Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

Production of Culture

Media

Part of Production of Culture

Title

Production of Culture

extracted text

Production of Culture
VAUGHN SCHMUTZ and CANDACE N. MILLER

Abstract
The production of culture (POC) perspective emerged as a way to understand the
external conditions that influence symbolic components of culture. Moving beyond
a simple “reflection” theory of cultural production, this perspective directed attention to the processes by which culture is made. POC scholars have demonstrated
how factors such as technology, law and regulation, organizational form, industry
structure, careers, and markets influence the production, distribution, and reception of cultural products. First, we review foundational research that addresses the
“six facets” associated with the POC perspective as well as related work on cultural industry and classification systems. Next, we address cutting-edge work that
offers new insights and methodological savvy to classic POC concerns with innovation and diversity, gatekeeping processes, and the consequences of categories in
symbolic production. Finally, we discuss opportunities for future work that has the
potential to move POC scholarship forward while addressing fundamental sociological questions about fields, networks, and processes of classification, valuation, and
evaluation. The increasing conceptual and methodological diversity that characterizes production of culture research promises to keep it a vibrant area of inquiry for
years to come.

INTRODUCTION
The production of culture (POC) perspective was an emerging trend in 1970s
sociology when Richard (“Pete”) Peterson (1976)—a principal advocate and
articulator of the perspective throughout his career—edited a volume bearing the name. At the time, it represented a nascent focus among sociologists on the ways in which symbolic components of culture are influenced
by the systems of production, distribution, and reception in which they are
embedded. As such, the POC perspective countered the previously common
view that expressive cultural symbols and society simply reflect one another
in a relatively straightforward manner. By contrast, POC scholars demonstrated that cultural objects are shaped by the external conditions—including
the technological, legal, organizational, industrial, occupational, and market structures—in which they are fabricated, circulated, and evaluated (for
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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a detailed discussion of this “six-facet model,” see Peterson & Anand, 2004).
As such, the POC approach typically focuses more on how cultural objects
are made than on what they mean.
Today, this approach is so widely accepted among sociologists that it often
remains tacit in empirical research on symbolic culture. Among the assumptions of this approach is that cultural products can be studied much like any
other kinds of human products, which meant that the theoretical ideas and
methodological techniques associated with the study of organizations, occupations, and work were readily incorporated in POC scholarship. Yet while
organizational and economic sociologists continue to invigorate the perspective, scholars from many substantive areas have enlivened POC as it has been
applied to wide-ranging contexts and to cultural symbols of great variety. As
a practical necessity, however, we limit the focus of this article to research on
the products of the “creative” or “culture” industries (e.g., music, film, fashion, literature), by first addressing foundational exemplars of the perspective,
then discussing more recent work in the area, and concluding with issues for
future research.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
BEYOND “REFLECTION”
One of the significant shifts ushered in by POC scholarship was a move away
from a “reflection” theory of society and culture to one that attended to specific factors that influence cultural content. For example, Wendy Griswold
(1981) famously countered the reflection argument, which explained the
divergent literary themes in American and European novels as simply mirroring differences in national character, by suggesting that scholars should
consider the systems of production, characteristics of authors, and other
factors that shape literary content. To put it succinctly, prevailing reflection
theories suggested that the thematic elements of British novels—which
focused on issues of marriage, money, and manners—mirrored the
European social order, while the American novelist’s deviant focus on
“man-fleeing-society” (or other uniquely American themes) was a reflection
of a distinctive national character.
Contrary to the reflection view, Griswold used a systematic analysis of
novels to show that the content of American and European novels was
not as different as previous commentators typically suggested. Moreover,
she showed that American literary content was greatly influenced by
copyright law. Before the Platt-Simmons Act of 1891, American publishers
could legally print and sell the work of foreign authors without providing
remuneration. Because this provided publishers with a vast library of free

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content, American authors had an incentive to distinguish themselves from
European authors in order to attract the attention of American publishers.
After 1891, when American publishers were legally required to compensate
foreign authors for their work, the differences in literary content between
American and European novels nearly disappeared. In addition to national
character, Griswold argued that literature is shaped by imperatives of the
genre, the literary market, author characteristics, and copyright law. Since
Griswold’s foundational work, copyright law and other regulatory policies
have been shown to influence a variety of cultural products, from music to
magazines and from television to fine art.
As mentioned, the role of law and regulation is only one of the “six facets”
associated with the POC perspective (Peterson & Anand, 2004). In his
explanation of why rock and roll music emerged in 1955, Peterson (1990)
draws on all six components of the POC model to dispel the prevailing
view that rock’s ascendance was simply a reflection of uniquely creative
individuals on the supply side (e.g., Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry) or of
changing preferences on the demand side (e.g., the growing number of
young “baby-boomer” consumers). Rather, technological changes (e.g.,
advent of television, transistor radios, vinyl 45s); new developments in
patent law and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulation;
concomitant changes in the organizational (e.g., independent radio stations
and decentralized music production), occupational (e.g., the rise of the
disc jockey and record producers), and industry structures (e.g., declining
concentration) of both radio broadcasting and music recording; and shifts
away from homogeneous conceptions of the music market all provided
conditions favorable to the emergence of rock music.
The advent of rock music represents a classic concern in POC scholarship
with the role of external conditions in promoting or hampering innovation
and diversity in cultural fields. In their foundational work on this matter,
Peterson and Berger (1975) showed that when the music industry is characterized by high market concentration (i.e., a small number of firms maintain
oligopolistic control over production) it produces less diverse and innovative music. Extending their work, Paul Lopes (1992) demonstrated that the
negative impact of market concentration is partly contingent on the system
of production and conception of the market employed by record companies.
As a result, the music industry was able to produce innovative output in the
1980s despite high concentration because it used an “open” system of production and targeted a segmented—rather than mass—market. Building on
these competing accounts, Tim Dowd (2004) produced convincing evidence
that a shift to decentralized production among major recording firms (e.g.,
widening their rosters of performers, creating alliances with independent

