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).     

Violence,the occult and the everyday: a Radio Zulu drama of the 1980s

This article explores how the medium of radio through the genre of radio drama enables the exploration of issues of power and violence in a way that is both public and intensely private. It argues that through the airing of a topic as feared, as secret and yet as pervasively present – or potentially so – as the supernatural and the occult, radio drama can open up for debate areas of modern life around which there is often official silence. The focus is on a double serial drama, single parts of a proverb, Yiz’ Uvalo and Inqobo Yisibindi (“In Spite of Fear, the Victor is Courage”). I discuss the power of radio to create an interactive community and particular public and the power of this particular drama to harness listeners’ interest, emotions and fears. It had the ability to fascinate and delight and to create a parallel world, which intersected with events but at the same time kept its own internal dynamic which impelled its listeners on with it. I explore too the particular elements within people’s lives and imaginings with which this drama interacted, and how this contributed to its extraordinary “success.”     

On reflexivity and the conduct of the self in everyday life: reflections on Bourdieu and Archer

This article provides a critique of the concept of reflexivity in social theory today and argues against the tendency to define agency exclusively in terms of reflexivity. Margaret Archer, in particular, is highlighted as a key proponent of this thesis. Archer argues that late modernity is characterized by reflexivity but, in our view, this position neglects the impact of more enduring aspects of agency, such as the routinization of social life and the role of the taken‐for‐granted. These concepts were pivotal to Bourdieu and Giddens' theorization of everyday life and action and to Foucault's understanding of technologies of the self. We offer Bourdieu's habitus as a more nuanced approach to theorizing agency, and provide an alternative account of reflexivity. Whilst accepting that reflexivity is a core aspect of agency, we argue that it operates to a backdrop of the routinization of social life and operates from within and not outside of habitus. We highlight the role of the breach in reflexivity, suggesting that it opens up a critical window for agents to initiate change. The article suggests caution in over‐ascribing reflexivity to agency, instead arguing that achieving reflexivity and change is a difficult and fraught process, which has emotional and moral consequences. The effect of this is that people often prefer the status quo, rather than to risk change and uncertainty.     

Reading self‐help literature in Russia: governmentality,psychology and subjectivity

Self‐help has become a booming business over the past decades and an increasingly visible part of popular media culture worldwide. The paper analyzes the arrival and effects of this cultural technology in post‐Soviet Russia after more than seventy years of socialism. It examines how Russians are engaging with popular psychology self‐help as a technology of the self and how they are making it meaningful in their lives. Drawing on a set of one‐to‐one and focus group interviews conducted with self‐help readers, it examines how these individuals negotiate the new ethics and the normative models of personhood put forward by the self‐help genre. It argues that popular psychology has offered a new language for making sense of the self and the social world, and highlights how the readers critically engage with the normalizing power of popular psychology by drawing on a number of local historically sedimented discourses.     

Everyday territories: homelessness,outreach work and city space

This article develops a situational approach to understanding urban public life and, in particular, the production of urban territories. Our aim is to examine the ways in which city space might be understood as comprising multiple, shifting, mobile and rhythmed territories. We argue that such territories are best understood through attending to their everyday production and negotiation, rather than handling territory as an a priori construct. We develop this argument from the particular case of the street‐level politics of homelessness and street care. The experience of street homelessness and the provision of care in the public spaces of the city is characterised by precarious territorial claims made and lost. We describe some of the ways in which care work with rough sleepers is itself precarious; ‘homeless’, in lacking a distinct setting in which it might get done. Indeed, outreach work takes place within and affirms homeless territories. The affirmation of territory is shown to be central to the relationship developed between the workers and their rough sleeping clients. We also show, however, the ways in which outreach workers operate on territory not their own, twice over. Outreach work is precarious in that it is practised within, and can run counter to, other territorial productions in which the experience of urban need and the work and politics of care are entangled. In sum, this article aims to move beyond static and binary understandings by developing a mobile and situational approach to city space which recognises the intensive yet overlooked work of territorial production.     

