The University IUAV in Venice and the EPOCA - Centre of Economics and Advanced Cultural Policy Research – IUAV University, Venice, in cooperation with the Research Network for the Sociology of Culture and the Research Network for the Sociology of the Arts of the ESA - European Sociological Association is organizing the conference "Arts, Culture and the Public Sphere: Expressive and Instrumental Values in Economic and Sociological Perspective".

The conference also represents the 5th ESA Sociology of the Arts Research Network mid-term conference and the 2nd ESA Sociology of Culture Research Network mid-term conference, and it will be the first opportunity to have three European networks meeting around a common theme in Venice from 4 to 8 November 2008.



Arts and culture can no longer be considered uncritically as vehicles merely related to a ‘civilizing mission’ or to ‘economic development’. In the beginning, Social Sciences and Economic Studies identified the social context of the realms of art and culture, measured their impact and evaluated their management. Later, processes of expanding democratization exposed these realms to the criticism of the public sphere. Consequentely, arts and culture became contended fields of social and economic contestation.
Beneth the increasing examination of these realms, rests the growing international and trans-national circulation of people, capital, and culture, different forces that have inspired individuals and groups to challenge well-established authorities, mentalities and semantic codes and socio-economic development models. These processes turned the artistic and cultural fields in a lively crossroads for trans-disciplinary research, spanning areas of inquiry once viewed as unrelated. Following the main theme of the conference, we will investigate how arts and culture became contest ed grounds involving multiple social and economic dimensions of contemporary societies.



The conference will be the first opportunity to have three European networks - the two Research Networks of the European Sociological Association, ‘Sociology of Arts’ and ‘Sociology of Culture’, and the network ‘Economics and Planning of Arts and Culture’ - meeting around a common theme. We therefore encourage strongly interdisciplinary papers, and we propose a focus on expressive and instrumental values with the aim of building a special platform for interdisciplinary exchange and debate, particularly between the economic perspective and the sociological one.