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labels) mitigated the negative impact of market concentration. Decentralized production allowed for new performing acts and new recording firms
to emerge even when market concentration was high. Taken together, this
influential strand of POC scholarship forcefully illustrates the role of industry
structure, organizational logics, and market conceptions in shaping cultural
products.
CULTURAL INDUSTRY SYSTEMS
Closely associated with the emergence of the POC perspective is the model of
cultural industry systems put forward by Paul Hirsch (1972), which emphasizes the relationships between culture-producing organizations and the role
they play as intermediaries between producers and consumers. Hirsch (1972)
introduced the idea of a cultural industry system to call attention to the role of
myriad individual and organizational actors in producing a cultural product
for an audience. Rather than isolated cultural producers (e.g., artists, actors,
musicians, writers) creating and delivering their work directly to an audience, the cultural industry system is a complex apparatus that selects relatively few creative works from a large pool of possibilities for distribution to
an audience. From this view, the organizations that discover, produce, distribute, and evaluate cultural offerings act as “filters” or “gatekeepers” that
together shape the form and substance of the cultural output that eventually
reaches consumers. The abundant oversupply of potential artists (e.g., writers, actors, musicians) comprise the “technical subsystem,” while the first
filter, or “managerial subsystem,” includes the organizations (e.g., publishing houses, movie studios, and record companies) that discover and produce
books, films, and recorded music for an audience. The second filter, or “institutional subsystem,” is comprised of a vast array of media actors (e.g., book
or film critics, disc jockeys) who evaluate cultural offerings. In studies of the
individual and organizational actors that constitute the institutional subsystem, they are variously referred to as “surrogate consumers” (Hirsch, 1972),
cultural intermediaries, reputational entrepreneurs, tastemakers, and so on.
The system also includes feedback loops from the institutional subsystem
and the audience, which influences the actions of artists and producing organizations. This expansive network of interrelated actors is akin to what others
call an organizational field.
Because of the vast oversupply of potential creative works to choose from
and the relative rarity of commercial success, the producing organizations
face a great deal of uncertainty. To deal with this problem, Hirsch (1972) suggested that such organizations engage in three strategies. First, they employ
boundary-spanning agents (e.g., talent scouts, promoters, public relations
personnel) who work upstream to identify creative talent and downstream

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to influence media gatekeepers and retailers. Second, they intentionally
overproduce in the hope that commercial failures are offset by big hits.
Finally, they attempt to co-opt members of the institutional subsystem to
secure favorable evaluation and exposure in media outlets. Much POC
scholarship focuses on one or more aspects of the cultural industry system,
such as how firms deal with uncertainty, the effects of gatekeeping processes
on artistic content, the role of institutional regulators, and so on. Considering
the interconnected and interdependent system in which cultural offerings
are discovered, produced, disseminated, and assessed is a central activity
of the POC perspective and reflects a sociological focus on the many forces
external to individual cultural creators that shape their creative work.
CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS
Another feature of the systems in which creative content is produced deals
with the possible categories into which such products are placed. Perhaps
the most familiar type of cultural category is a genre, which Paul DiMaggio (1987, p. 441) defines as “sets of artworks classified together on the basis
of perceived similarities.” Genre categories act as important sense-making
devices for both cultural producers and consumers. Classic studies in the
POC tradition demonstrate the central role of genres in the decision-making
processes of cultural producers. For example, Bielby and Bielby (1994) found
that television programmers at the major networks employed various rhetorical strategies to legitimate their precarious decisions about which shows to
produce for primetime from a plentitude of pilots. Among these strategies,
programmers would frequently rely on familiar genre categories (e.g., situational comedy, drama, reality) to frame their decisions. As a result, television
pilots that deviated from conventional genre categories were much less likely
to be selected for primetime production.
In his much-cited theory of artistic classification systems, Paul DiMaggio
(1987) draws on POC insights to generate formal propositions regarding the
structural features of classification systems themselves. DiMaggio suggests
four dimensions along which such systems differ at the societal level as well
as several social structural factors (e.g., social heterogeneity, level of inequality) that influence each dimension. For one, artistic classification systems can
vary in their differentiation, or the degree to which genres are institutionally bounded. Systems that are highly segmented with many identifiable
genres are highly differentiated. Second, artistic classification systems can
vary in the degree to which genres are ranked by prestige, which is an indicator of hierarchy. In more hierarchical systems, genres diverge widely in
prestige and receive unequal resources. A third dimension of variation is
universality, or the degree to which there is agreement among members of

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a society in the ways they recognize and classify genres. Finally, artistic classification systems can vary in their boundary strength, or the degree to which
genre boundaries are highly ritualized and difficult to transgress. Furthermore, ritual classifications are mediated by commercial categories (whereby
profit-seeking entities seek to differentiate cultural products); professional categories (based on the competitive process by which artists divide works into
types); and administrative categories (created by the state). Characteristics of
classification systems can have profound consequences for the types of cultural products that are available and how they are assessed (e.g., Zhao, 2008
on the production and valuation of Californian vs French wine).
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
Recent research in the POC tradition shares concerns similar to the foundational scholarship, but continues to enliven the perspective through detailed
investigations of cultural industries, novel methodological approaches,
and by exploring intersections between cultural production and other
domains of sociological inquiry. Where Hirsch (1972) opens his classic article
with observations of a fashion house in Paris, for example, Ashley Mears
(2011) offers a detailed look at the inner workings of the fashion industry
that touches on POC concerns with innovation and diversity, gatekeeping
processes, and the consequences of cultural categories. Providing keen
insights into the work lives of fashion models, the brokering efforts of
bookers (i.e., modeling agents) and the decision-making processes of their
clients, Mears details the uncertain environment in which these gatekeepers
of fashion operate. In the face of this uncertainty, bookers and clients in
the fashion industry rely on established work practices, familiar categories
(i.e., commercial vs editorial fashion), and a narrow conception of consumer
preferences to produce fashion images that are strikingly homogeneous in
terms of race and body type. While bookers and clients blame each other
as well as fashion consumers for this lack of diversity, shared conventions,
work routines, and the organization of the industry reveal a great deal about
how beauty is valorized by cultural producers in the fashion world. As such,
Mears’ work shows how the production of fashion intersects with racial
and gender hierarchies to reproduce inequalities. It also provides a model
for how ethnographic work can shed light on a wide range of typical POC
concerns.
Gabriel Rossman (2012) also addresses POC concerns with innovation,
gatekeeping processes, and classification in his book, Climbing the charts,
which focuses on radio airplay in popular music. Using a novel methodological approach, Rossman draws on diffusion of innovations theory to
model the patterns of radio airplay for successful pop songs (for a detailed

