Dear colleagues,

As you may have noticed, it is now only a few days away from April 15, 
the deadline by which we expect to receive proposals for the ESA 
Sociology of the Arts conference in November 2004. Our thanks to those 
who have already sent us their abstracts.
We look forward to hearing from the rest of you shortly!
If you have any questions about the conference arrangements or the topic
you are considering, please don't hesitate to get in touch.

Best wishes,

Susanne Janssen

http://www.esa-arts.net/



CALL FOR PAPERS

The Art of Comparison

6th Conference
ESA Research Network for the Sociology of the Arts
Rotterdam, The Netherlands
November 3-5, 2004


The 6th meeting of the Research Network for the Sociology of the Arts
of ESA (European Sociological Association) will be held November 3-5,
2004, at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The
Department for the Study of the Arts and Culture will host the
conference on the occasion of its 15th anniversary.

The conference programme features keynote lectures, plenary discussions,
paper sessions, and workshops. The theme of the conference, "The Art of
Comparison", is an invitation to assess critically how the social study
of the arts might be advanced through various forms of comparative
research (over-time, cross-national, between different art forms, across
cultural domains) and how sociologists of the arts might take advantage
of approaches and insights developed outside of their own discipline,
for example, within the fields of cultural economics, art history, or
media and communication research.

The organizers look forward to seeing proposals for conference papers or
for a workshop (e.g. around one or more recently published books, a
particular research theme or approach). Topics are invited in the
following and related fields:

· Art and everyday life
· Production of culture: networks, art worlds, cultural industries
· Artistic professions, practices and careers
· Distribution of high and popular art forms
· Public, non-profit and for-profit futures of the arts
· (New) technology, (new) media and the arts
· Change and continuity in the arts and cultural industries
· Cultural globalisation and the arts
· Cultural policy and national cultures
· The arts and the city
· Arts audiences, tastes and lifestyles
· Consumer society, culture and the arts
· The body and/in the arts
· Social uses of the arts
· Gender, race, ethnicity and the arts
· Art, cultural heritage and collective memory
· Mediating the arts: arts education, criticism and arts journalism
· Role and performance of arts organizations and cultural institutions
· Cross-national studies of art worlds and cultural fields
· Comparative methodology
· Theoretical and methodological issues in the sociology of the arts and
culture

Proposals should be submitted by April 15, 2004.
They can be sent by email to: [log in to unmask]
A decision on acceptance will be provided by June 15, 2004.

For a proposed paper, please provide a 400/500-word abstract (in
English), which gives a clear picture of the contents of the paper.
Please include a title, the name(s) of the author(s), institutional
affiliation (both university and department), mailing address, and email
address.

Workshops can be centred on a particular research topic or approach, but
can also involve an in-depth discussion of one or two recently published
books (cf., e.g., the format of the ASA "author meets critics" sessions).
For a proposed workshop, please provide a 700/800-word description (in
English) of the topic or the book publication(s) in question, including
an explanation of the relevance of the topic or book(s) for the social
study of the arts and culture. Please include the full details of the
organizer as above, and in addition the names of contributors, their
institutional affiliations, mailing address, and email address, and the
titles and abstracts of their proposed contributions. A workshop will be
scheduled for 45 tot 90 minutes, depending on the number of participants

Information updates will be regularly posted on the website of the ESA
Research Network for the Sociology of the Arts:
http://www.esa-arts.net

For more information about the conference, please contact the current
chair of the Network: Susanne Janssen (Erasmus University Rotterdam):
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