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Professor Tony Bennett
Tony Bennett joined UWS as Research Professor in Social and Cultural Theory at the Institute for Culture and Society in 2009. His previous positions included a period as Professor of Sociology at the Open University where he was also a Director of the ESRC Centre for Research on Socio-cultural Change, and as Professor of Cultural Studies at Griffith University where he was also Dean of Humanities and Director of the ARC Key Centre for Cultural and Media Policy. He is a member of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Professor Bennett’s interests span a number of areas across the social sciences and humanities, with significant contributions to the fields of literary theory, cultural studies, cultural sociology, and museum studies. His work in literary studies includes influential assessments of the relations between formalist and Marxist criticism, and critical appraisals of Marxist aesthetic theory. In cultural studies his work has had a formative influence on the study of popular culture and he has played a leading role in the development of cultural policy studies. His work in cultural sociology includes major surveys of the social patterns of cultural practice and consumption in both Australia and Britain, and critical engagements with the sociology of literature and audience and reception theory. His work in museum studies has contributed to the development of the ‘new museology’ particularly in the light it has thrown on the role of museums as instruments of social governance.
The common thread running through his interests across these areas concerns the ways in which culture is tangled up in the exercise of power. This continues to inform his current research focused on the ways in which the knowledge practices of aesthetics and anthropology have informed modern processes of cultural governance from the 19th century through to the present. This work includes a significant focus on the part played by the early fieldwork phase in Australian, British, French and American anthropology in the development of new practices of colonial governance. It also includes a concern with the varying social uses of aesthetic discourses, and the role of aesthetics in the history of social theory. He is also engaged in an inquiry into the role of habit as a key concept in social, political and cultural theory, and with the role it has played in the practices of both liberal and colonial governance. Professor Bennett is currently working on the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Museum, Field, Metropolis, Colony: Practices of Social Governance.
Professor Bennett’s work has been translated into French, Swedish, German, Italian, Spanish, Greek, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and he has lectured at universities, art galleries and museums in Europe, Asia, Africa, Asia and North America. He has worked in a consulting or advisory capacity for a range of governmental organisations, including UNESCO and the Council of Europe, and has conducted research collaborations with a wide range of cultural sector and government organisations in Australia and Britain.
He is currently co-editor of the Journal of Cultural Economy and of the Culture, Economy and the Social book series published by Routledge.
Qualifications
PhD, 1972, Sociology, University of Sussex, UK
BA, 1968, Politics, Philosophy, Economics, Oxford University, UK
Honours and Awards
2010-: Visiting Research Professor, Open University
2009: Visiting Professor, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Nanjing University
2005-: Visiting Professor, University of Hunan, Kaifung.
2006-: Professorial Fellow, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne
2003: Centre for Public Scholarship, Emory University, Atlanta: Visiting Fellow.
1996: Department of Communications, University of South Africa: Visiting Professor.
1998: Elected to the Australian Academy of the Humanities
1994: Unit for Interpretation and Criticism, University of Illinois: Visiting Professor.
1994: Pavis Centre for Research in Sociology and Social Anthropology, The Open University: Visiting Fellow.
1989: Faculty of Arts, Carleton University, Ottawa: Visiting Senior Scholar.
1983: Faculty of Humanities, Griffith University: Visiting Fellow.
1982: Departments of Comparative Literature and Film, University of Iowa: Visiting Professor.
Ongoing: Member of the editorial/advisory boards of: New Formations, Cultural Studies, Continuum, Critical Cultural and Communication Studies, Literature and History, The International Journal of Cultural Studies, The European Journal of Cultural Studies, Cultural Studies in Review, Museum History Journal, Museums & Society, and Culture Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research.
Selected Publications
Books
Bennett, T., 2013, Making Culture, Changing Society (opens in a new window), London and New York: Routledge.
Bennett, T., Savage, M., Silva, E., Warde, A., Gayo-Cal, M. and Wright, D. 2009, Culture, Class, Distinction (opens in a new window), London and New York: Routledge.
Bennett, T. 2007, Critical Trajectories: Culture, Society, Intellectuals (opens in a new window), Malden, US, and Oxford: Blackwell.
Bennett, T. 2007, Culture and Society: Collected Essays, Beijing: Guangxi Normal University Press.
Bennett, T. 2004, Pasts Beyond Memories: Evolution, Museums, Colonialism (opens in a new window), London and New York: Routledge.
Bennett, T., Frow, J. and Emmison, M. 1999, Accounting for Tastes: Australian Everyday Cultures (opens in a new window), Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.
Bennett, T. 1998, Culture: A Reformer’s Science (opens in a new window), Sydney: Allen and Unwin; London and New York: Sage. [Croatian translation, Golden marketing-Technicka knjiga].
