The sociology of popular music, interdisciplinarity and aesthetic autonomy

This paper considers the impact of interdisciplinarity upon sociological research, focusing on one particular case: the academic study of popular music. 'Popular music studies' is an area of research characterized by interdisciplinarity and, in keeping with broader intellectual trends, this approach is assumed to offer significant advantages. As such, popular music studies is broadly typical of contemporary intellectual and governmental attitudes regarding the best way to research specific topics. Such interdisciplinarity, however, has potential costs and this paper highlights one of the most significant: an over-emphasis upon shared substantive interests and subsequent undervaluation of shared epistemological understandings. The end result is a form of 'ghettoization' within sociology itself, with residents of any particular ghetto displaying little awareness of developments in neighbouring ghettos. Reporting from one such ghetto, this paper considers some of the ways in which the sociology of popular music has been limited by its positioning within an interdisciplinary environment and suggests two strategies for developing a more fully-realized sociology of popular music. First, based on the assumption that a sociological understanding of popular music shares much in common with a sociological understanding of everything else, this paper calls for increased intradisciplinary research between sociologists of varying specialisms. The second strategy, however, involves a reconceptualization of the disciplinary limits of sociology, as it argues that a sociology of popular music needs to accept musical specificity as part of its remit. Such acceptance has thus far been limited not only by an interdisciplinary context but also by the long-standing sociological scepticism toward the analysis of aesthetic objects. As such, this paper offers an intervention into wider debates concerning the remit of sociological enquiry, and whether it is ever appropriate for sociological analyses of culture to consider 'internal' aesthetic structures. In relation to the specific case study, the paper argues that considering musical specificity is a necessary component of a sociology of popular music, and some possibilities for developing a 'materialist sociology of music' are outlined.     

Sea breeze: Globalisation and cook islands popular music

This paper examines the dynamics of Cook Islands popular music, most commonly referred to as ‘island music’. Among Cook Islands communities at home and abroad, island music is performed at informal gatherings, at nightclubs and bars. It is also a central component of large functions such as weddings and island fundraising events. String bands—who perform island music—undertake performance tours through New Zealand, the Cook Islands and French Polynesia. These bands also record audiotapes and CDs of their music, which are extremely popular among Cook Islander communities across the region. Despite island music's centrality in many social contexts it is also the subject of much critical debate. It is viewed by some both as a ‘bastardisation’ of ‘traditional’ expressive forms and as an indicator of ‘global’ corruption; local music is seen as ‘swamped’ by Western popular music. I argue that these debates are symptomatic of anxiety about globalisation and related notions of authenticity, cultural ownership and loss. They are also ultimately concerned with negotiating locality and identity across the Cook Islands diaspora.     

Researching youth culture and popular music: a methodological critique

In this article I argue the need for critical evaluation of qualitative research methodology in sociological studies of the relationship between youth culture and popular music. As the article illustrates, there is currently an absence of critical debate concerning methodological issues in this field of sociological research. In the first part of the article I begin to account for this absence by illustrating how early research on youth and music rejected the need for empirical research, relying instead on theories and concepts drawn from cultural Marxism. The second part of the article illustrates how the legacy of this early body of work in youth and music research manifests itself in current research which, although empirically grounded, is characterized by an almost total lack of engagement with methodological issues such as negotiating access to the field, management of field relations and ethical codes. Similarly problematic is the uncritical acceptance on the part of some researchers of their insider knowledge of particular youth musics and scenes as a means of gathering empirical data. In the final part of the article I focus on the issue of insider knowledge and the need for critical evaluation of its use as a methodological tool in field-based youth and music research.     