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discussion of multilevel diffusion curves, see Rossman, Chiu, & Mol, 2008).
Among other things, the diffusion curves provide evidence that exogenous,
centrally coordinated influences lead to widespread airplay for a relatively
small number of hits. Thus, rather than diffusing through an endogenous
contagion process or as the result of influential radio DJs playing a record,
chart-toppers appear to more often result from the music industry co-opting
the gatekeepers of radio airplay (e.g., by using some form of payola). Yet
this is not the entire story. Radio programmers exert their influence through
their choice of radio format—a classificatory scheme in radio that defines
the core identity and strategy of a radio station. Such categories structure
radio airplay as well-established formats allow for more rapid diffusion of
hits while new formats and their associated genres follow less predictable
diffusion patterns. In addition, Rossman (2012) offers compelling evidence
that the precipitous decline in the Dixie Chicks’ airplay following Natalie
Maines’ controversial comments about President Bush had little to do with
market concentration in radio and much to do with the market as radio
listeners—especially of country music stations—voiced their displeasure.
The POC perspective has also benefited from work exploring intersections
with other fields of sociological study. Shyon Baumann (2006, 2007), for
example, has highlighted commonalities between social movements and the
process by which cultural products (or entire cultural fields) are legitimated.
Similar to social movements, fields of cultural production require opportunity space, resource mobilization, and a legitimating ideology to elevate the
status of their offerings. Baumann (2007) showed how typical POC factors
such as technology (e.g., advent of television) and changing organizational
arrangements (e.g., shift from studio to project-based production) provided
the necessary conditions and resources for Hollywood films to gain symbolic
status. The most distinctive contribution of Baumann’s work, however, is
his focus on the legitimating ideology provided by film critics (i.e., part
of Hirsch’s “institutional subsystem”) who provided an intellectualizing
discourse that helped frame films as works of art. In a different way, Larry
Isaac (2009, 2012) demonstrates how social movement fields can profoundly
influence fields of cultural production. Specifically, he looks at how contention over the labor movement in the United States led to the emergence
of a new fiction subgenre—the “labor problem” novel—where movement
and countermovement conflicts were waged on the pages of literary fiction.
In this way, he shows how social movement scholarship can enhance our
understanding of cultural production as well as how collective action can
produce cultural consequences.
Finally, considerable work has recently focused on a variety of issues
related to classification processes in the POC. A prominent example is
research that stems from the organizational ecology perspective to address

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the impact of multiple category membership on various market outcomes
(for a review, see Hannan, 2010). In the field of film, studies by Greta Hsu
and colleagues (e.g., Hsu, Hannan, & Koçak, 2009; Hsu, Negro, & Peretti,
2012) have generally shown that spanning genre categories hampers critical
and commercial success, although its negative effects may be mitigated by
contextual factors. For instance, in fields where there is less contrast between
categories (e.g., categories are in flux or less institutionalized), multiple
category membership is less likely to inhibit the favorable reception of
cultural offerings (Kovács & Hannan, 2010). Related research has considered
how a single cultural category emerges and either becomes successfully
institutionalized (e.g., Khaire & Wadhwani, 2010 on modern Indian art) or
fails to do so (e.g., Boone, Declerck, Rao, & van den Buys, 2012 on modernistic music in Brussels). By contrast, Jennifer Lena (2012) documents the
trajectories of dozens of music genres and reveals common patterns in the
processes by which such categories emerge and change over time. Her work
offers a theoretical lens for seeing the relationship between communities and
cultural classifications that can be readily applied to other fields of symbolic
production.
The foregoing examples are intended to give a brief snapshot of
cutting-edge work and current directions in POC research rather than
a comprehensive overview of all the innovative scholarship in this thriving
field. It is worth noting, however, that many of the studies included here
address common criticisms that have been leveled at the POC perspective
over the years (see Peterson & Anand, 2004). In particular, POC has been
accused of overlooking the influence of cultural consumers, but Rossman
(2012) shows how influential fans can be in shaping radio airplay in the
case of the Dixie Chicks controversy. Likewise, although POC scholarship
is not generally aimed at inferring meaning (a criticism of the perspective),
the work of Baumann (2006, 2007) and Isaac (2009, 2012) offers insight into
the interpretation of meaning across space and time. Finally, the argument
that the POC perspective downplays issues of power and inequality does
not apply to Mears’ (2011) account of how production processes in fashion
reproduce racial and gender inequalities or to Lena’s (2012) discussion of
how genre classifications have concrete consequences in the distribution of
power and resources.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Research in the POC tradition continues to thrive and remaining issues
promise to invigorate the POC agenda for the foreseeable future. While there
are many ways in which scholarship on cultural production can continue
to progress, POC-inspired work also has the opportunity to contribute

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to fundamental sociological issues related to social fields, networks, the
sociology of markets, and processes of classification, valuation, and evaluation. In this section, we offer suggestions for ongoing work inspired by POC
questions and insights.
As has been noted elsewhere (e.g., Peterson & Anand, 2004), one opportunity for moving POC scholarship forward is to direct more attention to the
broader social-structural context in which the “six facets” operate. Perhaps
this oversight is partly due to a desire to establish distance from the reflection theories that prevailed before the POC perspective emerged, which
assumed that structural factors determined cultural production. However,
contemporary scholars generally see culture as more of a fragmented
pastiche than a “seamless web” (DiMaggio, 1997) and envision a complex,
context-dependent relationship between culture and social structure rather
than a one-to-one correspondence. Thus, attention to the societal level has
the potential to illuminate the contingent and interdependent relationships
between structural factors, cultural industries, classification systems, and
the six facets of the POC perspective. A more practical obstacle to such
efforts is that most studies look at a single institutional setting and focus
on one (or a few) POC variables. Indeed, Peterson’s (1990) analysis of the
advent of rock music, discussed earlier, is somewhat rare as an example
of work that examines all six facets of the POC model in the same study
(see also Bourdieu, 1993; Crane, 1992). While practical and methodological
challenges confront efforts at societal-level analyses of the type needed,
such work has the potential to not only contribute to scholarship on cultural
production but more broadly to our understanding of social fields and their
relationships to one another (see Fligstein & McAdam, 2012).
Research at a macro-sociological level is also lacking from studies of classification in cultural fields. DiMaggio’s (1987) widely cited theory of artistic
classification systems, described earlier, contains many propositions regarding the relationship between key dimensions of such systems (i.e., their level
of differentiation, hierarchy, universality, and boundary strength) and a variety of social structural factors (e.g., level of social heterogeneity and inequality, features of the educational system). Yet as DiMaggio (2009) himself has
acknowledged, this set of propositions has not been formally tested. Again,
such research has the potential to explain variation in classification systems
as well as shed light on the relationship between fields of cultural production
and other social fields. The theoretical propositions in the theory are largely
built on DiMaggio’s (1982) research on the institutionalization of high culture in the United States, but historical and cross-national research can assess
the validity of the theory in other contexts and enhance POC scholarship
(see Janssen & Peterson, 2005). While notable comparative work has been
inspired by DiMaggio’s (1987) theory of artistic classification systems—for

