Rock ‘n’ Roll Music as a Timepiece

This essay illustrates the value of time in understanding baby boomers' experiences of rock ‘n’ roll. In a distinctively interactionist style, I use time as a sensitizing concept in my research on this phenomenon. The orientation that guides this research is methodological tourism, by which the researcher treats something as common and taken‐for‐granted as rock ‘n’ roll music in everyday life as strange if not exotic. Structurally, songs about time constitute the most visible temporal structures in the world of rock ‘n’ roll. Interactionally, I will argue that the concept of the cohort is more useful than that of the decade for an interpretive analysis of musical nostalgia, a key feature of the phenomenon in question. Illustrations of the reflexive relationship between rock ‘n’ roll and time in middle age include using awareness of recent deaths of rock ‘n’ roll performers to interpret the existential significance of aging; using rock ‘n’ roll songs as benchmarks for significant events such as birthdays and anniversaries, as well as gift giving for these events; and using rock ‘n’ roll music to pass the time.     

Notes on contributors

This article focuses on the organizational practices of the music industry to contribute a neglected dimension to our understanding of rap as a commercial activity and cultural form. It initially situates the production of rap within the context of the corporate strategies and business practices of musical entertainment companies, stressing how rap production is located within the context of corporate ‘black music divisions’ and the major labels' relationships to smaller companies. At the same time, the study considers how musical production is shaped by broader culture processes and practices that are not directly within the control or understanding of the company. As corporate organization intersects with and attempts to make sense of surrounding culture, I argue that the actions of recording companies are a direct intervention into and contribution to the way in which the social world is rationalized and fragmented and through which different cultural experiences are separated and treated unequally. This argument is focused on the theme of ‘the street’ and ‘executive suite’ through which I suggest that, while it is important to acknowledge the struggles of rap artists and entrepreneurs for both recognition and independence from the corporate world, it is also important to highlight deliberate attempts to maintain a distance between the corporate world and the genre culture of rap. This article seeks to contribute to our understanding of the articulations between musical genre, occupational practices and broader cultural formations, highlighting a significant series of connections and relational practices which connect production and consumption and the articulations through which corporate organization is linked to broader cultural formations.     

New ways of working (NWW): work space and cultural change in virtualizing organizations

ABSTRACT

This study offers a grounded theory of ‘new ways of working’ (NWW), an organizational design concept of Dutch origin with a global relevance. NWW concern business solutions for flexible workspaces enabled by digital network technologies. Theoretically, NWW are analysed with reference to Lefebvre’s theory on the ‘production of space’ and are defined along three dimensions: the spatiotemporal ‘flexibilization’ of work practices, the ‘virtualization’ of the technologically pre-defined organization, and the ‘interfacialization’ of meaning making in the lifeworld of workers. Empirically, NWW are explored in a case study of an insurance company which in 2007 radically implemented NWW. The case study consists of a longitudinal – before and after implementation – research based on ethnographic fieldwork, conducted in 2007 and 2010. The article contributes with a conceptual framework for the analysis and management of NWW, and highlights contradictions and ambiguities in the implementation and appropriation of this innovative organizational design.     

Measure for measure: evaluating performance and the arts organisation

This paper discusses the cultural policy and impacts of the application of performance indicators to subsidised arts organisations in Britain. The context of this study is the increased accountability and measurement of the outputs of arts organisations by government funding agencies, and the related drive for improved productivity and efficiency. In an extension of performance measurement regimes in ‘public good’ provision, and the arguments concerning economic importance of the cultural industries, the performing arts occupy an uncomfortable place as a pre-industrial activity being subjected to notions of economic efficiency. This discussion concerns the focus for analysis of the measurements used – the three-Es of economy, efficiency and effectiveness - and the rationale underlying their imposition. The outputs and performance indicators of the major subsidised arts organisations are then presented, based on a ten year time series, revealing declining audiences and production, but increasing ticket prices and expenditure, which arguably undermines the performing arts ‘merit good’ status.     

