Roberto Velázquez-Quiroz

Roberto Velázquez-Quiroz

Ph.D. candidate in Sociology (UC Chile). I study the social and cultural forces structuring the production of art and science. I use computational and statistical techniques to observe the emerging properties of social fields.

Presentations

The Art of Connections: Social Relations and Cultural Value in Chile’s Contemporary Art Market

May 03, 2024

XII Congreso Chileno de Sociología, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile

This presentation examines the conditions for artists’ success in markets where private investment and philanthropy do not play a pivotal role in cultural consumption. Focusing on Chile’s model of state funding, the analysis contrasts Bones’ (1989) assumptions with evidence supporting the hypothesis that social connections are crucial, even when these connections are with public institutions, policymakers, and tastemakers. The presentation employs two-level hierarchical models to control for contextual conditions in predicting contemporary art sales before and after the economic impact of COVID-19.

Artists, Artworks, and Galleries: A Socio-Semantic Approach to the Contemporary Art Market and its Dualities

April 17, 2024

Duality@50: Making Progress and Looking Forward, ETH Zürich, Social Networks Lab, Ascona, Switzerland

In recent years, social scientists have increasingly focused on the production of cultural value as a prime example of the structure-content duality. Building on Ronald Breiger’s seminal work (1974), this presentation offers a socio-semantic network analysis of the contemporary art market, exploring the underlying mechanisms that shape its organizing principles. The research contributes to the existing literature by adopting a relational perspective to address core questions previously overlooked by economic and cultural analyses. Specifically, it examines the roles of organizational cultures and aesthetic topics in structuring the market for symbolic goods, the significance of various connections for competitiveness in the art scene, and the impact of social networks on access to social and symbolic resources in the art world. Methodologically this work combines Multilevel Exponential Random Graphs (MERGMs) and Structural Topic Models (STMs).

The Science of Sustainability: An Inter-organizational Approach to the Latin American Network

June 28, 2023

SUNBELT 2023, International Network for Social Network Analysis, Portland, US

This presentation aims to analyze the production of scientific knowledge in sustainability science within Latin America over the past 30 years, focusing on the structuring of the research network. The first stage of this study involves defining the field of sustainability science in the region, identifying key actors and centers of scientific knowledge production, and mapping the relationships between these entities. By building a macro-level map of the production network, we aim to elucidate the connections not only between scientific actors but also between scientific and non-scientific actors. This analysis provides insights into the collaborative dynamics and institutional landscapes shaping sustainability science in Latin America.

The Inter-organizational Field of Contemporary Art

June 27, 2023

SUNBELT 2023, International Network for Social Network Analysis, Portland, US

In recent years, the study of organizational fields within creative networks has become a focal point for examining both formal and informal relationships that contribute to value-making processes. This presentation centers on the inter-organizational field of contemporary art to empirically assess how ‘valuable’ art pieces emerge as a byproduct of the brokerage power exercised by organizations. By adopting a two-mode network perspective, this work provides an empirical approach to a classical sociological issue: under what conditions can homophilic selection affect access to material and symbolic resources in the art world? Ultimately, it seeks to determine which types of connections are crucial for convincing the art scene of an artist’s creative potential.

What is Sustainability Science? A Text Analysis Approach to the Field’s Semantic Structure

January 14, 2023

1st Chilean Social Network Conference 2023, CHISOCNET, Santiago, Chile

In the Climate Crisis era, sustainability science has emerged as a key response to societal unsustainability, serving as the lingua franca for transdisciplinary approaches across various fields. This presentation explores sustainability science over three decades of scientific production. We investigate the scientific network and language usage of sustainability science using secondary data and topic modeling. Key questions include: What are the field’s most important topics? How have these topics evolved over time? Analyzing 2.5 million academic publications, we use supervised and unsupervised text modeling to identify the field’s lexicon and linguistic topology. We also assess disciplinary expertise and publication dates as covariates in a comparative set of structural topic models (STM).

Aesthetic Dispositions and Cultural Variety: Hierarchical Clustering Analysis for Cultural Preferences in Contemporary Chile

February 07, 2021

IV ISA Forum of Sociology, International Sociology Association, Porto Alegre, Brazil

The presentation investigates the impact of Chile’s neoliberal cultural production reforms on aesthetic preferences and cultural repertoires. Using longitudinal data, the analysis estimates consumer patterns based on variations in aesthetic tastes across ten fields of cultural production. Hierarchical clustering is employed to categorize consumers into three types: omnivores, univores, and those with cultural variety. The study evaluates individual attributes influencing taste preferences, including gender, age, ethnicity, educational attainment, and the aesthetic dispositions reported by respondents.