Editorial introduction: Special Issue “Ethnographies of Artistic Work”

Howard S. Becker has taught sociology at Northwestern University and the University of Washington. He is the author of Outsiders, Art Worlds, Writing for Social Scientists, Tricks of the Trade, and Telling About Society. Home page: http://home.earthlink.net/~hsbecker

Marie Buscatto is maîtresse de conferences – H.D.R. at l'Université de Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne and a researcher at Georges Friedmann Research Center (Paris 1 – CNRS). She has led several intensive ethnographic surveys in modern organizations - call centers, automobile industry, insurance companies and distribution sector – and in the French Jazz world. Her current main research topics are women’s difficulties to get access and full recognition in artistic worlds and main gender segregations at work. She also develops epistemological reflections related to the uses and advantages of ethnography to study organized work. Her publications include Femmes du jazz. Musicalités, féminités, marginalisations (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2007); “Chanteuse de jazz n’est point métier d’homme. L’accord imparfait entre voix et instrument en France.” (Revue française de sociologie, 44 (1): 33-60, 2003); “De la vocation artistique au travail musical: tensions, compromis et ambivalences chez les musiciens de jazz” (Sociologie de l’art, Opus 5: 35-56, 2004); « Des managers à la marge : la stigmatisation d’une hiérarchie intermédiaire » (Revue française de sociologie, 43 (1): 73-98, 2002).