Growing inequalities, shifting cultural boundaries 2: cultural production

Culture & Inequality Podcast

What happens when the boundaries of what counts as art shift in American museums such as the Met? And how do elites maintain power in the process of opening up the arts? Is Rockefeller a villain or a hero in this story? And what do we gain from looking at art to study the dynamics of culture and power? In this episode, Phillipa Chong, assistant professor at McMaster University interviews Jennifer Lena, associate professor at Columbia on the shifting boundaries and shifting inequalities in the American art scene. Readings: Lena, Jennifer. C. (2019). Chapter 3: The Museum of Primitive Art. Entitled: Discriminating tastes and the expansion of the arts. Princeton University Press. Chong, Phillipa. (2018). Everyone’s A Critic? Openness as a Means to Closure in Cultural Journalism', The M in CITAMS@ 30 (Studies in Media and Communications, Volume 18). Phillipa Chong’s research is about how we define and evaluate worth, both in relation to social groups and social objects. Her empirical focus is on book reviewers as market intermediaries in the cultural market. She just released the book Inside the Critics' Circle: Book Reviewing in Uncertain Times (Princeton UP) on the politics of book reviewing. Jennifer Lena’s research focuses on processes of classification, particularly the organizational and institutional conditions for the creation, modification, or elimination of cultural categories. Before Entitled, she published a book on the communities surrounding musical genres Banding Together: How Communities Create Genre in Popular Music (Princeton UP) Presentation: dr. Phillipa Chong & dr. Jennifer Lena Introduction: Luuc Brans Audio edit: Iris Verhulsdonk Intro and outro tune: professor Timothy Dowd