{"id":478,"date":"2021-06-15T12:40:00","date_gmt":"2021-06-15T12:40:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hnr2021.historicalnetworkresearch.org\/?page_id=478"},"modified":"2021-06-18T18:08:14","modified_gmt":"2021-06-18T18:08:14","slug":"collective-identity-formation-through-symbolic-networks-the-emergence-of-auteur-filmmaking-in-new-hollywood","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/hnr2021.historicalnetworkresearch.org\/?page_id=478","title":{"rendered":"Collective identity formation through symbolic networks: The emergence of auteur filmmaking in New Hollywood"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h2 style=\"text-align:center\"><em>Katharina Burgdorf<\/em> and Henning Hillmann<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"box\"><strong>Time and Place:<\/strong> Thursday, 01.07., 13:30\u201313:50 \u2013 Room 2<br><strong>Session:<\/strong> Networks and Cultural Objects<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Keywords:<\/strong> Cultural networks; collaboration networks; citation networks; movie networks\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Background&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The 1960s saw a shift from the Golden Age of Hollywood to New Hollywood. This shift included&nbsp; changes with respect to visual and narrative style, and mode of production. It was driven by a&nbsp; community of young filmmakers that shared a novel artistic understanding of auteur filmmaking&nbsp; and challenged the predominant commercial understanding of the Golden Age. We ask how New Hollywood filmmakers formed their collective identity and drew boundaries from the old&nbsp; Hollywood studio system.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Our research builds on previous sociological research that asked how movements form and&nbsp; institutionalize new collective identities in political, cultural or economic fields. One stream in the&nbsp; sociological literature argues that tangible social ties among movement members, for example&nbsp; through collaborations are pivotal for the construction of new identities (Gould, 1995; Tilly, 2015).&nbsp; A different stream of research has pointed to the importance of symbols for the construction and&nbsp; institutionalization of new identities (DiMaggio, 2011). Historical studies of New Hollywood reveal&nbsp; evidence for both mechanisms. On the one hand, the collaborative nature of filmmaking entails&nbsp; the emergence of dense social networks. On the other hand, filmmakers can express symbolic&nbsp; boundaries through the shared use of citations as, for example, expressed in dialogue sequences&nbsp; that one film borrows from another. We expect that a cohesive co-citation rather than&nbsp; collaboration network provided the relational foundation for New Hollywood filmmakers&#8216;&nbsp; collective identity.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Methods&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To resolve this tension, we use data from the Internet Movie Database (IMDb) and analyze&nbsp; collaboration and co-citation networks of 17,783 American filmmakers and 52,353 feature films&nbsp; between 1930 and 2000. The two-mode collaboration network consists of filmmakers (directors&nbsp; and writers) that are connected to films in which they participated. The co-citation network&nbsp; consists of filmmakers that are connected if referring to the same film. We analyze both networks&nbsp; with respect to their cohesion as measured through network modularity.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Findings&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"826\" height=\"515\" src=\"http:\/\/hnr2021.historicalnetworkresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Graphik-Hollywood-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-482\" srcset=\"http:\/\/hnr2021.historicalnetworkresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Graphik-Hollywood-1.jpg 826w, http:\/\/hnr2021.historicalnetworkresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Graphik-Hollywood-1-300x187.jpg 300w, http:\/\/hnr2021.historicalnetworkresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Graphik-Hollywood-1-768x479.jpg 768w, http:\/\/hnr2021.historicalnetworkresearch.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Graphik-Hollywood-1-800x499.jpg 800w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 826px) 100vw, 826px\" \/><figcaption>Figure 4: Thick line: Collaboration network; Dashed line: Co-citation network (3-year moving windows); gray area marks the New Hollywood period.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>The results show a continuous decrease of modularity in the co-citation network at the time of the&nbsp; New Hollywood movement. During the same time, modularity in the collaboration network first&nbsp; increases and then stagnates. These findings indicate that collective identity formation of New&nbsp; Hollywood filmmakers operated through symbolic networks (i.e. co-citation networks) rather than&nbsp; tangible social networks (i.e. collaboration networks). While modularity of the collaboration&nbsp; network increases and then stagnates during the period of the New Hollywood movement,&nbsp; modularity of the co-citation network first increases and then starts to continuously decrease&nbsp; during the same period. These findings resonate with the idea of auteur filmmaking. Auteur&nbsp; filmmaking highlights the role of the individual filmmaker (director and or writer) as decisive for&nbsp; the filmmaking process which rather prohibits the emergence of dense collaboration networks.&nbsp; We argue that symbolic references allowed New Hollywood filmmakers to construct social and&nbsp; symbolic boundaries from the studio identity of the Golden Age of Hollywood, and to&nbsp; institutionalize a canon of valuable films that still serves as a touchstone for filmmakers today.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>References&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>DiMaggio, Paul. 2011. &#8222;Cultural networks.&#8220; The Sage handbook of social network analysis:286-310.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gould, Roger V. 1995. Insurgent identities: Class, community, and protest in Paris from 1848 to the&nbsp; Commune: University of Chicago Press.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tilly, Charles. 2015. Identities, boundaries and social ties: Routledge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Katharina Burgdorf and Henning Hillmann Time and Place: Thursday, 01.07., 13:30\u201313:50 \u2013 Room 2Session: Networks and Cultural Objects Keywords: Cultural networks; collaboration networks; citation networks; movie networks\u00a0 Background&nbsp;&nbsp; The 1960s saw a shift from the Golden Age of Hollywood to New Hollywood. This shift included&nbsp; changes with respect to visual and narrative style, and mode of production. It was driven<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/hnr2021.historicalnetworkresearch.org\/?page_id=478\">Weiterlesen<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":98,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnr2021.historicalnetworkresearch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/478"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnr2021.historicalnetworkresearch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnr2021.historicalnetworkresearch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnr2021.historicalnetworkresearch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnr2021.historicalnetworkresearch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=478"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/hnr2021.historicalnetworkresearch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":597,"href":"http:\/\/hnr2021.historicalnetworkresearch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/478\/revisions\/597"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnr2021.historicalnetworkresearch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/98"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnr2021.historicalnetworkresearch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}