| dc.description.abstract | When reading Robert Witkin's paper from 20 years ago, I am, first and foremost,
reminded that aesthetics – in even the broadest of definitions – have had a patchy
and, on the whole, disappointing history in sociology. It may therefore be beneficial
for me to provide a relatively broad commentary on the field of aesthetics and
sociology to which Witkin's paper was an early contribution. In my own fields of
interest - the ethnographic study of organisations, work and culture - the aesthetic
orders of everyday life have received rather scant attention from most authors. It is
as if the sociologist were so concerned to stress the mundane, the practical and the
organisational that the aesthetic content and the achievement of aesthetic effects
were relegated to the margins of inquiry. In one way, of course, this is entirely
understandable. The sociologist or anthropologist does not wish to appear in the
guise of amateur critic (although some social theorists, such as Adorno, have made
their reputation through aesthetic judgements embedded in and justified by cultural
commentary). | en_GB |
