Table Of ContentThe Social Impact of the Arts
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Also available by Oliver Bennett
CULTURAL PESSIMISM: Narratives of Decline in the Postmodern World
INTELLECTUALS AND CULTURAL POLICY (co-editor with Jeremy Ahearne)
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The Social Impact
of the Arts
An Intellectual History
Eleonora Belfiore and Oliver Bennett
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© Eleonora Belfiore and Oliver Bennett 2008
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and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2008 by
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ISBN-13: 978–0–230–57255–3 hardback
ISBN-10: 0–230–57255–3 hardback
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Belfiore, Eleonora, 1975–
The social impact of the arts : an intellectual history / Eleonora
Belfiore and Oliver Bennett.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–230–57255–3 (alk. paper)
1. Arts and society. 2. Intellectual life—History. I. Bennett,
Oliver. II. Title.
NX180.S6B43 2008
700.190309—dc22 2008016164
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham and Eastbourne
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Contents
Foreword vii
Acknowledgements viii
Introduction 1
1 Towards a New Approach to Researching the
Social Impacts of the Arts 13
Defining the terms of the debate 16
On the pitfalls of ‘Eurocentrism’ 25
On the distinction between ‘high’
and ‘low’ culture 32
Identifying categories of ‘functions’ of the arts 35
2 Corruption and Distraction 40
Metaphysical arguments 41
Epistemological arguments 42
Psychological arguments 53
3 Catharsis 79
Moralistic/didactic catharsis 81
Emotional fortitude 83
Moderation 84
Emotional release 85
Intellectual catharsis 88
Dramatic or structural catharsis 90
4 Personal Well-Being 92
Pleasure and enjoyment 92
Relief from ‘will’ 93
In work and in leisure 96
Fulfilled time 97
Art as ‘experience’ 98
Art as play 99
Evolutionary significance 100
Art therapy 102
v
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vi Contents
5 Education and Self-Development 107
The influence of Horace 109
Renaissance elaborations 111
Bildung 115
Modern elaborations 120
6 Moral Improvement and Civilisation 124
Aristotle and Horace 124
French Enlightenment 127
Kant 129
Romanticism 130
Matthew Arnold 134
F. R. Leavis 137
The arts and colonialism 141
7 Political Instrument 146
Fascism and Nazism 148
‘Governmentalisation of culture’ 151
The ‘committed’ novel 155
Political theatre 161
8 Social Stratification and Identity Construction 165
9 A utonomy of the Arts and Rejection
of Instrumentality 176
The significance of Kant 178
Nineteenth-century aestheticism 182
Twentieth-century elaborations 184
Conclusion 191
Notes 196
References 215
Index 235
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Foreword
This book offers an intellectual history of claims made over time for the
value, function and impact of the arts. Drawing on a wide range of liter-
ary, philosophical and political texts, from Classical Greece to the
present day, it identifies and explores both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ tra-
ditions of thinking about the arts. With chapters on corruption, cathar-
sis, education and ‘art for art’s sake’, as well as a number of other key
themes, the book examines the many different ways in which the value
of the arts have been articulated. It suggests that an understanding of
how certain ideas have evolved over time into commonplace beliefs is
essential to any serious investigation of the place of the arts in modern
societies. At the same time, it attempts to reconnect contemporary
policy debates with a complex intellectual history, from which it is
argued that these debates have become detached.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to express our gratitude to the Arts and Humanities and
Research Council (AHRC) and Arts Council England (ACE) for co-f unding
the Fellowship that has made this research possible. We are also grateful
for the support, encouragement and constructive feedback of the staff
and research students at the Centre for Cultural Policy Studies at the
University of Warwick. Many thanks go also to the members of our
Advisory Group for their insights and advice: Catherine Bunting (ACE),
Lisa Hill (AHRC), Professor Jim Davis (University of Warwick),
Dr Jonathan Vickery (University of Warwick), Dr Jeremy Ahearne
(University of Warwick), Dr Sheila Galloway (University of Warwick),
Professor Robert Lindley (University of Warwick), Dr Jonothan Neelands
(University of Warwick), Professor Sara Selwood (City University).
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Introduction
In most parts of the world, the arts1 are subject to the attentions of a
large number of social institutions. They are taught in schools, where
their study and practice are seen as a desirable, if not essential, part of a
child’s education. They form part of the school curriculum and are
deemed suitable subjects for examination and qualifications. They are
often assigned great importance by middle-class parents, who encour-
age their children to read serious novels, take up musical instruments or
enrol in out-of-school drama and dance classes.
At university level, students worldwide and on a vast scale study
novels, poems, paintings and artistic performances of all kinds. In Japan,
for example, the number of graduates in arts and humanities subjects
rose from 22,523 in 1957 to 163,928 in 2005; in Britain, from 26,845 to
97,465; and in France, from 3242 to 82,878.2 Academics are employed to
teach these students, usually with the support of government funds, and
to add to the ever-growing body of arts research. New artists and per-
formers pour out of the world’s training schools each year. The art critic,
Suzi Gablik, once calculated that in the United States alone the educa-
tional system produced as many graduate artists every five years as there
were people in fifteenth-century Florence (1984, 100).
Most nations in the world now have government departments that
promote and support the arts. Many of them also have Arts Councils,
which have either been given the role of distributing government funds
to the arts or of advising on how it should be done. According to the
International Federation of Arts Councils and Cultural Agencies
(IFACCA 2007), which identified 116 national arts funding bodies to
invite to its inaugural meeting in December 2000, there has been ‘an
explosion of council-like or foundation-like agencies [...] in poor as well
as wealthy nations’.
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