Film and cinema as a subject of sociological study. Between tradition and the present

Abstract

Relations between sociology and cinema span over a hundred years. The author’s task is to reflect on this fact and, as a result, to present her own theoretical and methodological concept. Constructive framing is done in a historical perspective supplemented with methodological reflections using a variety of existing materials, scientific publications (library query) and the author’s own analyses. The basic research question concerns the state of the subdiscipline: what methodological, empirical and theoretical proposals have been developed; to what extent are they currently up to date or cultivated by scholars? A look at the broad heritage of the sociology of film and cinema allows us to see the gaps to be filled in in the area of empiricism and theory. This article does not address the reasons for this state of affairs in great detail, but merely indicates that an in-depth study of relationships and embedding data in the light of Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory or Pierre Bourdieu’s field concept could shed light on the issue from a different angle, in this case – the scope of the sociology of knowledge. One of the conclusions is that the sociology of film has a faint presence in the field of the sociology of art. The author tries to revive the old postulates of the Polish sociologists of culture and film (including A. Kłoskowska, C. Prasek, K. Żygulski), drawing theoretical inspiration from the philosophy of Ernst Cassirer and also using experience from her own research. What emerges as a result is a research model proposal (along with a research tool) in the field of the sociology of film/cinema, aimed at the cognition and comparison of images of reality.