Preferences for popular music in and outside school among Chinese secondary school students

During the last two decades, China has experienced the emergence of vibrant popular music, resulting from globalisation and commercialisation. This empirical study investigates Chinese secondary students' popular music preferences in daily life, and to what extent and in what ways they prefer learning about popular music in school in the city of Changsha. Based on the findings from the survey questionnaires completed by 1816 secondary school students and interviews with 45 students from 8 secondary schools, this study revealed that Chinese teenagers preferred popular music styles in their daily lives and in school, particularly popular songs from Mainland China, the USA and the UK. There was a strong relationship found between school music teachers and the students' preferences for learning popular songs. Many of the students surveyed had their own popular music idols, but they mostly maintained that they liked their music idols because of their songs' melodies and lyrics. The findings also showed that there was a gap between the students' preferences for popular music and the popular music styles taught in school music lessons. Despite the division of classical and popular music learning among Chinese youths, most students conceded that these two musical styles should be taught in school music education. This study's findings challenge the notion of how popular music education in a culturally diverse community can be improved, as well as stimulate further examination of young students' music preferences in and outside the school environment.     

Where the mystical meets the market: creativity and commerce in the production of popular music

Taking as my theme the familiar opposition between commerce and creativity, this paper contrasts different sociological approaches to the production of popular music and questions some of the assumptions about the rational nature of the market and mystical character of creative inspiration, that are often implied when these terms—‘creativity’ and ‘commerce’—are used in this binary oppositional manner. In arguing for a sociology of the mundane practices that produce‘commercial’ and ‘creative’ texts, I suggest that the production of popular music does not so much involve a conflict between commerce and creativity, but a struggle over what is creative, and what is to be commercial.     

Discourse, interaction, and testimony: The making of selves in the U.S. Protestant dispute over homosexuality

Ethnography helps to elaborate Foucault's conception of power at work to produce subjects through micro-level interactions. I examine interactions among Protestants as they discuss homosexuality in two sites, an ex-gay movement seminar and a pro-gay liberal congregation. In two opposed groups, the genre of testimony produced an authentic-seeming truth, working performatively to produce group boundaries, to legitimate authority and hierarchies in the group, and to tacitly define certain categories as abject, unlivable. That groups can produce this effect in spite of their intentions illustrates how certain forms of social power inhere in language and work through everyday talk.     

Performative family: homosexuality,marriage and intergenerational dynamics in China

Using in‐depth interview data on nominal marriages – legal marriages between a gay man and a lesbian to give the appearance of heterosexuality – this paper develops the concept of performative family to explain the processes through which parents and their adult children negotiate and resolve disagreements in relation to marriage decisions in post‐socialist China. We identify three mechanisms – network pressure, a revised discourse of filial piety and resource leverage – through which parents influence their gay offspring's decision to turn to nominal marriage. We also delineate six strategies, namely minimizing network participation, changing expectations, making partial concessions, drawing the line, delaying decisions and ending the marriage, by which gay people in nominal marriages attempt to meet parental expectations while simultaneously retaining a degree of autonomy. Through these interactions, we argue that Chinese parents and their gay adult children implicitly and explicitly collaborate to perform family, emphasizing the importance of formally meeting society's expectations about marriage rather than substantively yielding to its demands. We also argue that the performative family is a pragmatic response to the tension between the persistent centrality of family and marriage and the rising tide of individualism in post‐socialist China. We believe that our findings highlight the specific predicament of homosexual people. They also shed light on the more general dynamics of intergenerational negotiation because there is evidence that the mechanisms used by parents to exert influence may well be similar between gay and non‐gay people.     

Prison sexology: Two personal accounts of masturbation,homosexuality, and rape

As revealed in two unrelated reports from prison inmates, the sexology of all‐male incarceration subdivides into masturbation, wet dreams, and partner contacts in association with heterosexual imagery; consenting homosexual pairing with one partner exclusively androphilic and the other bisexual; coercive partnerships with one partner dominating but not injuring the other and neither being permanently and exclusively androphilic; and violent homosexual rape. The long‐term outcomes of prison celibacy and homosexuality are not presently known. These outcomes need to be studied systematically and prospectively. It is suggested that it is illogical to punish sex offenders by incarcerating them in an environment that breeds sex offending. A system of conjugal visitation, and possibly of family living in prison, is a more logical, and probably the only alternative to institutionalized sexual brutality and homosexuality that is situationally evoked.     