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instance, cross-national research by Janssen, Kuipers, and Verboord (2008) on
trends in the international orientation of arts journalism in elite newspapers
of four countries from 1955 to 2005—it has not fully tested the societal-level
propositions.
To the extent that newspaper coverage of culture and other text-based
sources provide a promising and unobtrusive source of comparative measurement (Peterson, 2005), efforts to advance POC scholarship may well
benefit from the “big data” movement in sociology and cognate fields. A
growing number of sociologists are collaborating with computer scientists
or borrowing from their methods for analyzing large text corpora, such
as DiMaggio, Nag, and Blei (2013) who use topic modeling to examine
the discursive frames regarding government funding of the arts in several
American newspapers over time (see Mohr & Bogdanov, 2013 for additional examples). The approach provides insights into the shifting policy
environment—a classic POC concern—for public arts funding in the United
States, while also considering contextual factors that influence the use of
contrasting frames. Many POC-related questions are not readily answerable
through text analysis and such methods are not without their pitfalls (see
Bail, 2014), but big data approaches are promising and proliferating.
Recent work in the sociology of markets highlights the fundamental role of
classification and evaluation in shaping assessments of quality across diverse
fields (Beckert & Musselin, 2013). The POC focus in creative industries on
gatekeeping and legitimacy processes can offer many insights into how
these mechanisms work to create ideas about symbolic value. Scholarship
that addresses the role of a legitimating ideology (Baumann, 2006, 2007)
for artistic products has inspired considerable work on critical discourse in
cultural fields that is relevant to the construction of quality. In her review of
related lines of inquiry, Lamont (2012) calls for a comparative sociology
of valuation and evaluation to produce cumulative insights into processes
of categorization and legitimation as well as valuation and evaluative
practices. Many POC-inspired scholars are engaged in this agenda, which
has broad sociological relevance.
Returning to the issue of classification, the burgeoning literature on the
topic among POC scholars and organizational ecologists can benefit from
more explicit dialogue between the two approaches. For example, what
ecologists refer to as “categorical contrast” (Kovács & Hannan, 2010) is
closely related to DiMaggio’s (1987) dimensions of differentiation and
boundary strength in artistic classification systems. Future research in this
area could also address issues of universality and hierarchy to provide
better explanations for variation in the impact of ambiguous classification.
In his review of this literature, Hannan (2010) suggests that future work
needs to account for how supply-side (i.e., producer) and demand-side (i.e.,

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audience) systems of classification mutually shape one another rather than
modeling them separately. Drawing on Hirsch’s (1972) model of cultural
industry systems, future research might push this agenda even further
by considering how classification operates at each stage in the production
process, from the creative personnel to the organizational producers to the
institutional intermediaries to the audience.
The study of social networks has long been associated with work in the POC
tradition given its close association to organizational and economic sociology. Much of this work has focused on the impact of such networks on the
careers of creative workers (e.g., Rossman, Esparza, & Bonacich, 2010). Examining the social networks of gatekeepers holds promise for understanding
their selection strategies in cultural markets. Foster, Borgatti, and Jones (2011)
demonstrate how networks among nightclub talent buyers in Boston operate in different niches of the market based on divergent cultural, economic,
and cognitive mechanisms. Drawing on relational and network governance
theories, such work not only contributes to classic POC questions about organizational boundary spanners and how they deal with uncertain markets but
also responds to Fligstein and McAdam’s (2012) call to study the “internal
governance units” in social fields that serve to maintain the existing structure of the field. POC scholars are well positioned to answer the call for this
type of research. Fortunately, the conceptual and methodological diversity
that characterizes POC research promises to keep it a vibrant area of inquiry
for years to come.
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Lamont, M. (2012). Toward a comparative sociology of valuation and evaluation.
Annual Review of Sociology, 38, 201–221.
Lena, J. (2012). Banding together: How communities create genres in popular music. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Lopes, P. (1992). Innovation and diversity in the popular music industry, 1969 to 1990.
American Sociological Review, 57, 56–71.
Mears, A. (2011). Pricing beauty: The making of a fashion model. Berkeley, CA: University
of California Press.
Mohr, J., & Bogdanov, P. (Eds.) (2013). Topic models and the cultural sciences. Special
issue of. Poetics, 41, 545–769.
Peterson, R. A. (Ed.) (1976). The production of culture. Newbury Park, CA: SAGE Publications.
Peterson, R. A. (1990). Why 1955? Explaining the advent of rock music. Popular Music,
9(1), 97–116.
Peterson, R. A., & Anand, N. (2004). The production of culture perspective. Annual
Review of Sociology, 30, 311–34.
Peterson, R. A., & Berger, D. G. (1975). Cycles in symbol production: The case of
popular music. American Sociological Review, 40(2), 158–73.
Peterson, R. A. (2005). Problems in comparative research: The example of omnivorousness. Poetics, 33, 259–282.
Rossman, G. (2012). Climbing the charts: What radio airplay tells us about the diffusion of
innovation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rossman, G., Chiu, M. M., & Mol, J. M. (2008). Modeling diffusion of multiple innovations via multilevel diffusion curves: Payola in pop music radio. Sociological
Methodology, 38(1), 201–30.
Rossman, G., Esparza, N., & Bonacich, P. (2010). I’d like to thank the Academy, team
spillovers, and network centrality. American Sociological Review, 75(1), 31–51.
Zhao, W. (2008). Social categories, classification systems, and determinants of wine
price in the California and French wine industries. Sociological Perspectives, 51(1),
163–99.