A ‘desi’ diaspora? The production of ‘desiness’ and London's Asian urban music scene

Increasingly, the term ‘desi’ amongst British Asians has been commonly used to describe South Asian diasporic cultural forms and practices, particularly regarding musical genres and styles. This article opens up debate on its contested meanings and usage within the London Asian urban music scene. In unpacking the complex and contradictory meanings and uses of ‘desi’ across time, space and place, ‘desiness’ becomes exemplary of the ambivalent spaces of youthful diasporic identities in process. I argue that cultural practices, such as music production and consumption, provide critical tools to critique one-dimensional notions of ‘Britishness’ and ‘Asianness’, as well as to reassert normative notions of belonging and diaspora. The exploration of diasporic identities in the making within the spaces of London Asian cultural production highlights the importance of everyday forms and practices and fosters a better understanding of multiculture and new modes of belonging in London.     

Practicing Birchism: The Assumption and Limits of Idiocultural Coherence in Framing Theory

Social movement theory and research over the past twenty years have utilized the concepts incorporated under the rubric of Framing Theory in order to draw attention to the cultural ‘meaning work’ within a social movement or social movement organization. Underlying Framing Theory is an assumption of what I term idiocultural coherence – that for a movement organization to be successful, its members must come to agree cognitively with its cultural understandings and identify collectively with it. Drawing on an example of the John Birch Society, a very successful conspiratorial, anti-communist organization, I show how people may join a social movement organization not because they necessarily or fully agree with its collective action frames but because it provides an opportunity to act collectively and publicly perform a collective identity. I argue that a narrow focus on idiocultural processes obfuscates important cultural processes ‘outside’ of a movement organization that have an impact on how and why people join an organization and maintain membership.     

The Relationship Between Box Office and Repertoire: a Case Study of Opera*

This is a study of opera as a performing arts organization. The concept of market is used to explain the selection of repertoire. The box office—an expression of client-centeredness—acts to constrain repertory selections, and affects the content and style of opera production in the United States.     

European Muslims’ engagement in the public sphere soft counterpublics

This article addresses European Muslims’ public engagement in the arts by applying the concept of counterpublics. It examines two case studies of young German Muslims whose involvement in the public sphere can be described as soft counterpublics. The term soft counterpublics denotes publics that show some characteristics of counterpublics, but are at the same time not only about ‘countering’. They can be seen as ‘in between’ cases, neither strong counterpublics nor completely beyond counterpublics. Their art reflects a diversity of interests that are translated into public expressions and related back to their multiple identities. Motivations and themes are multi-layered. Occasionally, topics address stereotypes and negative identity representations of Muslims, which reflect important characteristics of counterpublics. However, themes can deal with a broad range of matters that go beyond this particular issue and that can be seen in isolation of counterpublics. On the one hand, there is a natural interest in the arts as a tool to express oneself, which is not a typical case of counterpublics. On the other hand, there is also the intention to speak to people through the arts. As well as wanting to reach the Muslim youth community in Germany, who can identify with their art, the case studies are also concerned about the non-Muslim German community and its perception of Muslim identity in Germany.     

Breasted experiences in pregnancy: an examination through photographs

Drawing on qualitative data from a sample of pregnant women in Hobart, Australia this article uses ‘feminist’ ‘memory work’ and the ‘photovoice’ method as frames for discussing the ways in which interviews and participant-produced photographs may be used to trace and understand pregnant embodiment. I argue that digital photographs taken by women during pregnancy can reveal important information about how they negotiate their own experiences of breastedness and wearing maternity underwear over time. Here, the concept of ‘breastedness’ itself is expanded as women’s individual embodied experiences of pregnancy are reflected in the production and viewing of their own photographic images.     

