Alex van Venrooij

Change and Continuity in Newspaper Coverage of Popular Music since 1955: Evidence from the United States, France, Germany, and the Netherlands

In this article, we describe general features of popular music coverage in elite newspapers in the United States, France, Germany, and the Netherlands from 1955 to 2005. Drawing on data from content analysis of over 4,000 newspaper articles sampled in four reference years (1955, 1975, 1995, and 2005), we document broad changes and continuities in the extent, focus, and form of popular music coverage in mainstream media outlets of each country.

The French Alternative to Bourdieu? Hennion, Actor-Network Theory, and the Sociology of MediationThe Passion for Music: A Sociology of Mediation, by HennionAntoine, translated by RigaudMargaret. London: Routledge, 2015. 339 pp.

The Passion for Music: A Sociology of Mediation, the English translation of La Passion Musicale (1993) by French sociologist Antoine Hennion, comes at a timely moment. In recent years, several authors in the United Kingdom and the United States have urged the sociology of art and culture to move into a new, post-Bourdieu direction (Fuente 2007; Prior 2011; Beljean, Chong, and Lamont 2016). Switching from one French source to another, this post-Bourdieu movement has, to a large extent, looked for inspiration to one of the homegrown French theoretical alternatives to Bourdieu—actornetwork theory—and in particular to the work of Antoine Hennion, who has been a ‘‘traveling companion’’ to Bruno Latour and Michel Callon at the CSI institute in Paris and has been responsible for developing the ‘‘art and culture’’ wing of actor-network theory. The long-awaited translation of Hennion’s main theoretical work on the ‘‘sociology of mediation’’ is thus sure to be a major event for the post-Bourdieu movement and those seeking inspiration in actor-network theory for the study of art and culture. But considering that, as Lamont observed (2012:232), ANT is perceived within mainstream sociology—and most likely also among Bourdieu-inspired sociologists of culture—as a ‘‘somewhat peculiar and suspect endeavor,’’ will The Passion for Music convince the unconverted to leave Bourdieu behind? One of the major problems that the postBourdieu movement identifies with the current sociology of art and culture, and which forms the motivation for Hennion’s theory of mediation, concerns the ‘‘reductionism’’ that seems inherent in the sociological approach to art. When it comes to art, sociology acts—to borrow a phrase from Latour (2005:236)—like a negative King Midas: it turns everything of gold into dust. The artist becomes a ‘‘cultural producer’’ whose work can be explained by mundane sociological facts, the art lover a ‘‘cultural consumer’’ driven to art by games of social distinction, and the artwork a ‘‘cultural product’’ whose value is the outcome of arbitrary processes of historical selection and valuation. The sociology of art, according to Hennion, excels at demystifying and desacralizing art and is ‘‘obsessed with knocking the artistic object off its pedestal’’ (p. 74). It seems more a sociology against art than a sociology of art. Although probably not all sociologists of art consider this ‘‘reductionism’’ problematic (but rather the aim and contribution of sociology to the study of art), Hennion is convinced that this approach to art signals deep flaws within sociology’s thinking about the role of cultural objects, and he believes it should be amended by a ‘‘non-reductive’’ model of how art objects and society are connected, which his theory of mediation aims to accomplish. To explain what Hennion’s ‘‘theory of mediation’’ entails is not a simple task, also because—as he himself acknowledges—the concept of ‘‘mediation’’ is compatible with the theories that he wants to criticize as well as with the theoretical alternative he himself develops. Reading The Passion for Music can therefore be a rather dizzying, frustrating experience, since the key concept The Passion for Music: A Sociology of Mediation, by Antoine Hennion, translated by Margaret Rigaud. London: Routledge, 2015. 339 pp.

133.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781472418104.

133.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781472418104.