Bennett, T. (ed.) 1996, Museums and Citizenship: A Resource Book, special issue of Memoirs of the Queensland Museum, vol. 39, part 1.
Bennett, T. 1995, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (opens in a new window), London and New York: Routledge.
Bennett, T. 1990, Outside Literature (opens in a new window), London and New York: Routledge; New York: Methuen Inc.
Bennett, T. and Woollacott, J. 1987, Bond and Beyond: The Political Career of a Popular Hero, London: Macmillan; and New York: Methuen Inc.
Bennett, T. 1979, Formalism and Marxism (opens in a new window), London and New York: Methuen.
Edited Collections
Bennett, T. and Joyce, P. (eds) 2010, Material Powers: Cultural Studies, History and the Material Turn, London and New York: Routledge.
Bennett, T. and Frow, J. (eds) 2008, The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Analysis (opens in a new window), London: Sage.
Bennett, T. Grossberg, L. and Morris, M. (eds) 2005, New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary of Culture and Society (opens in a new window), Oxford: Blackwell. [Chinese translation, Nanjing University Press; Italian translation; Japanese translation].
Silva, E. B. and Bennett, T. (eds) 2004, Contemporary Culture and Everyday Life, Durham: The Sociologypress.
Bennett, T. and Watson, D. (eds) 2001, Understanding Everyday Life (opens in a new window), Oxford: Blackwell.
Bennett, T. and Carter, T. (eds) 2001, Culture in Australia: Policies, Publics, Programs (opens in a new window), Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.
Bennett, T., Buckridge, P., Carter, D. and Mercer, C. (eds) 1992, Celebrating the Nation: A Critical Study of Australia's Bicentenary, Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Bennett, T. (ed.) 1990, Popular Fiction: Technology, Ideology, Production, Reading (opens in a new window), London and New York: Routledge.
Bennett, T., Mercer, C. and Woollacott, J. (eds) 1986, Popular Culture and Social Relations (opens in a new window), Milton Keynes: Open University Press. [Chapter ‘Blackpool: Hegemony, Ideology, Pleasure’ republished in Ryan, M. (ed.) 2007/8, Cultural Studies: An Anthology, Oxford: Blackwell.]
Gurevitch, M., Bennett, T., Curran, J. and Woollacott, J. (eds) 1981, Culture, Society and the Media (opens in a new window), London and New York: Methuen.
Waites, B., Bennett, T. and Martin, G. (eds) 1981, Popular Culture: Past and Present. A Reader (opens in a new window), London: Croom Helm.
Bennett, T., Martin, G., Mercer, C. and Woollacott, J. (eds) 1980, Culture, Ideology and Social Process, London: Batsford.
Bennett, T., Boyd-Bowman, S., Mercer, C. and Woollacott, J. (eds) 1981, Popular Television and Film, London: British Film Institute.
Book Chapters (since 2000)
Bennett, T. 2010, 'Introduction', in, Bourdieu, P. and Bennett, T. (eds), Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (opens in a new window), London: Routledge.
Bennett, T. 2010, ‘Habit, Instinct, Survivals: Repetition, History, Biopolitics’, in, Gunn, S. and Vernon, J. (eds), The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain, University of California Press.
Bennett, T. 2010, '"Culture Studies" and the Culture Complex’, in, Hall, J. R., Grindstaff, L. and Lo, M-C. (eds), Handbook of Cultural Sociology, London and New York: Routledge, pp 25-34.
Bennett, T. 2010, ‘Making and Mobilising Worlds: Assembling and Governing the Other’, in, Bennett, T. and Joyce, P. (eds), Material Powers: Cultural Studies, History and the Material Turn, London and New York: Routledge, pp 190-208.
Bennett, T. 2010, ‘Culture, Power, Knowledge: Between Foucault and Bourdieu’, in, Silva, E. and Warde, A. (eds), Cultural Analysis and Bourdieu's Legacy: Settling Accounts and Developing Alternatives (opens in a new window), London and New York: Routledge.
Warde, A. and Bennett, T. 2008, ‘A Culture in Common: The Cultural Consumption of the UK Managerial Elite’, in, Williams, K. and Savage, M. (eds), Remembering Elites (opens in a new window), Sociological Review Monograph, Oxford: Blackwell.
Bennett, T. 2008, ‘The Art Museum as Civic Machinery’, in, Jaschke, B., Martinz-Turek, C. and Sternfeld, N. (eds), Sammlungen Austellen, Vienna: Verlag Turia + Kant.
Bennett, T. 2008, ‘Sociology and Culture’, in, Bennett, T. and Frow, J. (eds), The SAGE Handbook of Cultural Analysis (opens in a new window), London: Sage.
