Creativity, Attraction, and Rhythm: Aesthetic Experience in the Sociology of Culture

For a long time, Sociology of Aesthetics has meant a study of status, showing how people use culture to place each other in hierarchies and to form boundaries between groups. Well-grounded in field theory, this approach to aesthetics has proven robust and flexible, applicable to a wide variety of culture industries and modes of reception. However, in the aesthetics of field theory, the cultural objects being classified are incidental. Aesthetics is fundamentally about sorting people, not about relationships with cultural objects. In this dissertation, I make some gentle critiques of the prevailing field theory approach to aesthetics in sociology. I develop an alternative approach to sociological aesthetics, grounded in John Dewey’s Art as Experience (1934). The following three essays each make a different entry to introducing Deweyan aesthetics. The first essay, “The Creative Self in Alienation and Aesthetic Experience,” uses a broadly theoretical method, synthesizing Dewey’s concept of aesthetic experience with Marx’s concept of alienation. This essay makes the point that creativity and aesthetics are closely related experiences, with implications for action, social change, and power. More specifically, it draws out aesthetic experience as a material and temporal experience, which I elaborate in the following essays. The second essay, “Objects of Attraction,” focuses on the material component of aesthetic experience, arguing that aesthetics is a study of human relationships with the material environment. I call this approach “ecological pragmatism.” This essay examines the relationship between bluegrass musicians and their instruments, proposing the concept of “attraction” as an aesthetic motivator, rather than the “status” motivation of field theory. The third essay, “Familiar Rhythm: The Limits of Boundaries in Analyzing Taste,” explores the temporal component of aesthetic experience, arguing that metaphors with temporality are better suited to understanding aesthetics than field theory’s analysis of boundaries. I introduce the concept of “rhythm,” and analyze the recurrence and recognition of cover songs at different bluegrass festivals.