VAUGHN SCHMUTZ SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Vaughn Schmutz is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at UNC Charlotte.
His research focuses on processes of classification, evaluation, and consecration in various cultural fields.
Website: http://clas-pages.uncc.edu/vaughn-schmutz/
CANDACE N. MILLER SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Candace N. Miller has an MA in sociology from the University of North
Carolina at Charlotte and is currently a PhD student in the Department of
Sociology at the University of Virginia. Her research interests are cultural
sociology, race and ethnicity, and stratification.

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Gardner
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Culture and Globalization (Sociology), Frederick F. Wherry



Production of Culture
VAUGHN SCHMUTZ and CANDACE N. MILLER

Abstract
The production of culture (POC) perspective emerged as a way to understand the
external conditions that influence symbolic components of culture. Moving beyond
a simple “reflection” theory of cultural production, this perspective directed attention to the processes by which culture is made. POC scholars have demonstrated
how factors such as technology, law and regulation, organizational form, industry
structure, careers, and markets influence the production, distribution, and reception of cultural products. First, we review foundational research that addresses the
“six facets” associated with the POC perspective as well as related work on cultural industry and classification systems. Next, we address cutting-edge work that
offers new insights and methodological savvy to classic POC concerns with innovation and diversity, gatekeeping processes, and the consequences of categories in
symbolic production. Finally, we discuss opportunities for future work that has the
potential to move POC scholarship forward while addressing fundamental sociological questions about fields, networks, and processes of classification, valuation, and
evaluation. The increasing conceptual and methodological diversity that characterizes production of culture research promises to keep it a vibrant area of inquiry for
years to come.

INTRODUCTION
The production of culture (POC) perspective was an emerging trend in 1970s
sociology when Richard (“Pete”) Peterson (1976)—a principal advocate and
articulator of the perspective throughout his career—edited a volume bearing the name. At the time, it represented a nascent focus among sociologists on the ways in which symbolic components of culture are influenced
by the systems of production, distribution, and reception in which they are
embedded. As such, the POC perspective countered the previously common
view that expressive cultural symbols and society simply reflect one another
in a relatively straightforward manner. By contrast, POC scholars demonstrated that cultural objects are shaped by the external conditions—including
the technological, legal, organizational, industrial, occupational, and market structures—in which they are fabricated, circulated, and evaluated (for
Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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a detailed discussion of this “six-facet model,” see Peterson & Anand, 2004).
As such, the POC approach typically focuses more on how cultural objects
are made than on what they mean.
Today, this approach is so widely accepted among sociologists that it often
remains tacit in empirical research on symbolic culture. Among the assumptions of this approach is that cultural products can be studied much like any
other kinds of human products, which meant that the theoretical ideas and
methodological techniques associated with the study of organizations, occupations, and work were readily incorporated in POC scholarship. Yet while
organizational and economic sociologists continue to invigorate the perspective, scholars from many substantive areas have enlivened POC as it has been
applied to wide-ranging contexts and to cultural symbols of great variety. As
a practical necessity, however, we limit the focus of this article to research on
the products of the “creative” or “culture” industries (e.g., music, film, fashion, literature), by first addressing foundational exemplars of the perspective,
then discussing more recent work in the area, and concluding with issues for
future research.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
BEYOND “REFLECTION”
One of the significant shifts ushered in by POC scholarship was a move away
from a “reflection” theory of society and culture to one that attended to specific factors that influence cultural content. For example, Wendy Griswold
(1981) famously countered the reflection argument, which explained the
divergent literary themes in American and European novels as simply mirroring differences in national character, by suggesting that scholars should
consider the systems of production, characteristics of authors, and other
factors that shape literary content. To put it succinctly, prevailing reflection
theories suggested that the thematic elements of British novels—which
focused on issues of marriage, money, and manners—mirrored the
European social order, while the American novelist’s deviant focus on
“man-fleeing-society” (or other uniquely American themes) was a reflection
of a distinctive national character.
Contrary to the reflection view, Griswold used a systematic analysis of
novels to show that the content of American and European novels was
not as different as previous commentators typically suggested. Moreover,
she showed that American literary content was greatly influenced by
copyright law. Before the Platt-Simmons Act of 1891, American publishers
could legally print and sell the work of foreign authors without providing
remuneration. Because this provided publishers with a vast library of free

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content, American authors had an incentive to distinguish themselves from
European authors in order to attract the attention of American publishers.
After 1891, when American publishers were legally required to compensate
foreign authors for their work, the differences in literary content between
American and European novels nearly disappeared. In addition to national
character, Griswold argued that literature is shaped by imperatives of the
genre, the literary market, author characteristics, and copyright law. Since
Griswold’s foundational work, copyright law and other regulatory policies
have been shown to influence a variety of cultural products, from music to
magazines and from television to fine art.
As mentioned, the role of law and regulation is only one of the “six facets”
associated with the POC perspective (Peterson & Anand, 2004). In his
explanation of why rock and roll music emerged in 1955, Peterson (1990)
draws on all six components of the POC model to dispel the prevailing
view that rock’s ascendance was simply a reflection of uniquely creative
individuals on the supply side (e.g., Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry) or of
changing preferences on the demand side (e.g., the growing number of
young “baby-boomer” consumers). Rather, technological changes (e.g.,
advent of television, transistor radios, vinyl 45s); new developments in
patent law and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulation;
concomitant changes in the organizational (e.g., independent radio stations
and decentralized music production), occupational (e.g., the rise of the
disc jockey and record producers), and industry structures (e.g., declining
concentration) of both radio broadcasting and music recording; and shifts
away from homogeneous conceptions of the music market all provided
conditions favorable to the emergence of rock music.
The advent of rock music represents a classic concern in POC scholarship
with the role of external conditions in promoting or hampering innovation
and diversity in cultural fields. In their foundational work on this matter,
Peterson and Berger (1975) showed that when the music industry is characterized by high market concentration (i.e., a small number of firms maintain
oligopolistic control over production) it produces less diverse and innovative music. Extending their work, Paul Lopes (1992) demonstrated that the
negative impact of market concentration is partly contingent on the system
of production and conception of the market employed by record companies.
As a result, the music industry was able to produce innovative output in the
1980s despite high concentration because it used an “open” system of production and targeted a segmented—rather than mass—market. Building on
these competing accounts, Tim Dowd (2004) produced convincing evidence
that a shift to decentralized production among major recording firms (e.g.,
widening their rosters of performers, creating alliances with independent

