Culture as a Vocation : Preface to the English edition Routledge, CRESC series (forthcoming). Which social factors are involved in making educational and occupational choices? How do these individual choices reveal the adjustment of social reproduction strategies to the new realities of higher education and employment markets in the neoliberal era? This book addresses these questions by exploring vocational attitudes towards occupations in the cultural field. As culture serves as a vehicle for the expression of ‘principles of vision and division’ of social space – albeit sometimes sublimated or negated – and of the ways in which to define one’s role in that space (Bourdieu 1984), the choice of pursuing a cultural occupation is a particularly telling reflection of aesthetic, ethical and political preferences defining relationships to the social world. In this book I consider cultural vocations both as a topic in its own right and as a starting point to address broader sociological issues. While workers in the cultural sector hold a wide range of positions and social statuses, from unskilled employees to craftspeople, professional and managers (Hesmondhalgh and Baker 2010: 67), cultural occupations strictly speaking are typically held by members of educated fractions of the middle and upper-middle classes, which have been a major locus of social change over the last decades (on the UK see Savage et al. 1992, Bennett et al. 2009: 177ff.) They epitomize the changing role of cultural intermediaries, which has recently been revisited in studies on specific sectors and national contexts (Smith Maguire and Matthews 2012, Solaroli 2014, Jeanpierre and Roueff 2014, Lizé Naudier and Sofio 2014). Here I focus on the cultural intermediaries who have been labeled ‘cultural managers’ or ‘arts managers’ since the mid-1960s. Cultural managers are ‘intermediaries’ in three senses: in terms of their position in social space, as they are located between the middle and upper classes; in terms of their activity, which operates across the relations between various social fields (in particular art and culture, the political field, non-profit and for-profit economic fields, bureaucracy, the media); and in terms of the intermediation function they fulfill, by connecting cultural projects and their funders, events to their public, and artworks to their prospective buyers. These three levels of intermediateness intersect and interact one with another. Cultural managers must grapple with certain contradictions and make compromises, most notably when it comes to the traditional opposition between art and money. This essential feature of their work relates to structuring factors which define their positions in social space: the relations between economic and cultural capital. In other words, their social status reflects the dilemmas they face, the interactions between the social universes they cross, and the mediation work they accomplish. Starting with the questions of educational and occupational choices and of reproduction strategies, the analysis presented in Culture as a Vocation mostly draws on empirical research focused on the cultural sector, and more precisely on cultural managers, in France. A few salient features of the French case therefore need to be recalled to assess the possible generalization of my findings and to compare them with other cases (the latter approach being the one I prefer). At this stage I will not get into the questions of cultural employment, which are addressed in the beginning of the first chapter, nor will I examine the impact of the long-term deterioration of socio-economic conditions, which I elaborate upon in several chapters, in particular by revisiting the question of ‘downclassing’ (the term used by Bourdieu to refer to the inability of individuals to reach social positions equivalent to their parents – social downclassing – and/or matching their academic achievements – educational downclassing). This preface will merely outline aspects of the educational system and of the social organization of the cultural field that may not necessarily be entirely specific to the French case, but in any case combine in ways that influence the choice of pursuing cultural occupations. In France, the vast majority of children are educated in free state-funded primary schools and high schools (87%). Student can pick a vocational stream at high school level, but most of them go into one of the three national streams of general education: literature and languages; economic and social sciences; mathematics and natural sciences. Since the mid-1990s the proportion of an age cohort obtaining the national high school degree (baccalauréat) has stabilized at around 65%. 80% of baccalauréat holders go on to pursue higher education, for the majority in universities, with around 40% of an age cohort obtain a higher education degree. French universities are state-funded, do not select students on entrance (except for a minority of programs), and charge low tuition fees. This distinguishes the French educational system from those which sort and select students more systematically at an early stage (junior high school) and/or at entrance to universities. In practice, massive access to higher education does not necessarily translate into democratization. Despite considerable transformations in the system, the social reproduction processes unveiled by Bourdieu and Passeron in the 1960s still operate: social class inequalities of access remain decisive, and the hierarchies of courses and diplomas still reinforce these inequalities much in the way that they did at the time of The Inheritors (Bourdieu and Passeron 1979). If massification does not equal democratization, it does result in the production of more numerous graduates in search of a career choice, which is one of the factors steering vocational choices towards cultural occupations, especially in the case of humanities students. The most prominent and stable features of the French cultural field and of the attitudes toward culture associated with it are well known by international social scientists, especially thanks to the worldwide dissemination of Bourdieu’s Distinction. The cultural system is highly centralized: the main institutions and instances of consecration are found in Paris. This is connected with the domination of the model of the cultured fractions of the higher (Parisian) bourgeoisie – highbrow culture plays a very important role in marking social and symbolic boundaries – and an inclination towards the sacralization of culture. While over the decades countless studies in cultural sociology have nuanced and refined these observations, they remain relevant in accounting for the social distribution of tastes and cultural practices in France (Coulangeon 2013) in ways that differ from other national