This is a book about one of the great untold stories of modern
cultural life: the remarkable ascendancy of prizes in literature
and the arts. Such prizes and the competitions they crown are
almost as old as the arts themselves, but their number and
power--and their consequences for society and culture at
large--have expanded to an unprecedented degree in our day. In a
wide-ranging overview of this phenomenon, James F. English
documents the dramatic rise of the awards industry and its complex
role within what he describes as an economy of cultural
prestige.
Observing that cultural prizes in their modern form originate
at the turn of the twentieth century with the institutional
convergence of art and competitive spectator sports, English argues
that they have in recent decades undergone an important shift--a
more genuine and far-reaching globalization than what has occurred
in the economy of material goods. Focusing on the cultural prize in
its contemporary form, his book addresses itself broadly to the
economic dimensions of culture, to the rules or logic of exchange
in the market for what has come to be called "cultural capital." In
the wild proliferation of prizes, English finds a key to
transformations in the cultural field as a whole. And in the
specific workings of prizes, their elaborate mechanics of
nomination and election, presentation and acceptance, sponsorship,
publicity, and scandal, he uncovers evidence of the new
arrangements and relationships that have refigured that field.
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