Bennett, T. 2006, ‘Exhibition, Difference and the Logic of Culture’, in, Karp, I. and Kratz, C. (eds), Museum Frictions: Public Cultures/Global Transformations (opens in a new window), Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp 46-69.
Bennett, T. 2006, ‘Civic Seeing: Museums and the Organisation of Vision’, in, MacDonald, S. (ed.), Companion to Museum Studies (opens in a new window), Oxford: Blackwell, pp 263-281.
Bennett, T. 2006, ‘Culture and Differences: The Challenges of Multiculturalism’, in, Boda, S. and Cifarelli, M. R. (eds), When Culture Makes the Difference: Heritage, Arts and Media in Multicultural Society, Rome: Meltemi Editore, pp 21-37. [Also in Bonet, L. and Négrier, E. (eds), La fin des cultures nationales? Les politiques culturelles à l’épreuve de la diversité, Paris: La Découverte, 19-31.]
Bennett, T., Savage, M., Silva, E., Warde, A. Gayo-Cal, M. and Wright, D. 2005, ‘Cultural Capital and the Cultural Field in Contemporary Britain’, CRESC Working Papers on Socio-cultural Change, No. 3, University of Manchester and the Open University.
Bennett, T. 2005, ‘The Media Sensorium: Cultural Technologies, the Senses and Society’, in, Gillespie, M. (ed.), Understanding Audiences, Milton Keynes: The Open University Press.
Bennett, T. 2003, ‘The Rules of Culture: Exhibition and the Politics of Knowledge’, in, Furuichi, Y. (ed.), Asia in Transition: Representation and Identity, Tokyo: Japan Foundation Asia Centre. [Republished in Journal of the Leisure Studies Association.]
Bennett, T. 2004, ‘Metropolis, Colony, Primitive: Evolution and the Politics of Vision’, in, Kopp, K. et al, (eds), Metropolis and Primitive, Berlin: Metzler Verlag.
Bennett, T. and Silva, E. 2004, ‘Everyday Life in Contemporary Culture’, in, Silva, E. and Bennett, T. (eds), Contemporary Culture and Everyday Life, Durham: The Sociologypress, pp 1-20.
Bennett, T. 2004, ‘The Invention of the Modern Cultural Fact: Toward a Critique of the Critique of Everyday Life’, in, Silva, E. and Bennett, T. (eds), Contemporary Culture and Everyday Life, Durham: The Sociologypress, pp 21-36. [Chinese translation in Cultural Studies, 2006, 6: 25-268.]
Bennett, T. 2002, ‘Stored Virtue: Memory, the Body and the Evolutionary Museum’, in, Radstone, S. and Hodgkin, K. (eds), Regimes of Memory (opens in a new window), London and New York: Routledge, pp 40-54. [Republished in Radstone, S. and Hodgkin, K. (eds), Memory Futures: Memory, Subjectivity and Recognition, New Brunswick and London: Transaction Publishers.]
Bennett, T. 2003, ‘Culture and Governmentality’, in, Bratich, J., Packer, J. and McCarthy, C. (eds), Foucault, Cultural Studies and Governmentality (opens in a new window), New York: SUNY Press, pp 47-66.
Bennett, T. 2002, ‘Contesting Times: Conflicting Histories in Postcolonial Contexts’, in, Jordan, T. and Pile, S. (eds), Social Change (opens in a new window), Oxford: Blackwell, pp 49-78.
Bennett, T. 2002, ‘Sociology and Government’, in, Hamilton, P. and Thompson, K. (eds), The Uses of Sociology (opens in a new window), Oxford: Blackwell, pp 41-67.
Bennett, T., Emmison, M. and Frow, J. 2001, ‘Social Class and Cultural Practice in Contemporary Australia’, in, Bennett, T. and Carter, D. (eds), Culture in Australia: Policies, Publics, Programs (opens in a new window), Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, pp 193-216.
Bennett, T. and Watson, D. 2001, ‘Understanding Everyday Life: Introduction’, in, Bennett, T. and Watson, D. (eds), Understanding Everyday Life (opens in a new window), Oxford: Blackwell, pp ix-xxiv.
Bennett, T. 2001, ‘Home and Everyday Life’, in, Bennett, T. and Watson, D. (eds), Understanding Everyday Life (opens in a new window), Oxford: Blackwell, pp 1-33.
Bennett, T. 2001, ‘Cultural Policy – Issues of Culture and Governance’, in, Snickars, F. (ed.), Culture, Society and the Market, Stockholm: Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and the Swedish National Council for Cultural Affairs, pp 13-28.
Bennett, T. 2001, ‘Cultural Policy’, International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioural Sciences (opens in a new window), London: Elsevier, pp 3092-7.
Journal Articles (since 2000)
Bennett, T. 2010, 'Sociology, Aesthetics, Expertise' (opens in a new window), New Literary History, 41(2): 253-276.
