as ready-made ideological resources that culturalentrepreneurs could employ across a range of other art forms. In other words, a clearly

articulated ideology (DiMaggio, 1992, p. 22) played a role in these cases of artistic legitimation.

The sociology of art can clearly benefit from theoretical advances within the social

movements literature on framing. Studies of art world legitimation have not settled on a common

set of concepts for explaining how culture is legitimated ideationally. I argue that the distinctions

between discourse, ideology, and frames reviewed above can be applied to work in the sociology

of art to clarify how ideas function to legitimate culture in fundamentally similar ways across

cultural genres. Moreover, this set of concepts can be reconciled with Beckers pioneering work

on the role of aestheticians and critics in art worlds.

Becker (1982)persuasively argues that aestheticians (or philosophers of art) and critics playessential, but different, roles within art worlds. Aestheticians study the premises and arguments

people use to justify classifying things and activities as beautiful, artistic, not art, good

art, bad art, and so on. They construct systems with which to make and justify both the



13/19

classifications and specific instances of their application. Critics apply aesthetic systems to

specific art works and arrive at judgments of their worth and explications of what gives them that

worth (Becker, 1982, p. 131).

To translate Becker into the terminology of the social movements literature, aestheticians create

ideologies of art, and critics frame particular works of art by appealing to the theories and values ofspecific ideologies.11 An example of an ideology of art is the Romanticideology of art, which

explains art as the product of a uniquely gifted creative individual.12 It values art for its

characteristics of personal expression. In contrast, the institutional ideology of art explains art as a

product of therelationshipbetween a culturalproduct anditscontext.Artis valued according to how

well it innovates in response to its cultural environment. For any given cultural production, a critic

can explain how that work should be understood according one of these or another ideology of art.

The concept of discourse can be incorporated into this analysis without need for translation.

Discourse refers to the vocabulary and a related set of concepts for communicating within a given

field. The art world, in the sense of the field of cultural production in general, possesses a

discourse of common terms and ideas for discussing art. More narrowly defined art worlds, suchas the art world for poetry, possess elements of discourse that are specific to that art world. Thus,

while metaphor might be part of the discourse for art generally, blank verse is part of the

discourse of poetry more specifically.

How then, are discourses, ideologies, and frames employed to legitimate cultural productions as

art? To see how these categories apply in practice we can look at the example of film. Baumann

(2001)argues that US film criticism changed in the 1960s. At that time, film critics began to more

intensively employa vocabulary andtechniques a discourse that were commonwithinother high

art worlds. Significantly, film reviews also began to focus on the role of the director as the driving

creativeforceinfilmmaking.Thisfocusingontheroleofthedirectorwasaframingactivity,wherein

critics framed films as essentially the products of individuals, thereby appealing to the Romantic

ideology of art in order to justify why films should be legitimately considered art. In addition, critics

began to interpret films for their messages or meanings. This framed films as art within the

established ideology of art as a form of communication between an artist and an audience.

This act of framing in accordance with ideologies of art is invoked repeatedly in sociological

studies of artistic legitimation, even if the labels of frame and ideology are not employed in

the manner specified here. For example,Ardery (1997)shows how US folk artists works were

framed by curators, gallery owners, and art critics as authentic art because the artists were

untrained, unsophisticated, and financially disinterested. It can be argued that this frame

implicitly references a Romantic ideology of art.Corse and Westervelt (2002) explain the canonization of a particular work of artKate

Chopins novelThe Awakening. The authors demonstrate that the key to the novels increasing

legitimation over time was the application by literary scholars of new interpretive strategies to

reevaluate the book, particularly in the period 19501979 (Corse and Westervelt, 2002, p. 152).

The novels feminist themes were highlighted and explicated in a way that successfully resonated

with scholars and audiences at that point in history.Corse and Westervelt (2002, p. 156) argue

that In order for the congruence between a cultural text and the social environment to be

perceived, an interpretive strategy that constructs the text in those terms must be available. By


11 Aestheticians and critics are not always distinct populations. An aesthetician can engage in criticism, and vice versa.

The two activities, however, are distinct, even when performed by the same individual.12 Romanticism is, of course, a larger ideology to which the Romantic ideology of art is linked.


14/19

translating their terminology into the terminology of the social movements literature, we can see

how their article provides empirical support for a more general theory of how ideas work to

legitimate culture.The Awakeningwas reframed in the 19501979 period when the ideology of

feminism gained currency, and these frames were couched in elements of a new discourse that

had been generated in order to communicate about that ideology.As a final example, considerLopess (2002, pp. 177178)argument that one component of the

rise of a jazz art world was the establishment of jazz criticism which evaluated jazz in a manner that

mirrored the criticism of legitimate music. Jazz enthusiasts rested their claims for the quality of jazz

on its complexity, traditions, emotional vitality, and the need for serious learning of jazzs history,

practitioners, and its variants in order to be understood. Again, we can see the work of these critics as

an act of framing wherein jazz was framed as a standard, rather than anarchic or dangerous, musical

form. This framing called upon preexisting ideas and values about the nature of legitimate art.13

4. Conclusion

The major goal of this paper is to outline the main components of a theory of artistic

legitimation. To achieve this goal, I employ two analytical tools: (1) I synthesize and abstract

from a large number of studies of artistic legitimation, and (2) I draw parallels between art worlds

and social movements, borrowing the language and perspectives developed by social movements

scholars. The general theory of artistic legitimation can be stated as follows: Discrete areas of

cultural production attain legitimacy as art, high or popular, during periods of high cultural

opportunity through mobilizing material or institutional resources and through the exercise of a

discourse that frames the cultural production as legitimate art according to one or more

preexisting ideologies. The main benefit for the sociology of art is a theoretical advancement

beyond the current state of tenuously linked cased studies of artistic legitimation toward an

understanding of a process that is common across art worlds.

