Eduardo De La Fuente
Biographic Data
| ID | 91089 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Eduardo De La Fuente |
| GIVEN NAMES | Eduardo |
| FAMILY NAME | De La Fuente |
| SIGNATURE | DE LA FUENTE E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of South Australia |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9129-4969 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 142 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 28 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Cultural sociology and the ‘black box’ of meaning
In this article, I respond to the overview and exegesis of Alexander's sociology provided by Villegas and Watts. I explore their case for the theorist's ‘canonization’ and outline what they see as the major ‘commitments’ of his social theory. As someone who self-defines as a cultural sociologist, I am particularly interested in what the authors term the ‘multidimensionality’ and ‘postpositivism’ of Alexander's thought. However, I also note Villeg…
Imaginative sociology
Combining the personal and academic ‘voice’, this article reflects on the value of serendipitous associations and unplanned images in doing sociological work. One of the central research artefacts discussed is an image generated during an evening of sociability of an urban stairway made from a regionally specific rock known as Sydney sandstone. The accidental nature of the image is used to reflect on a series of issues: to what extent is research…
Surrendering to the Tropics
The central idea in this article is that tropical landscapes are not uniform and that reducing such physical worlds to a set of generic material signifiers—as is the case in tropical tourism discourses—impoverishes place narratives. I base my attempt at increasing the multiplicity of tropical landscapes on the discussion of such landscapes in Lévi-Strauss’s famed Tristes Tropiques. The latter combines approaches not often associated with the anth…
Social theorising as emplacement
In this article, I consider the idea of academic work as ‘emplaced’ activity. I contextualise myself as social theorist and sociologist by considering two parallel processes: my responses over time to Antipodean sociology, and my evolving relationship to landscape, geology and place. I offer exegeses of Beilharz's Imagining the Antipodes , Thinking the Antipodes , and the textbook Sociology: Place, Time and Division ; as well as the writings of n…
Re-enchanting sustainable consumption
Cultural intermediaries play an essential role in shaping the ‘moral textures’ of sustainable consumption. Drawing on Bourdieu and Weber’s cultural sociologies of religious personas, this article analyses how cultural intermediaries deploy different charismatic modalities in the field of fashion to advocate for sustainable consumption. Using illustrative methods and media examples, we illuminate how ‘prophetic’ taste influencers, ‘ascetic’ produc…
Sociology in a new key
The sonic framing of place
In this article we examine the sonic framing of place. Our theoretical approach combines Goffman's microsociology (and its sociology of music/sound studies off-shoots) with an account of sound in the urban atmospheres literature. Drawing on the work of French urban sociologist Jean-Paul Thibaud and associated work on sound in urban environments by the CRESSON research centre, we propose that sound frames activity in particular ways, including by …
Introduction to thinking place
This introduction positions the special issue by highlighting the inherent relationality of place as well as how place is not just an object of analysis but something that shapes thinking, writing and experiences of the world. We reflect on why sociology has found it somewhat more difficult than its social science counterparts to give place the centrality it merits, and discuss whether this reflects a problem with dealing with questions of 'scale…
Framing Atmospheres
In this article, we synthesize Goffman's microsociology with recent developments in fields such as aesthetics, geography, and urban studies labeled 'atmosphere theory.' Our central rationale is if microsociology is to deepen its account of embodiment and the noncognitive it needs a theory of spatialized moods. In the second half, we develop our synthesis with respect to musical atmospheres and conclude by drawing on our own research regarding how…
Living in a Textured World
Sonic Havens
Drawing upon Goffman’s notion of the interaction order we propose that home and homeliness pertain to the degree to which we can control our auditory involvements with the world and with others. What we term “homely listening” concerns the use of music to make oneself feel at home, in some cases, through seclusion and immersion, and, in others, through either the musical ordering of mundane routines or the use of music to engage in sociality with…
After the cultural turn