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labels) mitigated the negative impact of market concentration. Decentralized production allowed for new performing acts and new recording firms
to emerge even when market concentration was high. Taken together, this
influential strand of POC scholarship forcefully illustrates the role of industry
structure, organizational logics, and market conceptions in shaping cultural
products.
CULTURAL INDUSTRY SYSTEMS
Closely associated with the emergence of the POC perspective is the model of
cultural industry systems put forward by Paul Hirsch (1972), which emphasizes the relationships between culture-producing organizations and the role
they play as intermediaries between producers and consumers. Hirsch (1972)
introduced the idea of a cultural industry system to call attention to the role of
myriad individual and organizational actors in producing a cultural product
for an audience. Rather than isolated cultural producers (e.g., artists, actors,
musicians, writers) creating and delivering their work directly to an audience, the cultural industry system is a complex apparatus that selects relatively few creative works from a large pool of possibilities for distribution to
an audience. From this view, the organizations that discover, produce, distribute, and evaluate cultural offerings act as “filters” or “gatekeepers” that
together shape the form and substance of the cultural output that eventually
reaches consumers. The abundant oversupply of potential artists (e.g., writers, actors, musicians) comprise the “technical subsystem,” while the first
filter, or “managerial subsystem,” includes the organizations (e.g., publishing houses, movie studios, and record companies) that discover and produce
books, films, and recorded music for an audience. The second filter, or “institutional subsystem,” is comprised of a vast array of media actors (e.g., book
or film critics, disc jockeys) who evaluate cultural offerings. In studies of the
individual and organizational actors that constitute the institutional subsystem, they are variously referred to as “surrogate consumers” (Hirsch, 1972),
cultural intermediaries, reputational entrepreneurs, tastemakers, and so on.
The system also includes feedback loops from the institutional subsystem
and the audience, which influences the actions of artists and producing organizations. This expansive network of interrelated actors is akin to what others
call an organizational field.
Because of the vast oversupply of potential creative works to choose from
and the relative rarity of commercial success, the producing organizations
face a great deal of uncertainty. To deal with this problem, Hirsch (1972) suggested that such organizations engage in three strategies. First, they employ
boundary-spanning agents (e.g., talent scouts, promoters, public relations
personnel) who work upstream to identify creative talent and downstream

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to influence media gatekeepers and retailers. Second, they intentionally
overproduce in the hope that commercial failures are offset by big hits.
Finally, they attempt to co-opt members of the institutional subsystem to
secure favorable evaluation and exposure in media outlets. Much POC
scholarship focuses on one or more aspects of the cultural industry system,
such as how firms deal with uncertainty, the effects of gatekeeping processes
on artistic content, the role of institutional regulators, and so on. Considering
the interconnected and interdependent system in which cultural offerings
are discovered, produced, disseminated, and assessed is a central activity
of the POC perspective and reflects a sociological focus on the many forces
external to individual cultural creators that shape their creative work.
CLASSIFICATION SYSTEMS
Another feature of the systems in which creative content is produced deals
with the possible categories into which such products are placed. Perhaps
the most familiar type of cultural category is a genre, which Paul DiMaggio (1987, p. 441) defines as “sets of artworks classified together on the basis
of perceived similarities.” Genre categories act as important sense-making
devices for both cultural producers and consumers. Classic studies in the
POC tradition demonstrate the central role of genres in the decision-making
processes of cultural producers. For example, Bielby and Bielby (1994) found
that television programmers at the major networks employed various rhetorical strategies to legitimate their precarious decisions about which shows to
produce for primetime from a plentitude of pilots. Among these strategies,
programmers would frequently rely on familiar genre categories (e.g., situational comedy, drama, reality) to frame their decisions. As a result, television
pilots that deviated from conventional genre categories were much less likely
to be selected for primetime production.
In his much-cited theory of artistic classification systems, Paul DiMaggio
(1987) draws on POC insights to generate formal propositions regarding the
structural features of classification systems themselves. DiMaggio suggests
four dimensions along which such systems differ at the societal level as well
as several social structural factors (e.g., social heterogeneity, level of inequality) that influence each dimension. For one, artistic classification systems can
vary in their differentiation, or the degree to which genres are institutionally bounded. Systems that are highly segmented with many identifiable
genres are highly differentiated. Second, artistic classification systems can
vary in the degree to which genres are ranked by prestige, which is an indicator of hierarchy. In more hierarchical systems, genres diverge widely in
prestige and receive unequal resources. A third dimension of variation is
universality, or the degree to which there is agreement among members of

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a society in the ways they recognize and classify genres. Finally, artistic classification systems can vary in their boundary strength, or the degree to which
genre boundaries are highly ritualized and difficult to transgress. Furthermore, ritual classifications are mediated by commercial categories (whereby
profit-seeking entities seek to differentiate cultural products); professional categories (based on the competitive process by which artists divide works into
types); and administrative categories (created by the state). Characteristics of
classification systems can have profound consequences for the types of cultural products that are available and how they are assessed (e.g., Zhao, 2008
on the production and valuation of Californian vs French wine).
CUTTING-EDGE RESEARCH
Recent research in the POC tradition shares concerns similar to the foundational scholarship, but continues to enliven the perspective through detailed
investigations of cultural industries, novel methodological approaches,
and by exploring intersections between cultural production and other
domains of sociological inquiry. Where Hirsch (1972) opens his classic article
with observations of a fashion house in Paris, for example, Ashley Mears
(2011) offers a detailed look at the inner workings of the fashion industry
that touches on POC concerns with innovation and diversity, gatekeeping
processes, and the consequences of cultural categories. Providing keen
insights into the work lives of fashion models, the brokering efforts of
bookers (i.e., modeling agents) and the decision-making processes of their
clients, Mears details the uncertain environment in which these gatekeepers
of fashion operate. In the face of this uncertainty, bookers and clients in
the fashion industry rely on established work practices, familiar categories
(i.e., commercial vs editorial fashion), and a narrow conception of consumer
preferences to produce fashion images that are strikingly homogeneous in
terms of race and body type. While bookers and clients blame each other
as well as fashion consumers for this lack of diversity, shared conventions,
work routines, and the organization of the industry reveal a great deal about
how beauty is valorized by cultural producers in the fashion world. As such,
Mears’ work shows how the production of fashion intersects with racial
and gender hierarchies to reproduce inequalities. It also provides a model
for how ethnographic work can shed light on a wide range of typical POC
concerns.
Gabriel Rossman (2012) also addresses POC concerns with innovation,
gatekeeping processes, and classification in his book, Climbing the charts,
which focuses on radio airplay in popular music. Using a novel methodological approach, Rossman draws on diffusion of innovations theory to
model the patterns of radio airplay for successful pop songs (for a detailed