The Politics of Temporality: An Analysis of Leftist Youth Politics and Generational Contention

Based on focus groups and in-depth interviews with young leftist political party activists in Uruguay, this article analyzes the dilemmas faced by young people as they use images from the past to interpret and orient their situation in the present and their aspirations for the future. They are the heirs to a highly romantic image of what it means to be a political activist on the Left; in this sense, the shadow of the radical Sixties and the omnipresent image of armed struggle and military dictatorship define them. But the reality of politics in contemporary democratic Uruguay is that of pressing for incremental and routine social reform inside a ‘Broad Front’ where ideological definitions for the future have become hazy. This paper explores the various ways that young Uruguayan Leftists work to reconcile these different senses of time and how these mediate their relationships with ‘significant generational others’. In so doing, I place the concept of time, of the perceived and socially constructed sense of acting in the current of a particular historical time, at the center of analysis.     

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.     

Organizing the organism: a re-casting of the bio-social interface for our times

I present a future-oriented look at sociology and anthropology's historical appropriation of the concept of organism. The ‘future’ of which I speak is one in which the biological and technological are blending together. In cultural and science studies, the figure of the ‘cyborg’ is often discussed in this context. But the cyborg tends to be treated as a specifically ‘postmodern’ innovation, whereas the organism has always invited the cyborg's ontological ambivalence. This sensibility goes back to the dawn of both the modern biomedical sciences and the social sciences. I begin on the relatively familiar terrain of the role that emerging medical conceptions of the organism in the mid-nineteenth century played in the formation of such founding figures of sociology and anthropology as Emile Durkheim and Franz Boas. I then move to the specific ‘relativization’ of Darwin's theory of evolution that fostered turn-of-the-century conceptions of the social organism, including that emergent entity, the ‘superorganism’, which figures prominently – albeit differently – in the attempts to characterize the uniquely ‘human’ character of culture and technology. Finally I look at one very explicitly ‘constructivist’ approach to the social organism promoted by the distinguished chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, who was in turn anathematized by Max Weber in one of the original episodes of sociology's disciplinary boundary maintenance. The pride of place that Ostwald gave to ‘catalysts’ in consolidating and enhancing social organisms – from business firms to academic disciplines – earns his perspective a second look in our time. I end with directions for further exploration, which include reviving Norbert Wiener's cybernetic vision.     

Digital media and cultural institutions in Russia: online magazines as aggregates of cultural services

ABSTRACT

Focusing on online magazines, this article sheds light on Russian cultural institutions from the perspective of digital media. My analysis concentrates on urban lifestyle magazines, a sub-category of consumer magazines and a media genre, which emerged in Russia in the glossy magazine format and is now experiencing a powerful ‘second rising’ on the internet. My article asks how the adaptation to the digital communication environment by lifestyle publications re-defines the very concept of a magazine and reorganizes the institutional ties between media and cultural industries. This focus enables me to analyse lifestyle magazines as a dynamic field of interaction in which cultural meanings are produced and negotiated. Based on new media studies, I see the cultural transcoding (Manovich 2002) of the networked and automatized information transmission into the magazines’ content as being a significant factor in the development of contemporary culture and media. Ultimately, my article introduces an attempt to analyse new media titles combining qualitative media analysis with the developing theory of ‘algorithmic culture’ (Striphas 2015). My argumentation is based on two case publications: Afisha, established in 1999 as a weekly glossy magazine introducing all cultural events in Moscow, and Inde, a digital-born regional lifestyle magazine focusing on urban culture in the Republic of Tatarstan. Urban lifestyle magazines are important for the institutional organization of Russian culture, as they direct their readers’ attention to a broad selection of arts, products and events; strengthen the link between consumers and cultural entrepreneurs and build on a long tradition of print journalism, thereby transmitting the values of reading and literacy to a popular public. Moreover, my analysis shows that, through their multi-platform publication strategy, online magazines (re)organize as aggregates of digital resources helping to manage cultural decision-making in a consumerist setting.     