This article proposes the social sciences consider texture - rather than text − as the important legacy of the 'cultural turn' in the social sciences. The article considers texture in the literal sense of surface-patterns, as well as texture as a metaphor for the 'dynamic' and hard-to-capture qualities of social life. The article draws on the philosopher Stephen C. Pepper and the anthropologist Tim Ingold, the 'practice turn' in organizational st…
Both-And
Um dos dilemas recorrentes na sociologia da arte tem sido como balancear abordagens internalistas e externalistas dos fenômenos estéticos (isto é, explicações estéticas e sociais); ou o que este artigo caracteriza como a necessidade de sair de um modelo "ou arte ou sociedade" para um modelo de lógica "tanto arte quanto sociedade". Nos últimos anos, os dilemas conceituais foram intensificados por uma tendência de o capitalismo se tornar um fenômen…
Why Aesthetic Patterns Matter
This paper argues that an explanation of the role of aesthetic patterning in human action needs to be part of any “qualitative” social theory. It urges the social sciences to move beyond contextualism and to see art as visual, acoustic and other media that lead to heightened sensory perception and the coordination of feelings through symbols. The article surveys the argument that art provides a basic model of how the self learns to interact with …
Profane' rather than 'secular
Daniel Bell's writings are often cast as offering a contemporary jeremiad regarding the corrosive effects of culture upon the modern economic and social order. In this paper, I take the opposite approach and argue that Bell is a sensitive cultural analyst who is claiming that human experience ought not to be deprived of culture - understood as symbol and myth that tap into the felt need for human transcendence. Bell could therefore be seen as a s…
Altered states
The concept of mobility seems to be sweeping across the humanities and social sciences. We argue that the close relationship between communication and movement is to some extent independent of specific communication technologies. We demonstrate this through the particular ‘knottings’ of music and physical/imaginative movement. We also suggest that in order to do justice to the complex entanglements of communication and movement, it would pay to r…
Philosophical and Cultural Theories of Music
Music is a ubiquitous and hard to grasp cultural form. It is semiotically and aesthetically open-ended; yet even a 'non-musical' person is able to follow the basics of rhythmic structure and flow. Its presence in social and cultural life is further complicated by its multiple forms of existence - as both 'live' and 'technologically mediated', as self-referential language and as accompaniment to text, dance and other cultural expressions. This col…
Philosophical and cultural theories of music
Music is a ubiquitous and hard to grasp cultural form. It is semiotically and aesthetically open-ended; yet even a 'non-musical' person is able to follow the basics of rhythmic structure and flow. Its presence in social and cultural life is further complicated by its multiple forms of existence-- as both 'live' and 'technologically mediated', as self-referential language and as accompaniment to text, dance and other cultural expressions. This col…
Philosophical and Cultural Theories of Music
Twentieth Century Music and the Question of Modernity
In the first decade of the twentieth-century, many composers rejected the principles of tonality and regular beat. This signaled a dramatic challenge to the rationalist and linear conceptions of music that had existed in the West since the Renaissance. The 'break with tonality', Neo-Classicism, serialism, chance, minimalism and the return of the 'sacred' in music, are explored in this book for what they tell us about the condition of modernity. M…
The Artwork Made Me Do It
The sociology of art has experienced a significant revival during the last three decades. However, in the first instance, this renewed interest was dominated by the 'production of culture' perspective and was heavily focused on contextual factors such as the social organization of artistic markets and careers, and displays of 'cultural capital' through consumption of the arts. In this article, I outline a new mode of approaching art sociologicall…
In Defence of Theoretical and Methodological Pluralism in the Sociology of Art
This article welcomes Born's proposal that the sociology of art learn from 'adjacent fields' that can 'augment the sociological repertoire'. It agrees especially that sociologists can learn much from the anthropology of art and material culture studies. However, it challenges Born's claim that the sociology of art has 'seen little progress in recent years' and thus questions certain aspects of her proposal for a 'post-Bourdieuian theory of cultur…
Cultural sociology in the Australian context
