A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Continuing in a creative career: Claiming an artistic identity and aligning trajectories among early career novelists

  2023. Henrik Fürst. Poetics 100, 101818-101818

  Article

  Most artists who venture into an artistic career discontinue after their debut work. This article contributes to the understanding of early artistic career discontinuation and continuation by drawing on 53 mainly longitudinal interviews with early-career Swedish novelists. The article develops interactionist theories of careers and social worlds, and suggests that continuation of literary careers depends on realizing an artistic identity and the alignment of trajectories in life, thereby providing time for creative work to emerge. The alignments are arrangements of trajectories that work together, and aligning trajectories makes it possible to legitimize an artistic identity in relation to competing identity claims (and roles) from other trajectories in life. The legitimation creates normative acceptance of the writing identity and activity. The ease of claiming a literary writing identity depends on a person's author type, finances, engagements in work and family, and time management skills. The article proposes that creative career continuation is influenced by historical, situational and cultural availability, as well as the ability to claim an artistic identity and manage intermingling trajectories and priorities in life.

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• The Value of Art Education: Cultural Engagements at the Swedish Folk High Schools

  2023. Henrik Fürst.

  Book

  This book shows the continuing importance of art education. Art education attracts students who see multiple meanings and justifications for the worth of that education. Their engagement in art education is not limited to the uncertain prospects for jobs or routes into employment in the arts. Fürst and Nylander approach art education through a rich array of empirical examples derived from Swedish folk high school programs in music, visual arts, and creative writing. Based on an analytical framework of pragmatic sociology, the book allows the reader to understand the competences and critical capacities held by students and teachers. The book challenges the dominant public perception of art education and broadens our understanding of what it is good for. The Value of Art Education is essential reading for those defending the status of this vital sector of education, offering a deeper understanding of why people engage, what they gain, and the social importance of the arts.

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• Splendid isolation: Managing time and making culture among novelists during the pandemic

  2022. Henrik Fürst. Poetics, 101733-101733

  Article

  While many public performances of culture were shut down during much of the pandemic, the homes of many artists became prominent places for making culture. In particular, the pandemic created a rift in the temporal and spatial organization of work and leisure, affecting time management. This article turns to the creative lives of 32 novelists in Sweden who were interviewed online over video in 2020 and 2021. Using the example of these authors, the article investigates the impact of the pandemic on actors in culture who, to a large degree, already work creatively in physical isolation. The pandemic became an external shock affecting the temporal organization among authors and their ability to juggle commitments in life. For some, the pandemic situation appeared to create a rare slowdown of their relationships to their creative lives as well as a synchronization of spheres of life, feelings of resonance, and time for writing. As their regular activities disappeared and commitments weakened, others felt a non-resonant slowdown in their creative capacities. Those whose lives were intensified by new or additional work to make ends meet lost time for creative work, with writing becoming a guilty pleasure in response to the pandemic as a trauma. The research results emphasize the temporal conditions for making culture at home during the pandemic and argue for the general importance of studying temporal organizations of careers and art-making.

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• Arrival to a fictional total institution: The Swedish folk high school as a liminal space in literature

  2022. Henrik Fürst. Sociologisk forskning 59 (3), 321-340

  Article

  Arrivals have an unexplored significance as a phenomenon in sociology. This article studies depictions of arrivals to art education courses at Swedish folk high schools in fiction. These arrivals are liminal transitions between two states, warranting personal change, either being the solution to a previous problem or creating a problem (to be solved). Many spaces in society have lost their status as total institutions physically and symbolically detached from the rest of society. The rarity of and desire for totalizing milieus create possibilities for self-exploration and self-development in characters, enabling authenticity and revealing truths of social life. The depiction of the folk high school as a total institution of isolation and a liminal space for change is effective in (re-)producing cultural images of the folk high school and as a literary device to contain characters and develop conflicts that arise from the milieu. At the same time, these arrival stories demonstrate the importance of liminality in arrival and suggest that arrival be studied as a general phenomenon to uncover hidden facets of institutionalized social life.

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• The creative economy: Production, consumption, and temporality

  2023. Henrik Fürst, Patrik Aspers. International Handbook of Economic Sociology, 358-372

  Chapter

  The creative economy is together with other economic domains, such as financial economy, natural resource economy, or labor economy, an obvious case of interest to economic sociologists, and a field to which economic sociologists have made contributions. It has grown to become an important part of the economy. The academic field covering the creative economy has grown, and the relevance and use of its theories and concepts go beyond its empirical boundaries. This chapter presents fundamental components of the creative economy, brings up the main research themes of this economy, and provides the key social science references for the field and its current debates. First, the central concepts of the cultural and creative economy are introduced. Second, we present research on artistic labor, focusing on artistic labor and commodity markets. Third, research on cultural consumption and the valuation of goods are discussed. Fourth, we conclude by discussing the temporal dimensions and transformations of the creative economy and its consequences for future research. The chapter ends by presenting some possible areas of future research.

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