Bøker av Janet Wolff

A valuable introduction to the central issues in the sociology of the arts, this work draws on sociology, art history, feminism, and literary and media studies, to explain the social nature of the arts, their production, distribution, and reception. This second edition is the result of the author's chapter-by-chapter review and updating, taking into account not only her own re-thinking on these issues but also the work that has been done in cultural studies and the sociology of the arts since the first edition appeared in 1984. Wolff considers changes in sociology, literary studies, and cultural studies, and their implications for the project of the sociology of art: the relevance of post structuralist theory for an understanding of the author/artist; and the current, and perhaps unfounded, rejection of the concept of ideology. The author also assesses the question of cultural politics in relation to debates about postmodernism, as well as the matter of identity politics with regard to gender and ethnicity. Containing a wealth of information about both past and present thinking on the sociology of art, this book will be of particular interest both to students of the arts and students of sociology.

Austerity baby might best be described as an 'oblique memoir'. Janet Wolff's fascinating volume is a family history - but one that is wide-ranging and consistently surprising. The underlying and repeated themes of the book are exile and displacement, life (and death) during the Third Reich, mother-daughter and sibling relationships, the generational transmission of trauma and experience, transatlantic reflections and the struggle for creative expression. Stories mobilised and people encountered in the course of the narrative include: the internment of aliens in Britain during the Second World War; cultural life in Rochester, New York in the 1920s; the social and personal meanings of colour(s); the industrialist and philanthropist Henry Simon of Manchester and his relationship with the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen; the liberal British campaigner and MP of the 1940s Eleanor Rathbone; and reflections on the lives and images of spinsters. The text is supplemented throughout by extensive visual materials - including photographs, paintings and facsimile documents - which illustrate the story while engaging indirectly with the written word.

Early twentieth-century art and art practice in Britain and the United States were, Janet Wolff asserts, marginalized by critics and historians in very similar ways after the rise of post-Cubist modern art. In a masterly book on the sociology of...

This book has been a standard text for cultural studies and the sociology of art since its first appearance in 1981. It provides a clear and useful overview of theories and studies which contribute to the project of a sociology of art, ranging from sociology to art history, literary theory, feminism and media studies.