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Social forces and decision‐making by gatekeepers in arts organizations
Author(s) -
Kordsmeier Gregory T.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
sociology compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.782
H-Index - 31
ISSN - 1751-9020
DOI - 10.1111/soc4.12594
Subject(s) - embeddedness , the arts , sociology , perspective (graphical) , affect (linguistics) , perception , public relations , work (physics) , social force , political science , social science , epistemology , law , visual arts , philosophy , communication , politics , engineering , mechanical engineering , art
Gatekeepers in arts organizations have an important role to play in determining which artistic works the public gets to experience. Performing arts organizations provide a good example of how these decisions made by gatekeepers necessarily delimit the art that the audiences will experience. This article catalogs the social forces that influence individual decision‐makers. Individual level forces like social background, embeddedness in social networks, and perceptions of the organization and organizational level forces like organizational structure, funding, and size all affect what they ultimately produce. This, in turn, allows us to better understand the work these companies produce form a sociological perspective.