‘Life stage dissolution’ in Anglo‐American advertising and popular culture: Kidults,Lil’ Britneys and Middle Youths

The ‘long road to adulthood’ that supposedly now characterizes the period from the teens to the late twenties (for individuals in developed countries) has been the subject of much recent media and academic commentary. This paper adopts a sociological perspective to review and critique this commentary, and in particular the argument made by certain developmental psychologists that the period between adolescence and fully‐fledged adulthood is now distinct enough to constitute a new stage in the life cycle known as ‘emerging adulthood’. In contrast, it is argued that, rather than anything as significant as a new life stage, what is actually happening is the erosion of established ones. To illustrate this point, the article introduces the new theoretical concept of ‘life stage dissolution’ (and its attendant bi‐directional processes of ‘adultification’ and ‘infantilization’) – a blurring (or more accurately merging) process that makes it increasingly difficult for young people to differentiate and disassociate themselves from the generation immediately ahead of them, and indeed vice versa. The paper argues that, whilst this process takes a number of cultural/psychosocial forms, it is at its most prominent in contemporary Anglo‐American advertising and marketing practices that actively seek to erode traditionally demarcated adult and childhood roles, differences, and oppositions as a new and distinct message within contemporary consumerism.     

THE CHALLENGE OF REVENUE SHARING WITH BUNDLED PRICING: AN APPLICATION TO MUSIC

Although bundling can substantially increase profits relative to standalone pricing, particularly for zero‐marginal‐cost information products, it has one major problem: bundling produces revenue that is not readily attributable to particular pieces of intellectual property, creating a revenue division problem. We evaluate several possible solutions using unique song valuation survey data. We find the Shapley value, a well‐motivated theoretical solution, is universally incentive compatible (all bundle elements fare better inside the bundle than under standalone pricing), but revenue‐sharing schemes feasible with readily available consumption data are not. Among feasible schemes, Ginsburgh and Zang's modified Shapley value performs best. (JEL C71, D79, L14)     

Post‐Fordist reconfigurations of gender,work and life: theory and practice

Based on an in‐depth study with 56 informants (25 women and 31 men), across the ICT (information and communication technology), creative and academic sectors in one city/regional hub in Ireland, this article investigates the so‐called revolution in work/life practices associated with the post‐Fordist labour processes of the Knowledge Economy from the perspectives of workers themselves. Recent theorizations of post‐Fordist work patterns emphasize a rearranging of work and life place boundaries; a reconfiguring of work and life time boundaries; and a dissolving of the gendered boundaries of work and life (production and social reproduction) (Adkins and Dever 2014 ; Morini and Fumagalli 2010 ; Gill and Pratt 2008 ; Weeks 2007 ; Hardt and Negri 2004 ). Our findings suggest that, instead of dissolving boundaries, workers constantly struggle to draw boundaries between what counts as work and as life, and that this varies primarily in relation to gender and stage in a gendered life trajectory. Work extensification is compensated for via a perceived freedom to shape one's own life, which is articulated in terms of individualized boundary‐drawing. While younger men embraced ‘always on’ work, they also articulated anxieties about how these work habits might interfere with family aspirations. This was also true for younger women who also struggled to make time for life in the present. For mothers, boundary drawing was articulated as a necessity but was framed more in terms of personal choice by fathers. Although all participants distinguished between paid work and life as distinct sites of value, boundaries were individually drawn and resist any easy mapping of masculinity and femininity onto the domains of work and life. Instead, we argue that it is the process of boundary drawing that reveals gendered patterns. The personalized struggles of these relatively privileged middle‐class workers centre on improving the quality of their lives, but raise important questions about the political possibilities within and beyond the world of post‐Fordist labour.     

Migrant Assimilation in Europe: A Transnational Family Affair1

The paper advances our empirical and theoretical understanding of migrant assimilation. It does so by focusing on a very particular group of individuals who appear more likely than other migrant types to “go native.” We call these individuals “mixed nationality relationship migrants” (i.e., migrants who have committed to a life outside their home country because of the presence of a foreign partner). The paper argues that the transnational family milieus that emerge from this form of international migration are critical to the assimilation process. Empirical material from 11 in‐depth interviews with female migrants in Britain (Sheffield) and France (Paris) supports our argument. We also suggest that such “extreme” assimilation is more likely within a regional migratory system – like the EU – where the “identity frontiers” crossed in the formation of a transnational family are relatively shallow.     

