Materiality as a Basis for Valuation Entrepreneurship: Re-modeling Impressionism

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Sgourev, Stoyan, V
• 刊物名称: ORGANIZATION SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1047-7039
• DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2020.1419
• 发表日期: 2021
• 页码: 1235-1255
• 关键词: evaluation; MATERIALITY; IDENTITY; social networks; ART; Impressionism

摘要

This paper addresses the recognized need for connecting scholarship on materiality and evaluation by conceptualizing how materiality provides grounds for val-uation entrepreneurship. It extends the scope of materiality scholarship by considering an ignored organizational outcome while offering stronger evidence for the role of supplyside factors in social evaluation. The theoretical model posits that materiality affords opportunities for identity construction and social organization that can lead to the emergence of a new theory of value contesting the evaluative regime. This framework is applied to the reanalysis of a famous case: Impressionism. The analysis shows that new materials and methods of painting served as a focus for the social organization of artists with a shared identity of craftsmen. These artists espoused a new theory of value that advocated the unfinishedness of artworks and used natural perception as an objective basis for contestation of the subjective evaluative regime at the salons. The contestation had political overtones, drawing on cultural resources and scientific tenets to justify the valorization of individuality and decentralization of art appraisal. An endogenous account of culture in action presents materiality as a natural counterpoint to the emphasis on conceptualization.