Understanding the Realities of People's Cultural Activities: The Perspective of Antoine Hennion's Sociology of the "Amateur"

The purpose of this paper is to explore how to understand the realities of people's cultural activities through an examination of the sociology of Antoine Hennion, which has recently attracted attention in the field of cultural sociology. Hennion proposes unique cultural sociology focused on the "amateur." The usual approach of cultural sociology, represented by Pierre Bourdieu and Howard Becker, tends to attribute people's preferences for cultural activities to social contexts. In contrast, Hennion's approach takes amateurs more seriously by getting as close as possible to the amateur's specific activities. This paper starts by discussing the main concepts of Heninon's sociology and emphasizes the differences from the usual approach of Bourdieu and Becker. Then, referring to Hennion's ethnography of music lovers, it considers in detail how he describes the amateur's activities. From these discussions, we show that Hennion gives the amateur the same reflexive abilities as sociologists while requiring sociologists to participate in cultural activities from the same standpoint as amateurs. However, he does not describe how he became an amateur. Therefore, to confirm the validity of Hennon's approach, we apply his approach to a case study of Bunraku（Japanese puppet theater）using autoethnography. In conclusion, we point out the implications and limitations of Hennion's approach and suggest prospects for future research.