ABSTRACT

Much social-scientific writing on specific cultural phenomena has tended to foreground one or two analytic frames of reference from the variety of those that have been developed in the field. Here we draw on findings from a case study of a local art scene in a global context-Chelsea, Manhattan, the most important contemporary art-gallery district in the world. We argue that our empirical material concerns a highly complex situation for which one or two analytic frames cannot alone do justice. We further suggest that this may be true now of many other central cultural phenomena, partly because of the increasingly “global” context in which they exist. As complex phenomena (like art worlds) change over time, the analytic approaches that work best also change, with new ones coming to the fore and older ones needing modification in key ways. We pursue these points via a discussion of four main analytic frameworks-globalization,

market theory, analysis of the meaning of the cultural works for those who view them, and class and status theory, especially the debate between the “class homology” and the “omnivore” hypotheses. Overall, our approach is consistent with that of other cultural analysts (e.g. Griswold 2004; Battani and Hall 2000; Mann 2007) who have likewise stressed the need for theoretical complexity and eclecticism to do justice to a complex and changing empirical situation.