Career gatekeeping in cultural fields
- PDF / 672,124 Bytes
- 27 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 91 Downloads / 170 Views
Career gatekeeping in cultural fields Julian Hamann1 · Stefan Beljean2
© Springer Nature Limited 2019
Abstract This paper presents a comparative analysis of career gatekeeping processes in two cultural fields. Drawing on data on appointment procedures in German academia and booking processes in North American stand-up comedy, we compare how gatekeepers in two widely different contexts evaluate and select candidates for established positions in their respective field and validate their decisions. Focusing on three types of gatekeeping practices that have been documented in prior research— typecasting, comparison, and legitimization—our analysis reveals major differences in how gatekeepers perform these practices across our two cases: (1) typecasting based on ascriptive categories versus professional criteria, (2) comparisons that are ad-hoc and holistic versus systematic and guided by performance criteria, and (3) legitimation by means of ritualization versus transparency. We argue that these differences are related to the social and organizational context in which gatekeepers make selection decisions, including differences in the structure of academic and creative careers and the organization of the respective labor markets in which these careers unfold. These findings contribute to scholarship on gatekeeping in cultural fields by providing comparative insights into the work of career gatekeepers and the social organization of career gatekeeping processes. Keywords Gatekeeping · Academia · Comedy · Typecasting · Comparison · Legitimation Cultural fields are competitive arenas for producers of cultural goods. What is at stake is not only the creation of valuable products, but also access to positions which bestow cultural producers with material security and symbolic recognition * Julian Hamann [email protected]‑hannover.de Stefan Beljean [email protected] 1
LCSS Leibniz Center for Science and Society, Leibniz University Hannover, Lange Laube 32, 30159 Hannover, Germany
2
Department of Sociology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA
Vol.:(0123456789)
J. Hamann, S. Beljean
(Bourdieu 1993). A key role in regulating access to such established positions is played by gatekeepers. Gatekeepers are actors who control access to desirable goods and positions in a field, and who thereby have an important impact on careers in cultural fields. Because of the powerful positions they occupy, gatekeepers have received a good amount of attention in scholarship on cultural fields. The bulk of this research has concentrated on the social influences that shape gatekeepers’ decisions (see Godart and Mears 2009; Foster et al. 2011), as well as the consequences of their decisions for the fate of cultural producers and their products (see Bielby and Bielby 1994; Zuckerman et al. 2003). Some scholars have also examined the evaluative practices and decision-making processes through which gatekeeping decisions are produced (see Posselt 2016; Nylander 2014). Irrespective of the analytic focu
Data Loading...