I suggest that this framework for explaining the legitimation of ideas in social movements and

in art might also be applicable more broadly. Recent work byFrickel and Gross (2005, p. 206)

adumbrates a general theory for explaining the emergence and success of intellectual/scientific

movements (SIMs), which they define as collective efforts to pursue research programs or

projects for thought in the face of resistance from others in the scientific or intellectual

community. Their article places a heavy emphasis on scientific change, though they also mean

to make their theory applicable to other kinds of knowledge production. They borrow directly

from social movement research to sketch their theory, generating propositions that rely on theconcepts of resources, opportunities, and framing.14 While Frickel and Gross do not address art


13 This particular aspect of my argument about the role of framing in achieving legitimacy finds support in recent work

byZelditch and Walker (2003)on the legitimacy of regimes. They identify consonance as a necessary condition of

legitimacy by which they mean that a claim to legitimacy applies general principles to a particular case (Zelditch and

Walker, 2003, p. 233). For art worlds, the general, preexisting principles of what can count as art must be shown to be

applicable to the art in question.14 The analysis of knowledge production according to the insights and concepts of social movements was carried out

earlier byEyerman and Jamison (1991, p. 59): we want to argue that much if not all new knowledge emanates from the

cognitive praxis of social movements, that new ideas both in and out of science are the often unconscious results of new

knowledge interests of social movements. In fact, because Eyerman and Jamison argue that social movements are

significant on account of the role they play in knowledge production social movements and knowledge production are

not merely similar but are one and the same both in and out of science, their work offers a deeper and more coherent

synthesis of these two disparate areas.


15/19

worlds, it is clear that there are important parallels between an intellectual movement and an

art world. Each involves collective action through a network of actors who champion a counter-

hegemonic idea. Despite the parallels, I depart from Frickel and Gross most importantly in my

understanding of how to conceive of success and in how to explain the importance of the

central social movements concepts, most notably in the relevance of framing.Regarding success, I incorporate from the social psychological literature a conception of

legitimation as a social process involving justification and consensus, and I argue that social

movement success and art world success are kindred legitimation processes. As Frickel and

Gross (2005, p. 227)acknowledge, they explain only two main outcomessuccess or failure.

This false dichotomy is not sufficiently precise to describe the outcomes of interest. Social

movements can vary greatly in their success, which is to say that their core ideas might be highly

legitimated (e.g., women have the legal right to vote, and who would disagree this idea?), or

somewhat legitimated (same sex unions have limited legal recognition and some public opinion

support) or lack legitimation (the North America Man/Boy Love Association has few supporters

among the public and no legal victories). By putting the concept of consensus at the forefront ofunderstanding success, I provide a way of understanding social movement or art world outcomes

as continuous rather than dichotomous.

By specifying the link between justification and legitimation, I also provide an alternative way

of understanding the role of framing. Frickel and Gross (2005, p. 223) argue that framing is

relevant primarily as a way to explain how a movements ideas resonate with participants

intellectual self-concepts. Framing, they argue, creates a narrative that represents the

movement to insiders and outsiders, one that offers an attractive enough element of identity to

gain support. To be sure, framing of this sort occurs and is part of the process of mobilizing

support for a movement, social, scientific, or intellectual. However, recruitment should not be

confused with success. If framing is primarily about identity, how can an outsider accept the

movements ideas as valid without joining the movement? In contrast, I argue that framing is

primarily relevant to the success of social movements and art worlds because it is the activity that

instructs targeted audience members about how to correctly perceive and interpret specific issues,

conditions, events, and objects. Framing is made convincing by invoking the ideas and values in

ideologies which already have currency. In this way, framing justifies the movements or art

worlds ideas as legitimate by building consensus.

Future research should test the applicability of the legitimation framework described here to

areas outside of art and protest. In particular, does the concept of legitimation developed within

the social-psychological literature, linked as it is to justification and consensus, deserve a centralplace in the analysis of how new ideas become dominant or accepted? Can Lamonts (1988)

analysis of the success of Jacques Derrida in the US, for example, be reconciled with this general

theory of legitimation? When she claims that Derridas work was reframed (Lamont, 1988, p.

615) for an American audience, can we seehere the same kind of reframing identified byOliver

and Johnston (2000)in social movements?15

The extension of this legitimation framework would help to answer a call byPeterson (1994,

p. 178) for comparisons across symbol-producing realms in order to understand better the


15 This article does not attempt to incorporate the large literature on legitimation within the sociology of organizations.

This research typically investigates the causes and consequences of the legitimacy of organizational forms or industry

niches (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983; Hannan et al., 1995; Human and Provan, 2000; Ruef and Scott, 1998 ). Future

research should explore the similarities and contradictions of legitimation processes in art and organizations.


16/19

processes of cultural production. In the present case, such comparison allows for analytical

leverage on the question of how these realms function to achieve legitimacy, an important

question for the study of not only art but other fields in which the advancement of new ideas is a

central feature.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Ziad Munson for helpful comments and for pointing me to many useful

references, as well as to the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive criticisms.

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Shyon Baumann is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Toronto. His research interests are in the

sociology of arts, culture, and the media. His current projects include a study of gourmet food journalism and a study ofrace and gender in advertising. His book on the growth of an art world for Hollywood films is forthcoming from Princeton

University Press.


Documents

A General Theory of Artistic Legitimation How Art Worlds Are Like Social Movements