Thomas
Franssen
Sociology of culture
Publications
Kuipers, G., Franssen, T. & Holla, S. (2019) Clouded judgments? Aesthetics, morality and everyday life in early 21st century culture, European Journal of Cultural Studies 22(4): 383-398. [PDF]
Franssen, T. & Velthuis, O. (2016) Making materiality matter: A sociological analysis of prices on the Dutch fiction book market, 1980-2009, Socio-Economic Review 14(2): 363-381. [PDF]
Franssen. T. (2015) How Books Travel. Translation Flows and the Practices of Dutch Acquiring Editors and New York Literary Scouts, 1980-2009. Dissertation, University of Amsterdam. [PDF]
Franssen, T. (2015) Book translations and the autonomy of genre subfields in the Dutch literary field, 1981-2009, Translation Studies 8(3): 302-320. [PDF]
Franssen, T. & Kuipers, G. (2015). Sociology of Literature and Publishing in the Early 21st Century: Away From the Centre, Cultural Sociology 9(3): 291-295. [PDF]
Franssen, T. (2015) Diversity in the Large-Scale Pole of Literary Production: An Analysis of Publishers’ Lists and the Dutch Literary Space, 2000–2009, Cultural Sociology 9(3): 382-400
[PDF]
Franssen, T. & Kuipers, G. (2013) Coping with Uncertainty, Abundance and Strife: Decision-Making Processes of Dutch Acquisition Editors in the Global Market for Translations, Poetics 41(1): 48-74. [PDF]
Franssen, T. (2012) Leren Lezen. Over de Beoordeling van Manuscripten door Acquirerend Redacteuren, Cahier voor Literatuurwetenschap 4: 61-78. [PDF]
Franssen, T. & Kuipers, G. (2011) Overvloed en onbehagen in de mondiale markt voor vertalingen, Sociologie 7(1): 67-93. [PDF]
In my dissertation I studied translation flows in the literary field, specifically towards the Dutch language in fiction and poetry publishing. I was particularly interested in the question how gatekeepers, such as literary scouts and acquiring editors, value new manuscripts. This included also the eventual pricing of books as consumer goods to be sold in the bookstore. For the dissertation I also developed a dataset of published fiction and poetry books in the Netherlands 1980-2009, to study the changes in translation flows over time as well as the structure of the Dutch literary field drawing on an analysis of publishers’ catalogues.
I continue to be inspired by cultural sociology, particularly when it concerns valuation processes. I occasionally work with Giselinde Kuipers. Most recently we wrote about the notion of qualification.
