Sarah Thornton
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Sarah Thornton is a writer and sociologist of culture.[1] Her early work was about clubs,raves, and cultural hierarchies. Thornton has authored and edited several works about subcultures. She now writes principally about art and the art market. Thornton has published a book about art's subcultural spheres titled Seven Days in the Art World.
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[edit] Life and work
Sarah Thornton was born in Canada and currently resides in London. Her education comprises a BA in the History of Art from Concordia University, Montreal, and a PhD in the Sociology of Music from Strathclyde University,Glasgow.[2] Her academic posts have included a full-time lecturership at the University of Sussex, and a period as Visiting Research Fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London.
[edit] Publications
Club Cultures analyses the "hipness" of British rave culture and coins the term, "subcultural capital," an adaption of Pierre Bourdieu's influential concept as outlined in many works including Distinction. The study responds to earlier works such as Dick Hebdige's Subculture: The Meaning of Style. In contrast to Hebidge's analysis of British punk subculture—typical of the now-defunct Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham, which argued that youth subcultural aesthetics rise out of calculated stylistic subversion of dominant societal norms—Thornton instead posits that youth subcultures are "taste cultures" with shared media consumption that compete for distinctions of different kinds.[3] She said:
Local micro-media like flyers and listings are means by which club organizers bring the crowd together. Niche media like the music press construct subcultures as much as they document them. National mass media, such as tabloids, develop youth movements as much as they distort them. Contrary to youth subcultural ideologies, "subcultures" do not germinate from a seed and grow by force of their own energy into mysterious ‘movements’ only to be belatedly digested by the media. Rather, media and other culture industries are there and effective right from the start. They are central to process of subcultural formation.[4]
She suggests that these alternative social realities, rather than entirely re-inventing a system free from class hierarchies united under a particular style (as Hebdige proposes), "duplicate structures of exclusion and stratification found elsewhere."[5]
Thornton co-edited the first edition of The Subcultures Reader with Ken Gelder.
Thornton writes about the contemporary art market and art world for many publications including The Art Newspaper,[6] Artforum.com,[7] The New Yorker,[8] The Telegraph,[9] The Guardian,[10] and The New Statesman.[11]
Her book Seven Days in the Art World was published in 2008. It consists of seven day-in-the-life case studies: an auction (Christie's New York); an art-school seminar (California Institute of the Arts); an art fair (Basel); an art prize (the Turner); an art magazine (Artforum); a studio visit (that of Japanese art star Takashi Murakami); and the Venice Biennale.[12] This book is published in English and the following other languages: Dutch,[13] French,[14] German,[15] Italian,[16] and Spanish.[17]
[edit] Reception
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Her book Club Cultures: Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital is described by Stuart Hall and Tony Jefferson in Resistance Through Rituals as "theoretically innovative" and "conceptually adventurous."[18]
About Seven Days in the Art World, András Szántó writes: “Underneath [the book's] glossy surface lurks a sociologist’s concern for institutional narratives as well as the ethnographer’s conviction that entire social structures can be apprehended in seemingly frivolous patterns of speech or dress.”[19]
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ 'Website of Sarah Thornton'. Retrieved 28 June 2009.
- ^ McGlone, Jackie. (30 September 2008). 'Sarah Thornton-- Swimming in shark-infested waters'. The Scotsman. Retrieved 28 June 2009.
- ^ Lawrence, Tim. (Winter, 2001). Social and popular dance. Dance Research Journal, Vol. 33, No. 2, p. 139.
- ^ Thornton, Sarah. (1996). Club Cultures : Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital. Hanover: University Press of New England, p. 117.
- ^ Thornton, Sarah. (1996). Club Cultures : Music, Media, and Subcultural Capital. Hanover : University Press of New England, p. 115.
- ^ Thornton, Sarah. (October 2008). 'In and out of love with Damien Hirst'. The Art Newspaper. Retrieved 28 June 2009.
- ^ Thornton, Sarah. (10 February 2006). 'Happy as Larry'. Artforum.com. Retrieved 28 June 2009.
- ^ Thornton, Sarah. (19 March 2007). 'Letter from London: Reality Art Show'. The New Yorker. Retrieved 28 June 2009.
- ^ Thornton, Sarah. (3 October 2008). 'Is art the new gold?'. The Telegraph. Retrieved 28 June 2009.
- ^ Thornton, Sarah. (16 October 2008). 'If the work is free, is it art?'. The Guardian. Retrieved 28 June 2009.
- ^ Thornton, Sarah. (23 October 2008). 'Bye-bye to bling for billionaires'. New Statesman. Retrieved 28 June 2009.
- ^ Thornton, Sarah. (2008). 'Seven Days in the Art World'. WW Norton (publisher).
- ^ Thornton, Sarah. 'Art: Achter de schermen van de kunstwereld'. De Bezige Bij (publisher). Retrieved 28 June 2009.
- ^ Thornton, Sarah. (2009). 'Sept Jours dans le Monde de l'Art'. Editions Autrement (publisher). Retrieved 28 June 2009.
- ^ Thornton, Sarah. Sieben Tage in der Kunstwelt. S. Fischer Verlag (publisher).
- ^ Thornton, Sarah. 'Il Giro del Mondo dell'Arte in Sette Giorni'. Feltrinelli (publisher). Retrieved 28 June 2009.
- ^ Thornton, Sarah. (2009). 'Siete Días en el Mundo del Arte'. Edhasa (publisher). Retrieved 28 June 2009.
- ^ Hall, Stuart and Jefferson, Tony (Eds). (2006). Resistance Through Rituals (2nd ed.). Routledge: London, pp. xix-xx.
- ^ Szántó, András. (29 October 2008). 'Message in a bottle'. Art World Salon. Retrieved 28 June 2009.
