Much of the literature on production in cultural fields has been dominated by gatekeeper and rational-actor narratives. These literatures argue that the production of art objects tends to be driven by competition for status within fields and by institutional forces that shape how actors produce their work and define success. While much of the existing research has provided insight on the structural determinants that organize the opportunity structures within cultural fields, much less is known about how cultural producers make sense of the competitive prize-seeking bound up in professional integration. This article examines the role that juried prizes and competitions play in shaping how cultural producers understand who they are and what they do as artists seeking professional integration in their fields. Drawing on 41 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with contemporary art music composers in the early stages of their careers, the article shows how composers engage in self-curation strategies that seek to mitigate the uncertainty of selection associated with competition participation. The article discusses three additional findings. First, composers participate in different competition types and make decisions about which types are best suited for achieving their professional goals. Second, self-curation strategies map on to different aspects of composer’s self-concepts and the actions warranted by these differences. Third, composers move within and across three different self-curation strategies outlined in the article. By engaging these strategies, it is argued that composers come to understand competitions as meaningful in their efforts to professionalize and as mechanisms through which they reconcile legibility within the field with an authentic pursuit of their artistic voice. This research locates self-curation as a phenomenon at the intersection of rational and meaning-centered action.

中文翻译：

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成功的构成：当代艺术音乐中的竞争与创造自我

许多关于文化领域生产的文献都被看门人和理性演员的叙事所主导。这些文献认为，艺术品的生产往往受到领域内地位竞争的驱动，以及影响演员如何制作作品和定义成功的制度力量。虽然现有的大部分研究已经对组织文化领域内机会结构的结构决定因素提供了见解，但对文化生产者如何理解与职业整合相关的竞争性寻求奖赏知之甚少。本文探讨了评审奖和比赛在塑造文化生产者如何理解他们是谁以及他们作为寻求在其领域中寻求专业融合的艺术家所做的工作方面所发挥的作用。借鉴 41 半结构化，这篇文章深入采访了处于职业生涯早期的当代艺术音乐作曲家，展示了作曲家如何参与自我策划策略，以减轻与参加比赛相关的选择不确定性。本文讨论了另外三个发现。首先，作曲家参加不同的比赛类型，并决定哪种类型最适合实现他们的职业目标。其次，自我管理策略映射到作曲家自我概念的不同方面以及这些差异所保证的行动。第三，作曲家在文章中概述的三种不同的自我管理策略之间移动。通过采用这些策略，有人认为，作曲家开始将比赛理解为对他们专业化的努力具有意义，并作为一种机制，通过这种机制，他们将领域内的易读性与对其艺术声音的真实追求相协调。这项研究将自我管理定位为理性和以意义为中心的行动交叉点的一种现象。