Abstract:

In the history of sociology of art, the sociologists such as Marxist, Bourdieu and Becker used the sociological method to study arts, and developed our understanding of arts. But they did not pay attention to the specificity of art, what they did was just as the colonialism of sociology in the field of art, and reduced art into general social factors. This caused the criticisms of some sociologists of art. Wolff claimed that we cannot reduce art into economic base or ideology, and we should pay attention to its aesthetic and formal factors; Heinich argued that art was a value system of specificity, which could not be reduced; Hennion and Benzecry thought that the taste was a condition of passion, and could not be reduced into the tactics of social distinction. DeNora claimed that the power of art came from the interaction between people and art, and kept a place for the specificity of art in this interaction. Their idea on the specificity of art was a balance to the reductionism of art, and was helpful for the development of Chinese sociology of art.

Key words: Art, Sociology, Reductionism, Specificity