Rap music,race, and perceptions of crime

Scholars who study rap music have long expressed concerns that criticism of the genre is inextricably linked to stereotypes of young Black men in the United States. Yet minimal research has empirically examined how rap music is linked to race in ways that legitimize and maintain anti‐Black attitudes, particularly attitudes related to crime. This article reviews how scholars have typically challenged seemingly racialized concerns about rap music before surveying the handful of studies that empirically examine attitudes related to rap music, race, and crime. In so doing, this essay highlights a growing need for broader conceptualizations of race/ethnicity and social control.     

A theory of scandal: Victorians, homosexuality, and the fall of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde is considered to be the iconic victim of 19th-century English puritanism. Yet the Victorian authorities rarely and only reluctantly enforced homosexuality laws. Moreover, Wilde's sexual predilections had long been common knowledge in London before his trial without affecting the dramatist's wide popularity. Focusing on the seemingly inconsistent Victorian attitudes toward homosexuality and the dynamics of the Oscar Wilde affair, this article develops a general theory of scandal as the disruptive publicity of transgression. The study of scandal reveals the effects of publicity on norm enforcement and throws into full relief the dramaturgical nature of the public sphere and norm work in society.     

Condition,orientation, role or false consciousness? Models of homosexuality and transsexualism1

Two aspects of theories of deviant behaviour are outlined and discussed. These are concerned with whether or not the deviant behaviour indicates some inherent quality of the actor and with the tenability of that behaviour from the theorist's point of view. Combining these aspects produces four models which are discussed here in relation to homosexuality and transsexualism. The ‘condition’ and ‘orientation’ models presume an intrinsic nature, whereas the ‘role’ and ‘ false consciousness’ models reject this conception. The ‘orientation’ and ‘role’ models regard the deviant phenomenon as acceptable, as a tenable variation, whereas the ‘condition’ and ‘false consciousness’ models regard it as unacceptable, as morally, biologically, politically or psychologically untenable.     

Voice,place and genre in popular song performance1

Earlier sociolinguistic studies have conceptualised popular song as a field of phonological variation where singers do or do not maintain features of their national or regional accents in singing. The present paper explores a wider agenda for the sociolinguistics of popular song, theorised as a diverse field of performance organised according to genre. Following initiatives in the sociology of popular music (particularly Simon Frith's research), voice is interpreted as the repertoire of meaning‐making options available to performers. Voice subsumes dialect indexicality, but also the management of singer identity and singer‐audience relations through the performance of lyrics, rhythmic and bodily modalities. Place is understood as the specific socio‐cultural contexts that are explicitly or implicitly voiced, including contexts of performance and reception. By performing within or against generically structured stylistic norms, performers construct and disseminate different vernacular values and identities. Live tracks from three different, broadly‐defined genres are considered in detail – classic rock and roll (Chuck Berry's Maybellene), folk/country (James Taylor's Copperline), and punk rock (the Sex Pistols’Johnny B. Goode).     

Of pain,passing and longing for music

Despite musicology’s historic veneration of ‘tragic’ (mostly physically or mentally impaired) artists, disability studies is still a new and controversial field in music scholarship. This essay addresses the recent emergence of disability studies in music scholarship from the perspective of a non‐visibly disabled musician and researcher. It examines the internal dissonance of passing as pain‐free and non‐disabled, the limitations of focusing on visible difference in musical performance and the complexities of performance where impairment, damage or pain is aurally evident, connecting the listener to the performer’s body. It calls for the study of musical bodies in all their manifestations, using pain and disability as analytic constructs.     

Gypsy fetish: music,dirt, magic,and freedom

This article offers a reading of Transylvania (2006) directed by Tony Gatlif. It makes evident Gypsy identity’s unconscious dynamics when it occupies the position of a fetish within the cinematic story and in the interaction of the viewer with the exotic images on the screen. This specific reading argues that Gypsy fetish signals and covers over a site of psychic pain for the protagonist as well as for the viewer. Our argument insists that as a fetish Gypsy identity props up the social order. In this sense Gypsy identity is not addressed as it often is as a symptom, or more specifically as a challenge to the social order, but instead the analysis renders it to be a concealment of the lack around which the symbolic network is articulated. The article further explores Gypsy identity’s music, magic, dirt, and freedom as its key characteristics which conserve a potential access to what was disavowed and covered over – a lost enjoyment.