[Extract] This 'Cultural Sociology' special issue of the Journal of Sociology comes at a significant time in the development of cultural sociological analysis. Culture sections are thriving within North American, British and European sociological associations and the Cultural Sociology Group has established itself as amongst the most popular thematic sections in The Australian Sociological Association. Culture is also the subject of a burgeoning …
The Art of Social Forms and the Social Forms of Art
This article examines the sociology-aesthetics nexus in Georg Simmel's thought. The article suggests that it is useful to divide Simmel's linking of sociology and aesthetics into three distinct types of propositions: (1) claims regarding the parallels between art and social form (the 'art of social forms'); (2) statements regarding principles of sociological ordering in art and aesthetic objects (the 'social forms of art'); and (3) analytical pro…
On the Promise of a Sociological Aesthetics
This article outlines the contribution of a sociological aesthetics to explaining social life. The central argument is that aesthetic phenomena are neither incidental nor epiphenomenal to social structure; rather the social bond itself possesses an aesthetic dimension. The two central thinkers discussed are Georg Simmel and Michel Maffesoli. The first pioneered a sociology grounded in aesthetics through the study of forms of sociation where, as s…
The `New Sociology of Art
This article maps recent developments in social science writing about the arts and argues for seeing this work in terms of the label the `new sociology of art'. It considers four major lines of re-assessment being carried out by sociologists studying the arts: firstly, a reconsideration of the relationship between sociological and other disciplinary approaches to art; secondly, the possibility of an art-sociology as against a sociology of art; th…
After the cultural turn
This article proposes the social sciences consider texture - rather than text − as the important legacy of the 'cultural turn' in the social sciences. The article considers texture in the literal sense of surface-patterns, as well as texture as a metaphor for the 'dynamic' and hard-to-capture qualities of social life. The article draws on the philosopher Stephen C. Pepper and the anthropologist Tim Ingold, the 'practice turn' in organizational st…
The Artwork Made Me Do It
The sociology of art has experienced a significant revival during the last three decades. However, in the first instance, this renewed interest was dominated by the 'production of culture' perspective and was heavily focused on contextual factors such as the social organization of artistic markets and careers, and displays of 'cultural capital' through consumption of the arts. In this article, I outline a new mode of approaching art sociologicall…
On the Promise of a Sociological Aesthetics
This article outlines the contribution of a sociological aesthetics to explaining social life. The central argument is that aesthetic phenomena are neither incidental nor epiphenomenal to social structure; rather the social bond itself possesses an aesthetic dimension. The two central thinkers discussed are Georg Simmel and Michel Maffesoli. The first pioneered a sociology grounded in aesthetics through the study of forms of sociation where, as s…
Framing Atmospheres
In this article, we synthesize Goffman's microsociology with recent developments in fields such as aesthetics, geography, and urban studies labeled 'atmosphere theory.' Our central rationale is if microsociology is to deepen its account of embodiment and the noncognitive it needs a theory of spatialized moods. In the second half, we develop our synthesis with respect to musical atmospheres and conclude by drawing on our own research regarding how…
The Art of Social Forms and the Social Forms of Art
This article examines the sociology-aesthetics nexus in Georg Simmel's thought. The article suggests that it is useful to divide Simmel's linking of sociology and aesthetics into three distinct types of propositions: (1) claims regarding the parallels between art and social form (the 'art of social forms'); (2) statements regarding principles of sociological ordering in art and aesthetic objects (the 'social forms of art'); and (3) analytical pro…
In Defence of Theoretical and Methodological Pluralism in the Sociology of Art
This article welcomes Born's proposal that the sociology of art learn from 'adjacent fields' that can 'augment the sociological repertoire'. It agrees especially that sociologists can learn much from the anthropology of art and material culture studies. However, it challenges Born's claim that the sociology of art has 'seen little progress in recent years' and thus questions certain aspects of her proposal for a 'post-Bourdieuian theory of cultur…
Sonic Havens
Drawing upon Goffman’s notion of the interaction order we propose that home and homeliness pertain to the degree to which we can control our auditory involvements with the world and with others. What we term “homely listening” concerns the use of music to make oneself feel at home, in some cases, through seclusion and immersion, and, in others, through either the musical ordering of mundane routines or the use of music to engage in sociality with…