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7

discussion of multilevel diffusion curves, see Rossman, Chiu, & Mol, 2008).
Among other things, the diffusion curves provide evidence that exogenous,
centrally coordinated influences lead to widespread airplay for a relatively
small number of hits. Thus, rather than diffusing through an endogenous
contagion process or as the result of influential radio DJs playing a record,
chart-toppers appear to more often result from the music industry co-opting
the gatekeepers of radio airplay (e.g., by using some form of payola). Yet
this is not the entire story. Radio programmers exert their influence through
their choice of radio format—a classificatory scheme in radio that defines
the core identity and strategy of a radio station. Such categories structure
radio airplay as well-established formats allow for more rapid diffusion of
hits while new formats and their associated genres follow less predictable
diffusion patterns. In addition, Rossman (2012) offers compelling evidence
that the precipitous decline in the Dixie Chicks’ airplay following Natalie
Maines’ controversial comments about President Bush had little to do with
market concentration in radio and much to do with the market as radio
listeners—especially of country music stations—voiced their displeasure.
The POC perspective has also benefited from work exploring intersections
with other fields of sociological study. Shyon Baumann (2006, 2007), for
example, has highlighted commonalities between social movements and the
process by which cultural products (or entire cultural fields) are legitimated.
Similar to social movements, fields of cultural production require opportunity space, resource mobilization, and a legitimating ideology to elevate the
status of their offerings. Baumann (2007) showed how typical POC factors
such as technology (e.g., advent of television) and changing organizational
arrangements (e.g., shift from studio to project-based production) provided
the necessary conditions and resources for Hollywood films to gain symbolic
status. The most distinctive contribution of Baumann’s work, however, is
his focus on the legitimating ideology provided by film critics (i.e., part
of Hirsch’s “institutional subsystem”) who provided an intellectualizing
discourse that helped frame films as works of art. In a different way, Larry
Isaac (2009, 2012) demonstrates how social movement fields can profoundly
influence fields of cultural production. Specifically, he looks at how contention over the labor movement in the United States led to the emergence
of a new fiction subgenre—the “labor problem” novel—where movement
and countermovement conflicts were waged on the pages of literary fiction.
In this way, he shows how social movement scholarship can enhance our
understanding of cultural production as well as how collective action can
produce cultural consequences.
Finally, considerable work has recently focused on a variety of issues
related to classification processes in the POC. A prominent example is
research that stems from the organizational ecology perspective to address

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the impact of multiple category membership on various market outcomes
(for a review, see Hannan, 2010). In the field of film, studies by Greta Hsu
and colleagues (e.g., Hsu, Hannan, & Koçak, 2009; Hsu, Negro, & Peretti,
2012) have generally shown that spanning genre categories hampers critical
and commercial success, although its negative effects may be mitigated by
contextual factors. For instance, in fields where there is less contrast between
categories (e.g., categories are in flux or less institutionalized), multiple
category membership is less likely to inhibit the favorable reception of
cultural offerings (Kovács & Hannan, 2010). Related research has considered
how a single cultural category emerges and either becomes successfully
institutionalized (e.g., Khaire & Wadhwani, 2010 on modern Indian art) or
fails to do so (e.g., Boone, Declerck, Rao, & van den Buys, 2012 on modernistic music in Brussels). By contrast, Jennifer Lena (2012) documents the
trajectories of dozens of music genres and reveals common patterns in the
processes by which such categories emerge and change over time. Her work
offers a theoretical lens for seeing the relationship between communities and
cultural classifications that can be readily applied to other fields of symbolic
production.
The foregoing examples are intended to give a brief snapshot of
cutting-edge work and current directions in POC research rather than
a comprehensive overview of all the innovative scholarship in this thriving
field. It is worth noting, however, that many of the studies included here
address common criticisms that have been leveled at the POC perspective
over the years (see Peterson & Anand, 2004). In particular, POC has been
accused of overlooking the influence of cultural consumers, but Rossman
(2012) shows how influential fans can be in shaping radio airplay in the
case of the Dixie Chicks controversy. Likewise, although POC scholarship
is not generally aimed at inferring meaning (a criticism of the perspective),
the work of Baumann (2006, 2007) and Isaac (2009, 2012) offers insight into
the interpretation of meaning across space and time. Finally, the argument
that the POC perspective downplays issues of power and inequality does
not apply to Mears’ (2011) account of how production processes in fashion
reproduce racial and gender inequalities or to Lena’s (2012) discussion of
how genre classifications have concrete consequences in the distribution of
power and resources.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
Research in the POC tradition continues to thrive and remaining issues
promise to invigorate the POC agenda for the foreseeable future. While there
are many ways in which scholarship on cultural production can continue
to progress, POC-inspired work also has the opportunity to contribute

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to fundamental sociological issues related to social fields, networks, the
sociology of markets, and processes of classification, valuation, and evaluation. In this section, we offer suggestions for ongoing work inspired by POC
questions and insights.
As has been noted elsewhere (e.g., Peterson & Anand, 2004), one opportunity for moving POC scholarship forward is to direct more attention to the
broader social-structural context in which the “six facets” operate. Perhaps
this oversight is partly due to a desire to establish distance from the reflection theories that prevailed before the POC perspective emerged, which
assumed that structural factors determined cultural production. However,
contemporary scholars generally see culture as more of a fragmented
pastiche than a “seamless web” (DiMaggio, 1997) and envision a complex,
context-dependent relationship between culture and social structure rather
than a one-to-one correspondence. Thus, attention to the societal level has
the potential to illuminate the contingent and interdependent relationships
between structural factors, cultural industries, classification systems, and
the six facets of the POC perspective. A more practical obstacle to such
efforts is that most studies look at a single institutional setting and focus
on one (or a few) POC variables. Indeed, Peterson’s (1990) analysis of the
advent of rock music, discussed earlier, is somewhat rare as an example
of work that examines all six facets of the POC model in the same study
(see also Bourdieu, 1993; Crane, 1992). While practical and methodological
challenges confront efforts at societal-level analyses of the type needed,
such work has the potential to not only contribute to scholarship on cultural
production but more broadly to our understanding of social fields and their
relationships to one another (see Fligstein & McAdam, 2012).
Research at a macro-sociological level is also lacking from studies of classification in cultural fields. DiMaggio’s (1987) widely cited theory of artistic
classification systems, described earlier, contains many propositions regarding the relationship between key dimensions of such systems (i.e., their level
of differentiation, hierarchy, universality, and boundary strength) and a variety of social structural factors (e.g., level of social heterogeneity and inequality, features of the educational system). Yet as DiMaggio (2009) himself has
acknowledged, this set of propositions has not been formally tested. Again,
such research has the potential to explain variation in classification systems
as well as shed light on the relationship between fields of cultural production
and other social fields. The theoretical propositions in the theory are largely
built on DiMaggio’s (1982) research on the institutionalization of high culture in the United States, but historical and cross-national research can assess
the validity of the theory in other contexts and enhance POC scholarship
(see Janssen & Peterson, 2005). While notable comparative work has been
inspired by DiMaggio’s (1987) theory of artistic classification systems—for