Bennett, T. and Healy, C. (eds) 2009, Journal of Cultural Economy [Special Double Issue: ‘Assembling Culture’ (opens in a new window)], 2(1-2).
Bennett, T. 2009, ‘Museum, Field, Colony: Colonial Governmentality and the Circulation of Reference’ (opens in a new window), Journal of Cultural Economy, 2(1-2): 99-116.
Bennett, T. 2009, ‘Counting and Seeing the Action of Literary Form: Franco Moretti and the Sociology of Literature’ (opens in a new window), Journal of Cultural Sociology, 3(2): 277-297.
Bennett, T. 2008/9, ‘Aesthetics, Government, Freedom’ (opens in a new window), Key Words: A Journal of Cultural Materialism, 6: 76-91.
Bennett, T. 2008, ‘The Intellectual Genealogies and Possible Futures for Cultural Studies: An Interview with Tony Bennett’ (opens in a new window)[refereed interview with Professor Huimin Jin, Chinese Academy of the Social Sciences], Cultural Politics, 4(2): 161-182.
Bennett, T. 2007, ‘Making Culture, Changing Society: The Perspective of Culture Studies’ (opens in a new window), Cultural Studies, 21(4-5): 610-629.
Bennett, T. and Dodsworth, J. 2007, ‘Liberalisms, Government, Culture’ (opens in a new window), Cultural Studies, 21(4-5): 525-548.
Bennett, T., Grossberg, L. and Morris, M. 2006, ‘Originals, Remakes, Assemblages: A Retrospect on New Keywords’ (opens in a new window), Criticism, 47(4): 567-71.
Bennett, T. 2007, ‘The Work of Culture’ (opens in a new window), Journal of Cultural Sociology, 1(1): 31-48.
Bennett, T. 2007, ‘Habitus Clivé: Aesthetics and Politics in the work of Pierre Bourdieu’ (opens in a new window), New Literary History, 38(1): 201-228.
Bennett, T. 2006, ‘Culture and Society: Theoretical and Biographical Perspectives’, Jiangxia Social Sciences, 6: 233-244.
Bennett, T. 2006, ‘Distinction on the Box: Cultural Capital and the Social Space of Broadcasting’ (opens in a new window), Cultural Trends, 15(2-3): 193-212.
Bennett, T. and Silva, E. 2006, ‘Cultural Capital and Inequality – Policy Issues and Contexts’ (opens in a new window), Cultural Trends, 15(2-3): 87-106.
Bennett, T. 2006, ‘Postscript: Cultural Capital and Inequality – Refining the Policy Calculus’ (opens in a new window), Cultural Trends, 15(2-3): 239-244.
Bennett, T. 2005, ‘The Historical Universal: The Role of Cultural Value in the Historical Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu’ (opens in a new window), British Journal of Sociology, 56(1): 141-164.
Savage, M. and Bennett, T. 2005, ‘Cultural Capital and Social Inequality’, British Journal of Sociology, 56(1): 1-12.
Bennett, T. 2005, ‘Civic Laboratories: Museums, Cultural Objecthood, and the Governance of the Social’ (opens in a new window), Cultural Studies, 19(5): 521-547. [Revised version of CRESC Working Papers on Socio-cultural Change, No. 2, University of Manchester and the Open University.]
Bennett, T. and Savage, M. 2004, ‘Introduction: Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion’, Cultural Trends, 13(2): 7-14.
Bennett, T. 2003, ‘Representation or Exhibition?’, Journal of Education in Museums, 24: 3-8.
Bennett, T. 2002, ‘Archaeological Autopsy: Objectifying Time and Cultural Governance’ (opens in a new window), Cultural Values, 6(1-2): 29-48.
Bennett, T. 2001, ‘Pasts Beyond Memories: The Evolutionary Museum Liberal Government and the Politics of Prehistory’ (opens in a new window), Folk: Journal of the Danish Ethnographic Society, 43(autumn): 49-76.
Bennett, T. 2000, ‘Acting on the Social: Art, Culture, and Government’, American Behavioural Scientist, 43(9): 1412-1428. [Also in Meredyth, D. and Minson, J. (eds), Citizenship and Cultural Policy, London: Sage Publications, pp. 18-34.]
Reports (since 2000)
Bennett, T., Savage, M., Silva, E., Warde, A., Gayo-Cal, M. and Wright, D. 2006, Media Cultures: A Report on the Organisation of the Media Field in Contemporary Britain, London: British Film Institute.
Bennett, T. 2002, Differing Diversities: Culture, Policy, Citizenship and Diversity, Strasbourg: Council of Europe Policy Note.
Bennett, T. 2001, Differing Diversities: Cultural Policy and Cultural Diversity, Strasbourg: Council of Europe.
