American Behavioral Scientist

Woronkowicz, Joanna; Noonan, Douglas

doi: 10.1177/00027642231178517pmid: N/A

Chen, Wendy; Noonan, Douglas

doi: 10.1177/00027642231179923pmid: N/A

This paper examines and compares the funding distribution inequities in arts organizations across three different funding institutions—government grantmaking, charitable contributions, and crowdfunding—through different inequity measures. Based on three different datasets including the National Endowment for the Arts grants data, National Center for Charitable Statistics data, and Kickstarter crowdfunding data starting in 2009, we find that compared to non-arts funds on the same platforms, arts-related funds in these institutions are not more concentrated in the hands of a few, although the level of concentration is strikingly high. In addition, we find that nonprofit contributions are heavily concentrated, far more than government grants. However, contributions to arts nonprofits are not more concentrated than to other nonprofits. We also explore how the pandemic crisis impacted arts funding distributions.

Cornfield, Daniel B.; Herbolsheimer, Chancey; Bastian, Savannah

doi: 10.1177/00027642231177902pmid: N/A

As grantmaking intermediary organizations, local arts agencies (LAAs) play an important but under-researched role in realizing cultural equity—the incorporation of underrepresented groups and counternarratives into democratic discourse—in thousands of local communities throughout the United States. In deploying their diversity, equity, and inclusion grantmaking practices, LAAs vary in the degree to which they proactively encourage the artistic expression of underrepresented groups, such as immigrants and racial-ethnic minorities. Little research has been directed at the relationship between the relative population size of underrepresented groups in an LAA service area and an LAA’s likelihood of having a formal “race-ethnic targeting” policy, the proactive channeling of arts economic resources toward underrepresented community groups. Framing our analysis in sociological race relations theories, we examine patterns of association between an LAA’s likelihood of having a formal race-ethnic targeting policy and the percentage foreign-born of the residential population in an LAA service area based on 462 LAAs of the 2018 Local Arts Agency Profile collected by Americans for the Arts, a national dataset of LAAs that we augmented with U.S. Census demographic data on LAA service-area populations. We conclude by deriving from the curvilinear pattern of findings a “representation thesis” on the community social contexts in which proactive LAAs tend to target race-ethnic minorities for distributing arts economic resources.

Ateca-Amestoy, Victoria; Prieto-Rodriguez, Juan

doi: 10.1177/00027642231177655pmid: N/A

Cultural participation is an individual activity with relevant social dimensions. Democratic societies are concerned about the representation of social groups in cultural audiences and promote policies to increase participation focusing on planning aspects, such as in creative placemaking, or educational policies and social interventions targeted at some underrepresented social groups. Using the data derived from the 2017 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts from the United States, we estimate generalized entropy indexes to explore the more relevant dimensions to explain divides in cultural participation across the U.S. adult population, considering geographical and sociodemographic variables. Cultural engagement is characterized by the participation by highbrow, lowbrow, passive, active, live, and digital activities. Overall, we find that spatial and racial characteristics are not the most relevant, while education appears to be the most important source to explain access inequality. The pattern of digital participation is remarkably similar to the pattern of physical participation, thus showing some evidence that the divide and stratification of cultural practices in the real world translates to digital practices.

Burnill-Maier, Claire

doi: 10.1177/00027642231178286pmid: N/A

Against a backdrop of growing interest in localized cultural policy, this article explores the example of Oldham, an “overshadowed” town (Pike et al., 2016) situated on the edge of the Northern English city of Manchester (United Kingdom). While urban planning discourse has acknowledged the impact of large cities on neighboring satellite areas, finding that regeneration projects can result in a weak sense of place for [such] secondary towns (Turok, 2009), few have considered the extent to which arts organizations in secondary towns are able to sustain their work and create their own narratives. Drawing from the thought of Pierre Bourdieu and from theories of institutional logics, I adopt a relational approach to exploring the ways in which organizations within the local cultural ecology understand their operating environment. Although cultural policy endeavors to use local arts infrastructure to build local capacity, this case study reveals a situation in which those organizations in satellite towns remain unable to gain the status enjoyed by their metropolitan counterparts. Further, it examples a field that remains highly institutionalized, hierarchical, and increasingly professionalized. Institutional arrangements result in organizations in the satellite-town depending upon its city neighbor for crucial legitimating capitals. Just as stories of class reproduce patterns of inequality, this situation is similarly true for organizations. Organizations are found to be complicit in the production and reproduction of inequalities within the institutional field, with dominant organizations appearing more able to access legitimizing capital than others. Ultimately, I argue that organizations in satellite towns are heavily reliant on symbolic resources supplied by the institutional fields of greater scope in which they are nested. Organizations are required to harness the support of elite individuals and dominant “world-maker” organizations, which lie beyond their immediate local context to secure legitimacy for themselves and their activities. This situation I term “satellite dependency.”

Paulsen, Richard J.; Alper, Neil; Wassall, Gregory

doi: 10.1177/00027642231178281pmid: N/A

Using American Community Survey data, we describe the labor market experiences of sexual minority artists and arts majors and explore the differences in their earnings and employment. We identify workers in cohabiting relationships as being either in same-sex or opposite-sex relationships. We find that artists are more than twice as likely to be in same-sex relationships when compared to the overall workforce, largely driven by higher shares of males in same-sex relationships. A similar pattern is observed for arts majors when compared to all college graduates. We find significant heterogeneity in the share of workers in same-sex relationships across individual artist occupations and individual arts majors. In testing for differences in earnings and employment, we use regression analysis, finding an increased likelihood of unemployment for male and female artists in same-sex relationships, earnings penalties for males in same-sex relationships, and earnings premiums for females in same-sex relationships. However, like other studies using coupled data, we hesitate in using causal language in interpreting the earnings regression results due to data limitations.

Woronkowicz, Joanna

doi: 10.1177/00027642231177659pmid: N/A

This study examines the value of a college degree for artists, in addition to racial, sex, and ethnic differences. I use propensity score matching on data from the 2015–2019 American Community Survey to produce causal estimates of the effect of getting an arts degree and a non-arts bachelor’s degree on income, and the probability of unemployment, self-employment, and working in an arts industry. The results illustrate that degrees positively affect artists’ average incomes and, depending on the type of degree, the probability of working in an arts industry. The analyses also illustrate that degrees have differential effects on artists’ employment outcomes based on race, sex, and ethnicity, though not always in the direction we would expect. The results illustrate the often-delicate balance between building a career as an artist and maintaining a livelihood and that individual differences with respect to career aspirations and personal circumstances moderate employment outcomes that are often attributed to common educational trajectories.