I received my PhD from Columbia University before joining the London School of Economics as an Assistant Professor of Sociology. I am interested in issues of social status and status inequality: why people and groups are perceived as more or less valuable, and how this affects their social outcomes. My first book, Market Chains (to be published by Princeton University Press) explores the role of the market in the consecration of modern artists in Paris between 1870 and 1930. In more recent work I have studied cultural hierarchy and its role in cementing the status of elites in Gilded Age America. The database for that project is publicly available here. Other current projects include an analysis of the relations between old and new elites in the Bay Area, and a study of collaborations and careers in the creative industries.

At LSE I co-organize the Sociology Department’s colloquium series, as well as the Inequalities seminar at the International Inequalities Institute.

Here is a link to my LSE webpage.

Published and Forthcoming Work

Market Chains: Careers and Creativity in the Market for Modern Art. Under contract, Princeton University Press.

"Consecration: A Structural View." Forthcoming, American Behavioral Scientist.

"Creativity from Interaction: Artistic Movements and the Creativity Careers of Modern Painters." Poetics 37: 267-294.

"Market and Hierarchy: The Social Structure of Production Decisions in a Cultural Market." Histoire & Mesure 23: 177-218.

Working Papers

"A Theory of Consecration: Intermediation and the Formation of Economic Value in the Market for Modern Art."

"From Cultural Purity to the Segregated Inclusion of Culture: Subscribers to the New York Philharmonic in the Gilded Age" (with Shamus Khan and Adam Storer).


© Fabien Accominotti 2016. All rights reserved.