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instance, cross-national research by Janssen, Kuipers, and Verboord (2008) on
trends in the international orientation of arts journalism in elite newspapers
of four countries from 1955 to 2005—it has not fully tested the societal-level
propositions.
To the extent that newspaper coverage of culture and other text-based
sources provide a promising and unobtrusive source of comparative measurement (Peterson, 2005), efforts to advance POC scholarship may well
benefit from the “big data” movement in sociology and cognate fields. A
growing number of sociologists are collaborating with computer scientists
or borrowing from their methods for analyzing large text corpora, such
as DiMaggio, Nag, and Blei (2013) who use topic modeling to examine
the discursive frames regarding government funding of the arts in several
American newspapers over time (see Mohr & Bogdanov, 2013 for additional examples). The approach provides insights into the shifting policy
environment—a classic POC concern—for public arts funding in the United
States, while also considering contextual factors that influence the use of
contrasting frames. Many POC-related questions are not readily answerable
through text analysis and such methods are not without their pitfalls (see
Bail, 2014), but big data approaches are promising and proliferating.
Recent work in the sociology of markets highlights the fundamental role of
classification and evaluation in shaping assessments of quality across diverse
fields (Beckert & Musselin, 2013). The POC focus in creative industries on
gatekeeping and legitimacy processes can offer many insights into how
these mechanisms work to create ideas about symbolic value. Scholarship
that addresses the role of a legitimating ideology (Baumann, 2006, 2007)
for artistic products has inspired considerable work on critical discourse in
cultural fields that is relevant to the construction of quality. In her review of
related lines of inquiry, Lamont (2012) calls for a comparative sociology
of valuation and evaluation to produce cumulative insights into processes
of categorization and legitimation as well as valuation and evaluative
practices. Many POC-inspired scholars are engaged in this agenda, which
has broad sociological relevance.
Returning to the issue of classification, the burgeoning literature on the
topic among POC scholars and organizational ecologists can benefit from
more explicit dialogue between the two approaches. For example, what
ecologists refer to as “categorical contrast” (Kovács & Hannan, 2010) is
closely related to DiMaggio’s (1987) dimensions of differentiation and
boundary strength in artistic classification systems. Future research in this
area could also address issues of universality and hierarchy to provide
better explanations for variation in the impact of ambiguous classification.
In his review of this literature, Hannan (2010) suggests that future work
needs to account for how supply-side (i.e., producer) and demand-side (i.e.,

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audience) systems of classification mutually shape one another rather than
modeling them separately. Drawing on Hirsch’s (1972) model of cultural
industry systems, future research might push this agenda even further
by considering how classification operates at each stage in the production
process, from the creative personnel to the organizational producers to the
institutional intermediaries to the audience.
The study of social networks has long been associated with work in the POC
tradition given its close association to organizational and economic sociology. Much of this work has focused on the impact of such networks on the
careers of creative workers (e.g., Rossman, Esparza, & Bonacich, 2010). Examining the social networks of gatekeepers holds promise for understanding
their selection strategies in cultural markets. Foster, Borgatti, and Jones (2011)
demonstrate how networks among nightclub talent buyers in Boston operate in different niches of the market based on divergent cultural, economic,
and cognitive mechanisms. Drawing on relational and network governance
theories, such work not only contributes to classic POC questions about organizational boundary spanners and how they deal with uncertain markets but
also responds to Fligstein and McAdam’s (2012) call to study the “internal
governance units” in social fields that serve to maintain the existing structure of the field. POC scholars are well positioned to answer the call for this
type of research. Fortunately, the conceptual and methodological diversity
that characterizes POC research promises to keep it a vibrant area of inquiry
for years to come.
REFERENCES
Bail, C. (2014). The cultural environment: Measuring culture with big data. Theory
and Society, 43. doi:10.1007/s11186-014-9216-5
Baumann, S. (2006). A general theory of artistic legitimation: How art worlds are like
social movements. Poetics, 35(1), 47–65.
Baumann, S. (2007). Hollywood highbrow: From entertainment to art. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Beckert, J., & Musselin, C. (Eds.) (2013). Constructing quality: The classification of goods
in markets. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Bielby, W. T., & Bielby, D. D. (1994). All hits are flukes: Institutionalized decision
making and the rhetoric of network prime-time program development. The American Journal of Sociology, 99(5), 1287–1313.
Boone, C., Declerck, C. H., Rao, H., & van den Buys, K. (2012). Out of tune: The rise
and fall of modernistic music in Brussels, 1919–1939. Poetics, 40(1), 44–66.
Bourdieu, P. (1993). The field of cultural production. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Crane, D. (1992). The production of culture: Media and the urban arts. Newbury Park,
CA: SAGE Publications.

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DiMaggio, P. (1982). Cultural entrepreneurship in nineteenth-century Boston: The
creation of an organizational base for high culture. Media, Culture & Society, 4,
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VAUGHN SCHMUTZ SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Vaughn Schmutz is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at UNC Charlotte.
His research focuses on processes of classification, evaluation, and consecration in various cultural fields.
Website: http://clas-pages.uncc.edu/vaughn-schmutz/
CANDACE N. MILLER SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Candace N. Miller has an MA in sociology from the University of North
Carolina at Charlotte and is currently a PhD student in the Department of
Sociology at the University of Virginia. Her research interests are cultural
sociology, race and ethnicity, and stratification.

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