Both-And
Um dos dilemas recorrentes na sociologia da arte tem sido como balancear abordagens internalistas e externalistas dos fenômenos estéticos (isto é, explicações estéticas e sociais); ou o que este artigo caracteriza como a necessidade de sair de um modelo "ou arte ou sociedade" para um modelo de lógica "tanto arte quanto sociedade". Nos últimos anos, os dilemas conceituais foram intensificados por uma tendência de o capitalismo se tornar um fenômen…
Why Aesthetic Patterns Matter
This paper argues that an explanation of the role of aesthetic patterning in human action needs to be part of any “qualitative” social theory. It urges the social sciences to move beyond contextualism and to see art as visual, acoustic and other media that lead to heightened sensory perception and the coordination of feelings through symbols. The article surveys the argument that art provides a basic model of how the self learns to interact with …
The place of culture in sociology
Despite intense debate regarding the 'cultural turn', there has been very little framing of these intellectual conflicts in terms of the sociology of ideas or knowledge. Following Gouldner, the article proposes that sociology has oscillated between two major styles of thought: Classicism and Romanticism. The latter stimulated an interest in culture amongst social scientists and also led to an emphasis on the cultural properties of social life. Ye…
Max Weber and Charles Ives
At first glance, the figure of the Puritan analysed by Max Weber seems to be in direct tension with the ethos of the modern artist. But the latter resembled the former, in two important respects: in his sense of mission and in his 'heroic individualism'. In countering the tendency to see the Protestant-bourgeois and the modern artist as arch-rivals, this article brings Weber's characterization of the Puritan into dialogue with the aesthetic ethos…
Cultural sociology in the Australian context
[Extract] This 'Cultural Sociology' special issue of the Journal of Sociology comes at a significant time in the development of cultural sociological analysis. Culture sections are thriving within North American, British and European sociological associations and the Cultural Sociology Group has established itself as amongst the most popular thematic sections in The Australian Sociological Association. Culture is also the subject of a burgeoning …
Re-enchanting sustainable consumption
Cultural intermediaries play an essential role in shaping the ‘moral textures’ of sustainable consumption. Drawing on Bourdieu and Weber’s cultural sociologies of religious personas, this article analyses how cultural intermediaries deploy different charismatic modalities in the field of fashion to advocate for sustainable consumption. Using illustrative methods and media examples, we illuminate how ‘prophetic’ taste influencers, ‘ascetic’ produc…
Introduction to thinking place
This introduction positions the special issue by highlighting the inherent relationality of place as well as how place is not just an object of analysis but something that shapes thinking, writing and experiences of the world. We reflect on why sociology has found it somewhat more difficult than its social science counterparts to give place the centrality it merits, and discuss whether this reflects a problem with dealing with questions of 'scale…
Twentieth Century Music and the Question of Modernity
In the first decade of the twentieth-century, many composers rejected the principles of tonality and regular beat. This signaled a dramatic challenge to the rationalist and linear conceptions of music that had existed in the West since the Renaissance. The 'break with tonality', Neo-Classicism, serialism, chance, minimalism and the return of the 'sacred' in music, are explored in this book for what they tell us about the condition of modernity. M…
Music as Negative Theology
Jean-Francois Lyotard's essay `Adorno as the Devil' had argued that Theodor Adorno's Philosophy of Modern Music was a `diabolic' work of `negative theology' which attributed to Schoenberg's music a secret redemptive power. However, in his later writings, such as the essays in The Inhuman, Lyotard has himself moved close to a `negative theological' position with respect to modernity, time, aesthetics and music. The paper uses the occasion of Lyota…
Sociology and Aesthetics
This review explores the present fashion for aesthetics in contemporary sociology. It evaluates the claims that society is undergoing a deep-seated process of aestheticization, and that sociology is experiencing an aestheticization of its epistemological concerns. The aestheticization literature is divided as follows: (1) the re-reading of classical sociological theory through the aesthetic dimension of modernity; (2) the claim that postmodern so…
Max Weber and Charles Ives
