The Economy of Prestige: Prizes, Awards, and the Circulation of Cultural ValueThis 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. |
Contents
Prizes and the Study of Culture I | 1 |
Prize Frenzy | 17 |
Precursors of the Modern Cultural Prize | 28 |
The Logic of Proliferation | 50 |
Prizes as Entertainment | 69 |
PECULIARITIES OF THE AWARDS INDUSTRY | 107 |
Taste Management | 121 |
Trophies as Objects of Production and Trade | 155 |
Strategies of Condescension Styles of Play | 217 |
The Arts as International Sport | 249 |
The New Geography of Prestige | 264 |
Prizes and the Politics of World Culture | 297 |
Appendix A The Rise of the Prize | 323 |
Appendix B Prizes and Commerce | 329 |
Notes | 346 |
391 | |