This paper introduces the French sociology of art to English-speaking scholars. Its story begins with a shift from the humanities to social sciences through the use of empirical methods, and a change in focus from artworks to the social conditions of their production, mediation, and reception. This meant, initially, a positivist turn, relying on a strong explanatory and determinist paradigm using social origins, positions in a “field,” hidden interests or types of “capitals” as basic and unquestioned tools. Then an interactionist turn appeared, based on the observation of actual interactions between various actors within “art worlds” or “artistic fields.” Then an interpretivist turn happened, addressing the collective representations of art and artists, the values according to which people valuate artworks, and the hierarchy and classifications of artistic genres. Finally, a pragmatic turn introduced a general sociological trend investigating the actual processes owing to which artworks circulate, how things become endowed with the status of an artwork, as well as the conditions and meaning of artistic recognition. Because such issues cannot be fully addressed through the lens of a standard explanatory sociology, this article calls for a descriptive, pragmatic, qualitative, interpretivist, and value-neutral turn, inducing a new French sociology of art.

本文向英语学者介绍了法国的艺术社会学。它的故事开始于通过使用经验方法从人文科学转向社会科学，以及关注焦点从艺术品转向其生产、中介和接受的社会条件。这意味着，最初，实证主义转向依赖强大的解释性和决定论范式，使用社会出身、“领域”中的职位、隐藏的利益或“资本”类型作为基本和毋庸置疑的工具。然后出现了互动主义转向，基于对“艺术世界”或“艺术领域”内不同参与者之间实际互动的观察。然后发生了解释主义的转变，解决了艺术和艺术家的集体表现，人们评估艺术品的价值观，以及艺术流派的层次和分类。最后，一个务实的转向引入了一个普遍的社会学趋势，研究艺术品流通的实际过程，事物如何被赋予艺术品的地位，以及艺术认可的条件和意义。由于这些问题无法通过标准的解释性社会学的视角来完全解决，因此本文呼吁进行描述性的、务实的、定性的、解释性的和价值中立的转向，从而引发一种新的法国艺术社会学。