Figures of youth: on the very object of Youth Studies

ABSTRACT

‘Youth’ as a social category is used and abused in all manner of ways across an array of fields, platforms, discourses and spaces, Youth Studies notwithstanding. When we talk about ‘young people’ sometimes we seem to be referring to different phenomena, depending upon our political interests, theoretical perspectives and research methods. This article interrogates how the concept of ‘youth’ is figuratively put to work. By suggesting different figures of youth, and inviting suggestions for more, I propose that tracing how they are situated in different ontological spaces can develop a clearer conception of our research object(s) and help reduce confusion and the possibility that we are talking past each other. The incomplete picture I want to paint of figures of youth, in quite broad-brush strokes, all inter-relate in something of a feedback loop, a material-semiotic assemblage that forms powerful affects for the ways that ‘youth’ is brought into being, how youth are researched, governed, co-opted and exploited.     

Is “cost disease” contagious? The case of early music ensembles

The article aims to supplement traditional explanations of why performing arts institutions tend to run a deficit. The case of early music ensembles shows that the traditionally cited mechanisms do not suffice to explain why these institutions catch Baumol’s “cost disease.” Baumol’s model may be supplemented by another, based on two related hypotheses: the deepening deficit of early music ensembles is related to their going professional and is due to the fact that they are simultaneously competing with subsidized orchestras on two markets: the concert market and the labor market for musicians.     

Schooling youth (sub)cultures in East Asian education: the case of high school rock in Taiwan

Over the past few years, some articles in this journal began to propose avenues of inquiry that would go beyond the long lasting subculture/post-subculture debate. This article aims to contribute to this emerging literature through examining the semi-independent role of ‘schooling’ in shaping specific patterns of youth (sub)cultural participation with specific reference to the role of high school rock music in Taiwan. I analyse how certain schooling structures and institutions – such as academic ranking and exams – frame the way students engage in their rock activities, and how this facilitates the popularity of heavy metal rock and the replication of exam culture in students’ rock subculture. Extending Shildrick and Macdonald’s use of the term ‘leisure career’, I suggest that an in-depth analysis of the interplay between young people’s ‘educational career’ and their focused leisure activities can be useful in understanding how specific patterns of decision making shape young students’ everyday culture and contribute to the distinctiveness of their subcultural participation.     

Social work stories: situated views and larger visions in disciplinary scholarship and education

ABSTRACT

This paper is about the changing imaginations of social work in an increasingly entangled world. It is also about the ways in which literatures shared across time and space encourage us to identify with larger collectivities. My central argument is that if social work is to find a larger vision in the wake of the failure of a range of modern progress narratives, we must engage differently with the challenge posed by multiplying and sometimes conflicting knowledge communities. Thinking with contemporary debates in transdisciplinary critical social theory, I nominate and explore a number of alternative heuristics—‘generational problematic,’ ‘translational space,’ and ‘imagined communities’—in support of future work on the uneven temporal and spatial communities of affiliation that reproduce and change what social work is, or could be, about. I conclude with theoretical suggestions, and some thoughts toward how social work education might better support incoming generations to locate themselves within the broader life-course of the discipline and profession.     

Perspectives of Culture-Bearers on the Vitality,Viability and Value of Traditional Khmer Music Genres in Contemporary Cambodia

Previous studies have explored the historical and social context for the endangerment and subsequent revitalisation of Cambodian performing arts, but little work has focused on music, or the views of culture-bearers themselves on these issues. By thematically analysing qualitative data from semi-structured interviews conducted in early 2013, this research explores the perspectives and motivations of a group of master-musicians, teachers and performers who are making efforts to sustain and revive their music traditions. Participants emphasised five factors that they believed significantly interplayed with the vitality of traditional Khmer music genres. Four of these were generally perceived to have an overall adverse effect on vitality: ‘outside’ influence; loss of interest and knowledge among younger people; low market demand for performances and teaching; and perpetuation of limiting constructs and belief systems. Only one factor identified was perceived to have a beneficial effect on vitality: the strength of infrastructure for learning and teaching. Somewhat surprisingly, then, opinions about the viability of traditional genres were on aggregate highly optimistic, though with some concern expressed about the impact of government action (and inaction) on this issue. Justifications given for sustaining and revitalising traditional Khmer genres included the role of these traditions in education and ritual, Cambodian national identity and musicians’ livelihoods. The study confirms the perceived value, among one group of culture-bearers, of revitalising Khmer music traditions.