The Research Network Sociology of the Arts hereby announces its 7^th conference which will take place in Vienna from September 5^th to the 8^th, 2012. The organisation of the conference will be undertaken by the Institute for Music Sociology at the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna.

The focus of the key conference lectures will be on artistic practices. The concept of practice differs from the classical concept of action. Concrete practices are located in communities of practice and therefore should be analysed on the basis of their embedding in social structures and cultural dynamics. This theoretical conception also transforms our understanding of other concepts such as knowledge, intention, meaning, institution, rule, structure, and power.

Artistic practices, as arrays of specific activities (including, in a narrow sense, the area of con­ception and production and in a broader sense the promotion, distribution, displaying and con­veying of arts understanding) assume theoretical knowledge as well as know-how. They assume connoisseurship but also practical abilities and skills. Artistic practices are developed practically and collectively in collaborative networks. They are pre-structured by conventions, institutions, regimes of competence, forms or alignments of power as well as technological and financial means, although practices themselves instigate the formation of these various structural parame­ters. Another seminal characteristic of practices is their partly tacit dimension, which is due to the inherent limits of language, of practical consciousness as well as to the habituation that takes place after familiarisation and implicit learning.

The invited four key speakers are: Karlheinz Essl (composer), Nathalie Heinich (sociologist), Theodore Schatzki (philosopher), Laurent Thévenot (sociologist).

Szczegółowe informacje dostępne są na stronie konferencji http://www.mdw.ac.at/ESA-Arts-2012/?PageId=3414