traditions, such as the ‘loosely bounded culture’ of the USA (Lamont 1992). In addition to these aspects, it is worth noting a complementary French specificity pertaining to the role of state cultural policy. As we will see, cultural policy has played a key role in the professionalization of cultural managers, and in the rise of specialized training programs in cultural management across various national and institutional settings, from organizations at the European level to federal support for the arts in the USA. This has also been the case in France, where cultural policy has had other and more specific impacts on the choice of pursuing occupations in the cultural sector. French national and local cultural policy has created a cultural economy that is largely dependent on public budgets. This takes the form of a direct dependence on numerous public cultural institutions (libraries, theaters, museums and others), and an indirect dependence on subsidies for artists or cultural projects, or loans for film production (avance sur recettes). This particular economy has had a direct impact on cultural employment, whose rise from the 1960s onwards is in large part due to public subsidies. The increase in the public cultural budget, especially during the 1980s, has resulted in the recruitment of civil servants in cultural institutions and services, in new paid positions opening up in the non-profit sector, and in more opportunities for employment in the for-profit private cultural sector. In addition to cultural policy strictly speaking, the unemployment benefits system for workers in the performing arts and the film industry (intermittents du spectacle) has been an important factor in the growth of the cultural labor market (Menger 2005a). Cultural policy has not only boosted cultural employment and brought about a new division of cultural labor leading to the professionalization of cultural managers. It has also promoted cultural occupations in the preferences and anticipations of newcomers on the labor market. It has mapped out the boundaries of cultural management as a professional sector, which in France is more closely linked to the public and state-subsidized sectors, and less to the arts market or the ‘creative industries’, than it is for instance in the USA or in the UK. Although these trends have been weakened by the stagnation or decline of cultural public budgets in recent years, as well as by the internationalization of curricula and careers and by the dissemination of a more ‘entrepreneurial’ model of cultural worker, they remain notable. While this emphasis on social reproduction strategies and the structure of cultural management as a career choice that are specific to the French case may reduce the empirical generalizability of this study, it does not lessen its broader sociological relevance. My analytical proposals are formulated in such a manner that they can both accurately reflect the empirical case under scrutiny and yield insights that can be applied to other cases and broader issues. In order to move fluidly from empirical discussion to generalization and back, I have included as many points of comparison as possible, following Passeron’s thesis that sociological reasoning is based on assertions that are specific to a certain time and space and disputable in a comparative perspective (Passeron 2013). Several of the trends and questions I discuss are relevant to other professional worlds beyond cultural management; this book addresses them as such whenever possible, especially when it comes to occupations and employment sectors where the question of ‘vocation’ arises in similar ways – namely cases that combine an expectation of non-monetary rewards and the pursuit of moral values or common goods with high levels of cultural capital. My intention, then, is to present my findings on the French case in ways that they can be useful beyond it, drawing comparisons with other national contexts, even if the lack of similar researches often limits them to sketches of what a proper comparison should be. The generalizability of my empirical findings (by definition limited in space and time) should not be confused with that of my sociological results (which must be assessed on the basis of the research questions they help formulating): the processes I observe may display forms specific to my fieldwork, but these processes and the way I analyze them reflect general issues. It is my hope that readers will follow me in this approach by complementing this comparative sociological reasoning with their own knowledge and reflections, and by looking at this book not only as a study of the French case (which it is), but also as a set of proposals to be tested in other contexts (which it aims to be). Smith Maguire and Matthews argue that ‘research on cultural intermediaries has followed two different (although not incompatible) directions: cultural intermediaries as exemplars of the new middle class, involved in the mediation of production and consumption […]; and cultural intermediaries as market actors involved in the qualification of goods, mediating between economy and culture’ (Smith Maguire and Matthews 2012: 551). Nixon and du Gay referred to two roughly similar directions ten years earlier: ‘there is a serious need for more substantive work on cultural intermediary occupations in order to empirically ground claims about both their place in the occupational structure and the role they play in economic and cultural life’ (Nixon and du Gay 2002: 498). Most recent Anglophone research on cultural intermediaries focuses, however, on the functions they fulfill in various markets for symbolic goods. This is what Smith Maguire and Matthews do when they conflate the defining features of cultural intermediaries and the roles they play: framing the qualification of goods; exerting expertise; contributing to the construction of the legitimacy and the value of these goods (Smith Maguire and Matthews 2012). Even though they mention social dispositions and habitus, they neither address the mechanisms of their formation and actualization nor consider the backgrounds and trajectories of cultural intermediaries associated with their dispositions and habitus. In other words, as most Anglophone scholars (this is different in French sociology), they envision cultural intermediaries from the point of view of what they do, rather than from the point of view of what they are (sociologically speaking). As a result, despite frequent references to Bourdieu’s Distinction from which the very notion of cultural intermediaries is borrowed, most Anglophone sociological research on cultural intermediaries contributes to the sociology of the markets of symbolic goods more than to the sociology of stratification and class (Conlin 2014: 2). At odds with the bulk of existing