Towards sociology from the arts: An epistemological turn

Abstract Over the past two decades, Howard Becker's Art Worlds and Pierre Bourdieu's The Rules of Art were guidelines for the dominant paradigms in sociology of art. Nevertheless, according to Bourdieu, sociology and art do not make a good match. To overcome this dilemma, the French sociologist Nathalie Heinich proposed a “sociology from art,” based on the uniqueness of artists and their works, but she neglected artworks as sociological subject. A realistic and persistent criticism against sociology from the arts claims that artworks are fictions created by artists, therefore epistemologically unacceptable as social realities. Is it possible the making of sociology from artworks? Through theoretical review and using the example of literature, I will argue in this paper that artworks are important heuristic resources and a legitimate subject of sociological research.