The economy of smiles: affect,labour and the contemporary deserving poor

This paper examines the affective dimensions of new forms of informal entrepreneurial work carried out in spaces of unemployment. Situating the analysis within contemporary scholarship on deservingness and on affect and labour, I shed light on the forms of entrepreneurial labour that rely upon affect‐driven economies of exchange underpinned by moral judgements of deservingness, value and worth. In particular, this paper draws on a multi‐city (Melbourne, London, San Francisco) study of homeless street press sellers (The Big Issue and Street Sheet) to explore the ways in which contemporary practices of charity and care are carried out through individualized market‐place exchanges. Sellers’ accounts of their work reveal how smiling and being (or looking) happy is a performative expectation that must be managed in the face of poverty and precarity.     

Anticipating Nollywood: Lagos circa 1996

This essay discusses the Nigerian film Owo Blow (1996 Owo Blow. 1996. Film. Directed by T. Ogidan, Nigeria: First Call Production and Support.  [Google Scholar]), as a way to examine an aesthetic tendency that is largely missing in Nollywood, and to explore the relationship between media and the city, particularly in regard to Lagos. I use this film to propose three issues that are worth highlighting for a productive engagement with the relationship between media and urbanity. First, I argue that the current global interest in Nollywood is highly mediated, isolating the English‐language‐accented, popular genre‐formatted sub‐genre as the Nollywood film. Secondly, this process of mediation has tended to a kind of totalisation because it emphasises the commercial as the primary identity of the cinematic practice. Thirdly, I argue that the possible globalisation of Nollywood is undercut by limitations on how well the generic type can travel. Although recent and longstanding bureaucratic exhortations of Nigerian filmmakers to promote positive images of the country are often derided, Nollywood already fulfils this expectation by default because a systemic, ideologically explicit critique of Lagos as an urban city, for instance, is hard to come by in the films. I contrast this with Owo Blow, which attempts one such critique, a multi‐layered analysis of Lagos as a case study of the postcolonial incredible.     

Singers and Stereotypes: The Image of Female Recording Artists*

This study investigates the image of popular female singers in different musical styles as conveyed through their album cover photographs. Slides were made of ninety-one albums recorded by women between 1973 and 1981. They were shown in subgroups to panels of judges who rated them on thirty-one traits. These traits represent either (a) aspects of the “traditional” feminine stereotype, (b) qualities of sexual attractiveness, or (c) positive, but not specifically feminine, traits. The results indicate that female singers were rated positively, regardless of musical style. Country singers were rated relatively high on the traditional traits, while rhythm and blues artists were high on sex appeal and positive traits. Rock singers were rated as aloof and high on positive traits but low on traditionalism and sex appeal. Pop singers were not rated high or low on any dimension. Some differences in male and female raters’evaluations were found. It was concluded that female recording artists generally are not presented in the same stereotyped manner as women are usually portrayed in other forms of media advertising.     

Narrative Manhood Acts: Batterer Intervention Program Graduates' Tragic Relationships

We analyze how twenty graduates of a Batterer Intervention Program constructed autobiographical stories about their relationships with women they assaulted. We focus on the presentation of gendered selves via narrative manhood acts, which we define as self‐narratives that signify membership in the category “man” and the possession of a masculine self. We also show how graduates constructed self‐narratives as a genre that was oppositional to organizational narratives: rather than adopting the program's domestic violence melodrama or preferred conversion narrative, graduates used the larger culture—especially “bitch” imagery and sometimes racialized discourse—to construct tragedies. Our study demonstrates the usefulness of narrative analysis for research on batterers' accounts and manhood acts, and also shows how oppositional genre‐making can be a method to resist organizational narratives.     

Collaborative Music‐Making with Digital Audio Workstations: The “nth Member” as a Heuristic Device for Understanding the Role of Technologies in Audio Composition

This article examines amateur music‐making using a digital audio workstation, showing how audio and software are used as resources for creating compositions. The article has two aims. Firstly, to depict how digital music‐making is formed from routine interactional techniques. Secondly, to probe how researchers might account for such multi‐modal activity through a heuristic device: the “nth member.” Whereas sociology has typically been concerned with the cultural facets of how music is made and consumed, we explore the material practices of collaborative song creation utilizing conversation analytic techniques—“turn‐taking” and “next‐selection”—to capture two key interactional moments.     