research, then, the research presented in this book essentially pertains to the sociology and stratification and class. My contribution draws on Bourdieu’s framework, but this does not mean I aim to simply reiterate his analyses. While I revisit his notion of the ‘new petite bourgeoisie’, for instance, I reach significantly different conclusions, showing that the access to the loosely defined occupations of cultural intermediaries now requires a high level of educational capital, even for children of the high bourgeoisie, and is increasingly difficult for lower-class children – even achieving ones (Dubois 2014, and 2.2. Higher social backgrounds, 3.3.1. Dreams of social mobility in this volume). While Bourdieu remained fairly general in his sociology of cultural intermediary occupations (Smith Maguire 2014), I examine a specific subset of holders of such occupations. The empirical case of cultural managers offers the theoretical advantage of avoiding the use of the category of cultural intermediaries in a watered-down form – as a ‘descriptive catch-all for seemingly any creative or cultural occupation or institution’ (Smith Maguire and Matthews 2012: 552). Indeed, in addition to dealing with ‘culture’ in the strict sense of the term, cultural managers are cultural intermediaries in three respects (as previously mentioned: their position between social classes and class fractions, their activity at the crossroads of various social fields, and their intermediation function between culture, its publics and supporters). Another criticism of the category of ‘cultural intermediaries’ consists in questioning the ‘newness’ it supposedly accounts for: ‘new’ middle-classes holding ‘new’ positions in expanding occupational sectors (Nixon and du Gay 2002). There would be no point in simply stating that arts and cultural managers are entirely ‘new’ positions. Nonetheless, I do sketch out the historical process of their invention, show their quite recent rise as compared to well-established professions, and account for their expansion in the last decades. But in my view, the question is less about newness in itself than about the features of the positions observed. While they have experienced some of the trends characterizing the establishment of classic professions (the increasing role of specialized training, the formation of professional organizations, the use of a specific jargon, commons references shared via specialized press, books and conferences), positions in cultural management still share many characteristics of other ‘new’ occupations. This professional galaxy remains quite heterogeneous. There has been little standardization of jobs and paths of access, and, as is the case with new positions, the individuals who hold them still have leeway in their definition. The book will show that this is a significant part of what makes these occupations attractive. As Smith Maguire and Matthews note, the social stratification approach to cultural intermediaries is not incompatible with analyzing them as market actors involved in mediation activities. While I do not directly discuss these activities, I conceived this research as a first stage of a research program ultimately designed to include the practices and functions of cultural managers. For instance, the sociology of cultural tastes I propose in chapter four primarily envisions taste as an indicator of position in the social space and of attitudes towards social space. In addition to that, and because individual preferences do matter in the work of cultural managers, my aim is also to ground the analysis of these taste-makers’ professional activities in a sociology of their social dispositions. In my view, in order to fully understand the role cultural managers play in the social organization of culture, as taste-makers, experts, gatekeepers and organizers, we need to look at them as a professional group and in terms of their position in social space. This book is intended as a step towards this research agenda, which will include two comparative facets. The various forms of organization and definition of cultural managers as a professional group shape the structures of national cultural sectors, from the French state-funded arts to the British celebration of ‘creative industries’, and shed light on these structures in their turn. As a complement, the sociology of cultural managers could be approached as a cross-national comparison of class structures. The challenge of these occupations for a social stratification analysis lies in the fact they can both be viewed as a galaxy spanning across several classes, and as a distinct fraction of the upper-middle class. As we will see, the relative indetermination of these positions, the often relatively low level of economic capital associated with them, and the complex socio-professional trajectories frequently including precarious work likens them to the ‘emergent service workers’ of the new UK social class model, but with a higher level of legitimate cultural capital; they also share features of the ‘established middle-class’, but with a lower level of economic capital (Savage et al. 2013: 240-242; 234-236). As for their position in the internal structure of the middle classes, cultural managers could be considered from the point of view of the variations in the balance between the ‘cultured’ and the ‘moneyed’ fractions of these classes which take place between one national society to another (Bennett et al. 2009, Lamont 1992). This book contributes to this research program by offering a sociology of career choices in cultural management as a first stage toward a yet-to-be-written sociology of positions in this field. To do so, I use a sociological reformulation of the common-sense notion of ‘vocation’, which I use as an ideal-type to account for the specificity of these career choices. My analysis of the social structures grounding cultural vocations is also conducive to comparative analysis of national cases, touching on labor markets, higher education systems, class structures and the economies of cultural fields. I focus on the internalization of these structural patterns and on their translation into attitudes and choices, that, especially in the case at hand, individuals come to consider as the expression of their personality. As future cultural managers look for self-fulfillment through work, grapple with the contradictory urges of working on individual ‘projects’ and expanding ‘networks’, combine references to good management with critical attitudes toward finance and capitalism, I was led to consider them as embodiments of ‘the new spirit of capitalism’ (Boltanski and Chiapello 2005). In that sense, this sociological portrait of would-be cultural managers is also a reflection on this new spirit at work. Vincent Dubois, Luvigny, April 24th, 2015 1