Abstract
In recent years, some cultural sociologists have turned towards addressing the material aspects of social life. While anthropology, material culture studies and museum studies have dealt with these issues for a long time before cultural sociology discovered them, for the latter this shift still seems to be novel and to a certain extent contestable with regards to theory and methodology (see for example a recent article by W. Griswold, G. Mangione and T.E. McDonnell (2013) on the implications of actor-network theory inspired analysis for cultural sociology). So far there has been no paradigm in cultural sociology which has been able to deal with both materiality and meaning without reducing the one to the other. Iconic Power is an attempt to build this kind of paradigm.
The ‘iconic turn’ itself is not something wholly new for the social sciences and humanities. As one of the contributors to this book notes, it goes back to at least 1994 when the German art historian Gottfried Boehm coined the term (p. 102). Until recently it was in art history, visual studies and other humanities disciplines where theoretical debates concerning iconicity primarily took place. This book is intended to advance the iconic turn in sociology, making clear what has so far been achieved by humanities scholars. The book aims to map out the intellectual roots of a cultural sociology of iconicity, and to illustrate through a series of case studies how such an approach can or should work.
Paying tribute to various central humanities scholars, such as Panofsky, Boehm, Belting, Mitchell and others, many of the contributors to this book, as well as the editors, argue that conventional sociological thinking about materiality needs to be reconfigured away from forms of cultural critique towards the development of a more nuanced methodology which can avoid various forms of reductionism. As Alexander puts it, while sociology inspired by Marx disregards the meanings of material objects, Durkheim’s analysis which inspires cultural sociology emphasizes meanings while it ignores the material dimensions of human experience (pp. 25–35). Consequently the book and the individual contributions within it aim to go beyond this opposition between meaning and materiality, and to equip sociological inquiry with a theory and method which can deal with them together without reducing one to the other. For many of the contributors, Durkheim’s sociology serves as a central foundation for understanding how icons and images are connected with social life more generally.
For Alexander and Bartmanski in particular, Durkheim provides an alternative route for understanding the material aspects of social life generally, and modernity more specifically. For conventional sociology of culture, disenchantment is a key process of modernization, and therefore economic production based on rationality leaves no room for affect, emotion, singularity or uniqueness. What the iconic turn proposes instead is ‘to document and theorize […] how iconic aura continues to inhabit non-unique items’ (p. 3). The claims of Bartmanski and Alexander are supported by some of the contributors to the book. For instance, Werner Binder reflects on the possibilities offered by Durkheimian sociology for advancing thinking about specific images as secular icons, through exploring those photographs that accompanied the Abu Ghraib scandal and which depicted the Vietnam War (pp. 101–116).
The range of iconic objects that the book deals with goes far beyond images and photographs. It may include architecture and art (the papers by Boehm, Alexander, Suber, and Karamanic), past events (papers by Bartmanski, Kurasawa, and Bowler), public scandals and events (papers by Binder and Smith), visual representations of statistical data (the paper by Rauer) and wine brands (the paper by Woodward and Ellison). Exploring these and other iconic objects, the authors try to answer the question of how particular iconic objects work in different types of society.
The general answer to this question is given in both the editors’ chapters and those of a more conceptual orientation. Iconic objects involve an interplay of material surface and discursive depth. Following Gottfried Boehm, the editors describe this interplay as iconic difference. Iconic objects condense meanings in sensory and aesthetic forms in such ways that these objects may cause social actions. In his chapter, Boehm explains the nature of iconic objects by referring to notions of representation. He argues that iconic objects do not simply represent past events or absent or dead people, but rather intensify the meanings associated with the absent phenomenon. In what he describes as ‘performances of representation’, icons add ‘a surplus to the existence of the depicted’ (pp. 15–23). This surplus of meanings, enacted repeatedly in social life, is the foundation of the driving power of iconic objects, a power that can create solidarities and social distinctions. The foundation of the iconic power of objects is that they function on the level of immediate – i.e. sensory and aesthetic – perception. As Bernhard Giesen writes, ‘icons are immediately understood even if their meaning is diffuse and vague’ (p. 247).
Many contributors agree that iconicity is often not visible in everyday perceptions, and thus society tends to naturalize and conceal the practical work of icons. This becomes a natural part of the social order. For example, Alexander shows how the language which constitutes the discourse of an architecture critic transcends the subjectivity of the architect’s taste and informs the meanings of buildings under consideration (pp. 25–35). He shows how architecture is made to be ‘iconic’ in discourse and thus implicitly shapes the aesthetic perceptions of lay audiences. A different example of naturalized icons is offered by Bartmanski, who aims to explain the domination of an icon of the Berlin Wall associated with 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe over other possible iconic objects and events, by arguing that specific material and aesthetic qualities of the Wall and its pictorial representations made it a successful icon (pp. 40–65). Contributors address mainly successful icons such as the Berlin Wall, the Australian wine brand ‘Grange’ (pp. 155–170), and music festivals (pp. 171–186), while failed iconic objects are analysed only to demonstrate the success of others.
The various cases dealt with throughout the book illustrate the contingency of iconic objects. Iconic objects are not iconic per se, since they are made iconic under specific cultural conditions. To describe these contingent conditions, authors provide detailed analyses of the ‘popular imagination’ as this is condensed in the mass media. There is a clear relation between iconic objects of the modern age and the rise of mass media. Almost all chapters consider this relation to some respect, yet it is rarely put at the centre of cultural sociological reflection here. While providing rich analyses of narratives and symbols in media, the cultural sociology of icons pursued here does not fully recognize the historical role of mass media in the symbolic and cultural production of icons. Investigating this would answer the question as to whether iconic objects can exist and operate beyond the mass media. Another relevant question, not adequately dealt with here, concerns this issue: what happens to icons in the age of new media (internet, social networks, blogs, etc.) when the structure of cultural production of news seems to be changing significantly?
Despite the significant treatment of conceptual debates to be found throughout the book, there remain other issues to be dealt with in the future. Understanding how an object comes to qualify as an icon seems to be one of the most challenging tasks of the new cultural sociology of iconic power. If the iconic is defined in terms of the symbolic power it evokes, as Giesen and others here hold, then how one can explain the power of these objects without involving tautological explanations? In other words, are iconic objects powerful because they are iconic? Or is it the case that any objects which perform symbolic power must be iconic? This book takes initial steps towards answering these and related questions, and provides grounds for future explorations in cultural sociology of iconicity. It therefore deserves the attention of a range of audiences, not only in sociology but in the humanities as well.