At first glance, the figure of the Puritan analysed by Max Weber seems to be in direct tension with the ethos of the modern artist. But the latter resembled the former, in two important respects: in his sense of mission and in his 'heroic individualism'. In countering the tendency to see the Protestant-bourgeois and the modern artist as arch-rivals, this article brings Weber's characterization of the Puritan into dialogue with the aesthetic ethos…
On the Promise of a Sociological Aesthetics
This article outlines the contribution of a sociological aesthetics to explaining social life. The central argument is that aesthetic phenomena are neither incidental nor epiphenomenal to social structure; rather the social bond itself possesses an aesthetic dimension. The two central thinkers discussed are Georg Simmel and Michel Maffesoli. The first pioneered a sociology grounded in aesthetics through the study of forms of sociation where, as s…
The `New Sociology of Art
This article maps recent developments in social science writing about the arts and argues for seeing this work in terms of the label the `new sociology of art'. It considers four major lines of re-assessment being carried out by sociologists studying the arts: firstly, a reconsideration of the relationship between sociological and other disciplinary approaches to art; secondly, the possibility of an art-sociology as against a sociology of art; th…
The place of culture in sociology
Despite intense debate regarding the 'cultural turn', there has been very little framing of these intellectual conflicts in terms of the sociology of ideas or knowledge. Following Gouldner, the article proposes that sociology has oscillated between two major styles of thought: Classicism and Romanticism. The latter stimulated an interest in culture amongst social scientists and also led to an emphasis on the cultural properties of social life. Ye…
Cultural sociology in the Australian context
[Extract] This 'Cultural Sociology' special issue of the Journal of Sociology comes at a significant time in the development of cultural sociological analysis. Culture sections are thriving within North American, British and European sociological associations and the Cultural Sociology Group has established itself as amongst the most popular thematic sections in The Australian Sociological Association. Culture is also the subject of a burgeoning …
The Art of Social Forms and the Social Forms of Art
This article examines the sociology-aesthetics nexus in Georg Simmel's thought. The article suggests that it is useful to divide Simmel's linking of sociology and aesthetics into three distinct types of propositions: (1) claims regarding the parallels between art and social form (the 'art of social forms'); (2) statements regarding principles of sociological ordering in art and aesthetic objects (the 'social forms of art'); and (3) analytical pro…
Philosophical and Cultural Theories of Music
Music is a ubiquitous and hard to grasp cultural form. It is semiotically and aesthetically open-ended; yet even a 'non-musical' person is able to follow the basics of rhythmic structure and flow. Its presence in social and cultural life is further complicated by its multiple forms of existence - as both 'live' and 'technologically mediated', as self-referential language and as accompaniment to text, dance and other cultural expressions. This col…
Philosophical and cultural theories of music
Music is a ubiquitous and hard to grasp cultural form. It is semiotically and aesthetically open-ended; yet even a 'non-musical' person is able to follow the basics of rhythmic structure and flow. Its presence in social and cultural life is further complicated by its multiple forms of existence-- as both 'live' and 'technologically mediated', as self-referential language and as accompaniment to text, dance and other cultural expressions. This col…
Philosophical and Cultural Theories of Music
Twentieth Century Music and the Question of Modernity
In the first decade of the twentieth-century, many composers rejected the principles of tonality and regular beat. This signaled a dramatic challenge to the rationalist and linear conceptions of music that had existed in the West since the Renaissance. The 'break with tonality', Neo-Classicism, serialism, chance, minimalism and the return of the 'sacred' in music, are explored in this book for what they tell us about the condition of modernity. M…
The Artwork Made Me Do It
The sociology of art has experienced a significant revival during the last three decades. However, in the first instance, this renewed interest was dominated by the 'production of culture' perspective and was heavily focused on contextual factors such as the social organization of artistic markets and careers, and displays of 'cultural capital' through consumption of the arts. In this article, I outline a new mode of approaching art sociologicall…
In Defence of Theoretical and Methodological Pluralism in the Sociology of Art
