Whelan, Andrew and Nowak, Raphael Alexandre (2022) Genre work:‘How’ vs ‘what’ questions in the sociology of music culture. The Sociological Review. ISSN 1467-954X
Abstract
The established conceptual frameworks in the sociology of music largely name forms of social collective, albeit emphasising different characteristics. ‘Scene’ and ‘neo-tribe’ are the principal contemporary examples of this. In this article, we describe scene and neo-tribe as conceptual responses to what questions (What kind of sociality is this? What kind of cultural context is this?). We engage critically with scene and neo-tribe, and with the underlying logic of sociological explanation which posits and then answers what questions about social collectives as the best means of accounting for social practices around music. We do this to advocate sociological enquiry into music via how questions, suggesting that such questions have a specific sociological trajectory which presents underexplored opportunities for the sociology of popular music. To this end, we introduce and describe the concept of ‘genre work’, to investigate how musical development and social groups are co-constituted through the same social processes and dynamics. We argue that scene and neo-tribe tend to background the empirical processes (and the music) around which their respective research agendas are oriented. Genre work and similar approaches, in contrast, seek to document and analyse the discourses, interactional forms and mediated and co-present activities by which genres and the social groupings interested in them are mutually cohered.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © The Author(s) 2022. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details |
Keywords: | genre,genre work,music cultures,neo-tribe,scene |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of York |
Academic Units: | The University of York > Faculty of Social Sciences (York) > Sociology (York) |
Depositing User: | Pure (York) |
Date Deposited: | 18 Oct 2022 16:50 |
Last Modified: | 16 Oct 2024 18:39 |
Published Version: | https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261221111874 |
Status: | Published online |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/00380261221111874 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:192310 |
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