Culture as a Vocation: Sociology of career choices in cultural management

Description

Vocational occupations are attractive not so much for their material rewards as for the prestige and self-fulfillment they confer. They require a strong personal commitment, which can be subjectively experienced in terms of passion and selflessness. The choice of a career in the cultural sector provides a good example of this. What are the terms of this calling? What predisposes individuals to answer it? What are the meanings of such a choice? To answer these questions, this book focuses on would-be cultural managers. By identifying their social patterns, by revealing the resources, expectations and visions of the world they invest in their choice, it sheds new light on these occupations. In these intermediary and indeterminate social positions, family heritages intersect with educational strategies, aspirations of upward mobility with tactics against downward mobility, and social critique with adjustment strategies. Ultimately the study of career choices in cultural management suggests a new take on the analysis of social reproduction and on the embodiment of the new spirit of capitalism. The empirical findings of this research conducted in France are set in a broader comparative perspective, at the European level and with the USA. Cover Title Copyright Contents List of illustrations Foreword Preface Acknowledgements Introduction 1 Culture in the space of career choices How cultural occupations became attractive Training and the genesis of vocations 2 Who wants to be a cultural manager? A largely feminine vocation Higher social backgrounds Educated applicants Well-rounded applicants The space of applicants 3 The meanings of a career choice Leaving doors open A third way between art and teaching The social rationales of a career choice 4 Intermediate dispositions and adjustment strategies Between cultural legitimism and eclecticism Reinventing the artist’s life Conclusion Appendix Bibliography Index