Defending the city

Abstract

In ‘Defending the City’ George Pattison seeks to defend the modern city against the charge — made, for example, by Graham Ward — that it is a merely secular phenomenon. Instead, he argues that, in its essence, it is multi‐dimensional and pluralistic, representing a range of diverse possibilities, creative as well as destructive. Also, the modern city is shown to anticipate the essential features of the postmodern city. The argument is illustrated by references to Pugin's critique of architectural eclecticism, to Dostoevsky's invocation of the fantastical reality of St. Petersburg, to Kierkegaard and to Murnau's film Sunrise. It is claimed that the best Christian response to the city is to defend, not to subvert, its pluralism.     

Jonny Steinberg’s The Number and prison life writing in post‐apartheid South Africa

Under apartheid, the prison autobiography enjoyed a privileged status, with the prison playing the role of the apartheid state in miniature: the penitentiary was one of the most coercive material manifestations of a racist and brutal regime. With the demise of apartheid, however, the prison autobiography has become a marginalised and depoliticised genre. The loss of status of the prison autobiography is paralleled by the endemic neglect of the penitentiary system, despite its important role in South African history. A close reading of the tropes and rhetoric of apartheid‐era prison writing can provide some explanation for the abrupt marginalisation of the penitentiary as a socially important space after 1994: in particular, the line that is drawn between criminal convicts and political prisoners in apartheid‐era prison autobiographies anticipates the neglect of the penitentiary under democracy. One exceptional post‐apartheid reflection on life in prison, Jonny Steinberg’s The Number, stands out both for asking subtle questions about the ideological boundary between the political and the criminal prisoner and for the way it perpetuates the tradition, forged under apartheid, of using the prison as a site for radical social analysis and criticism.     

Families in the Life Course: Interdependency of Roles,Role Configurations,and Pathways

Families are central in the unfolding life course. They have both internal and external dynamics that reflect and characterize the modern life span, and a life course perspective has particular utility for understanding the role and implications of families for individuals and society. The purpose of this paper is 3‐fold. First, we offer a family life course perspective that delineates core concepts of roles, role configurations, and pathways, specifies the links between them, and highlights the importance of linked lives and structural context. Second, we elaborate a latent class approach for modeling the multilayered dynamic interdependencies that characterize modern family life. Third, we provide an empirical example by considering the timing of childbearing, teen parenthood, and its place in the transition to adulthood using women's data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (N= 2,191). We conclude by discussing further avenues of family research that are enhanced with a life course approach and complementary latent structure methodology.     

Towards Critical Intersections of Ageing,Housing and Well-Being

ABSTRACT

Across the life course, far-reaching socio-demographic and health related transformations are influencing the meaning of home in the UK. The collection presented in this Special Issue of Home Futures critically interjects into the ‘where and when’ of dwelling during the process of ageing with key concepts explored within this introductory article. It argues that, change is seen through the disruption of conventional ideas of ageing ‘at home’, traditional understandings of ‘the older person’ and its corollary social imaginaries, alongside the relationship between care practices and homes. Many of these shifts are being addressed through a range of emerging housing (and collaborative) alternatives. The article concludes by considering how discussions in this special issue disclose the home, from a range of social and material angles, as a diverse process and experience of meaning making over time, deeply entangled with health and well-being, disrupting traditional understandings of ‘place making’ in later life.     

The New Normal1

The Great Recession has caused many Americans to reevaluate their consumption‐rich way of life. In response to the shrinking economy, they have spent less, saved more, and simplified their lives. This essay asks whether people will seek a return to their prerecession lifestyles—in particular a return to making the acquisition and consumption of consumer goods a major source of meaning and contentment—as soon as their economic condition allows or whether they will make their more austere lives their “new normal.” It evaluates existing research on contentment and suggests that if instead of choosing to return to their “old normal,” Americans learn to derive satisfaction from nonconsumerist sources, in particular social relations and transcendental activities (i.e., religious, contemplative, and cultural activities), they may find the new normal quite acceptable.     

Emigration for Development? An Exploration of the State's Role in the Development‐Migration Nexus: The Case of Romania

This article explores the proposition that the developmental potential of emigration depends on the context of the sending countries. It builds on the insights from the institutional approach to development and adapts them to the migration‐development nexus. It argues that government involvement is necessary if resources from emigration are to become seeds for development. By analysing the case of Romania, one of the largest labour sending countries in Eastern Europe, it argues that its laissez‐faire approach is likely not enough to capitalize on emigrants' resources for development.