This article welcomes Born's proposal that the sociology of art learn from 'adjacent fields' that can 'augment the sociological repertoire'. It agrees especially that sociologists can learn much from the anthropology of art and material culture studies. However, it challenges Born's claim that the sociology of art has 'seen little progress in recent years' and thus questions certain aspects of her proposal for a 'post-Bourdieuian theory of cultur…
Altered states
The concept of mobility seems to be sweeping across the humanities and social sciences. We argue that the close relationship between communication and movement is to some extent independent of specific communication technologies. We demonstrate this through the particular ‘knottings’ of music and physical/imaginative movement. We also suggest that in order to do justice to the complex entanglements of communication and movement, it would pay to r…
Why Aesthetic Patterns Matter
This paper argues that an explanation of the role of aesthetic patterning in human action needs to be part of any “qualitative” social theory. It urges the social sciences to move beyond contextualism and to see art as visual, acoustic and other media that lead to heightened sensory perception and the coordination of feelings through symbols. The article surveys the argument that art provides a basic model of how the self learns to interact with …
Profane' rather than 'secular
Daniel Bell's writings are often cast as offering a contemporary jeremiad regarding the corrosive effects of culture upon the modern economic and social order. In this paper, I take the opposite approach and argue that Bell is a sensitive cultural analyst who is claiming that human experience ought not to be deprived of culture - understood as symbol and myth that tap into the felt need for human transcendence. Bell could therefore be seen as a s…
Sonic Havens
Drawing upon Goffman’s notion of the interaction order we propose that home and homeliness pertain to the degree to which we can control our auditory involvements with the world and with others. What we term “homely listening” concerns the use of music to make oneself feel at home, in some cases, through seclusion and immersion, and, in others, through either the musical ordering of mundane routines or the use of music to engage in sociality with…
After the cultural turn
This article proposes the social sciences consider texture - rather than text − as the important legacy of the 'cultural turn' in the social sciences. The article considers texture in the literal sense of surface-patterns, as well as texture as a metaphor for the 'dynamic' and hard-to-capture qualities of social life. The article draws on the philosopher Stephen C. Pepper and the anthropologist Tim Ingold, the 'practice turn' in organizational st…
Both-And
Um dos dilemas recorrentes na sociologia da arte tem sido como balancear abordagens internalistas e externalistas dos fenômenos estéticos (isto é, explicações estéticas e sociais); ou o que este artigo caracteriza como a necessidade de sair de um modelo "ou arte ou sociedade" para um modelo de lógica "tanto arte quanto sociedade". Nos últimos anos, os dilemas conceituais foram intensificados por uma tendência de o capitalismo se tornar um fenômen…
Living in a Textured World
Framing Atmospheres
In this article, we synthesize Goffman's microsociology with recent developments in fields such as aesthetics, geography, and urban studies labeled 'atmosphere theory.' Our central rationale is if microsociology is to deepen its account of embodiment and the noncognitive it needs a theory of spatialized moods. In the second half, we develop our synthesis with respect to musical atmospheres and conclude by drawing on our own research regarding how…
Sociology in a new key
The sonic framing of place
In this article we examine the sonic framing of place. Our theoretical approach combines Goffman's microsociology (and its sociology of music/sound studies off-shoots) with an account of sound in the urban atmospheres literature. Drawing on the work of French urban sociologist Jean-Paul Thibaud and associated work on sound in urban environments by the CRESSON research centre, we propose that sound frames activity in particular ways, including by …
Introduction to thinking place
This introduction positions the special issue by highlighting the inherent relationality of place as well as how place is not just an object of analysis but something that shapes thinking, writing and experiences of the world. We reflect on why sociology has found it somewhat more difficult than its social science counterparts to give place the centrality it merits, and discuss whether this reflects a problem with dealing with questions of 'scale…
Sociology (21 works) · Aesthetics (19 works) · Social and Cultural Dynamics (16 works) · Epistemology (15 works) · Art (14 works) · Social science (13 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Sociology of culture (7 works) · Visual arts (7 works) · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice (6 works)