{"title":"From the ‘Musical Agora’ to an ‘Extreme Sport’: Negotiating Live Music’s Values in a Context of Urban Informality, Corruption and Violence in Mexico City","authors":"Michaël Spanu","doi":"10.1177/17499755231197868","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755231197868","url":null,"abstract":"Mexico City’s live music industry is well integrated into transnational economic flows, sharing certain features of the Global North, while simultaneously maintaining an informal organization and conflicting dynamics typical of the Global South. Since the late 1990s, both the government and the entertainment industry in Mexico City have increasingly invested in live music, reflecting a strong emphasis on economic and political capitalization. In contrast, a notable segment of live music professionals has developed a distinctive yet contentious set of values, in which live music constitutes an essential component of urban life. This article investigates independent promoters and venue managers through 21 detailed interviews. Beginning in the informal economy of the city, interviewees started live music projects for creative purposes and brought people together to form emotional connections. The concept of ‘musical agora’ embodies their unique combination of values, emphasizing their potential contribution to local cultural democracy. However, factors such as the market structure, bureaucracy, corruption and violence turn most independent live music activity into an ‘extreme sport’, reflecting the complex nature of professionalization processes within cultural sectors in Mexico City.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"80 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136237709","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Shifting Artistic Identity on Canvas: From ‘Painter-Worker’ to ‘Painter-Artist’ in a Commercial Painting Community","authors":"Jiayi Tian","doi":"10.1177/17499755231191572","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755231191572","url":null,"abstract":"This study investigates how painters in Village F use artworks to facilitate their identity shift from ‘painter-workers’ to ‘painter-artists’. Focusing on the painters’ interpretation of the visual contents, types of paints, and painting techniques, this article highlights the artworks’ role as a medium for identity construction, thus avoiding the silencing of artworks. Drawing on interview and observation data, it argues that the artwork offers a space where art/commerce negotiate with each other, and where the painters are reconciled with their past experience and identity. The complexity and ambiguity of artworks allow juxtaposition of various interpretations by the artists, which deconstructs the dualistic view of art/commerce and authentic/inauthentic artistic images. By introducing what the artists do in addition to what they say, this study views artistic identity as emerging from the interaction between the artists and artworks. It thus dialogues with the production of culture perspective and the interactionist approach to the construction of an artistic identity, and responds to the calling of bringing the artworks back in the sociology of art. It concludes by discussing the findings’ broader implications, the methodological effectiveness, and the limitations of this research.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"136237428","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kaisa Torkkeli, J. Mäkelä, P. Seitamaa-Hakkarainen
{"title":"Adjusting the Coordination of Parental Foodwork Practices","authors":"Kaisa Torkkeli, J. Mäkelä, P. Seitamaa-Hakkarainen","doi":"10.1177/17499755221096647","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221096647","url":null,"abstract":"Carrying out proper food practices in family life is seen as the inherent and taken-for-granted responsibility of parents. However, the theoretically solid and comprehensive picture of coordination relating to parental food practices is missing. This study aims to map the coordination of cooking-related practices in today’s hurried family life. By applying practice theory, we employ the concept of foodwork as referring to a bundle of cooking-related practices. The coordination of foodwork is explored through material arrangements, temporal activities and interpersonal relationships in the theoretical part of the study. The empirical analysis utilises multiform qualitative data consisting of cooking videos shot by five Finnish families for one week and interviews with the families. The concept of adjustments is developed through the data analysis to provide a nuanced understanding of how parents reflectively and unreflectively integrate their foodwork into inevitable ongoing changes of everyday life. The study elaborates on the coordination of parental foodwork defining six adjustment themes: appropriateness, sequences, synchronisation, duties, significance and acceptance. Themes illustrate continuous, temporal, material and interpersonal adjustments of foodwork. As a result, the study constructs the comprehensive understanding of parental foodwork by providing novel, theoretically and empirically elaborated and interrelated concepts for future studies. The concept of foodwork and themes of adjustment enable a topical and multidimensional approach to identify and interpret the complex coordination of practices, what, for example, the change towards healthier and more sustainable cooking and eating can provoke in households and a family life.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"17 1","pages":"309 - 330"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47325829","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"‘If You Move in the Same Circles as the Royals, then You’ll Get Stories About Them’: Royal Correspondents, Cultural Intermediaries and Class","authors":"Laurie Clancy","doi":"10.1177/17499755221092810","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755221092810","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the cultural politics of the Royal Correspondent: journalists who specialise in reporting news on the British royal family. It draws on in-depth interviews with Royal Correspondents and a broader understanding of royal news production, to position Royal Correspondents as cultural intermediaries. Pierre Bourdieu described cultural intermediaries as ‘taste-makers’ with influence over the construction of, and responses to, forms of culture (1984). This cultural intermediary role is significantly classed, where it is Royal Correspondents who demonstrate the appropriate ‘capital’ (Bourdieu, 1984) who get access to the most exclusive stories. The research finds that, because of the general secrecy around royal news, Royal Correspondents rely heavily upon elite networks and contacts, a practice that produces ‘homophilic’ (Fincham, 2019) tendencies in reporting as well as a hierarchical and nepotistic structure based around those with the most exclusive access. This creates intersectional classed inequalities between those Royal Correspondents who have elite contacts and work for elite institutions, and those who do not. Such exceptionality in access to royal news means that Royal Correspondents are not necessarily disturbing the ideological bases of monarchical power. Rather, they function in service of reproducing the classed power of the monarchical institution.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":"17 1","pages":"331 - 350"},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"65574965","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Performative Polarization: The Interactional and Cultural Drivers of Political Antagonism","authors":"M. Revers","doi":"10.1177/17499755231188808","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755231188808","url":null,"abstract":"Political backlash against liberal democracy and ubiquitous clashes between different versions of identity politics in recent years evoked a heightened awareness of political polarization. Rather than examining the mechanics of this process, social science predominantly conceives political polarization in a rather static manner and measures its prevalence and causes within and between societies. This article views political polarization as taking shape in the experience of political conflict. It proposes a cultural performance framework suitable to examine the social drama of political conflict and its connections to interpersonal political dispute. Performative polarization is premised upon antagonizing one public in order to win over and energize another public. It views political antagonism as constituted by (1) powerful performers and performances that provide the preparatory symbolic work and scripts and (2) divided publics who arbitrate their dramatic acts in ensuing performances and who collectively generate political divisions. The anti-Critical Race Theory campaign in the USA serves as a case study to work through the elements of this theoretical framework.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-08-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44727785","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Holocaust Memory as Cultural Code: The UK National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre as Case Study","authors":"Tracy Adams","doi":"10.1177/17499755231182764","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755231182764","url":null,"abstract":"This research focuses on the proposed UK National Holocaust Memorial and Learning Centre as a vibrant site of discursive contestation, investigating the heated public and political debate on this memory initiative that took place between 2019 and 2022 through a twofold analysis of elite intention and public reception. Findings demonstrate that Holocaust memory in the UK is infused with ambivalence and contradictory understandings of what the meanings of the past hold for the present. Bursting from the sphere-specific boundaries of memory, however, the debate soon turns into a social problem, one that illuminates broader societal issues that the contemporary British collective struggles with. Insofar as British Holocaust memory, in cultural terms, is bound within a sacralizing discourse, identified and characterized as linked to values such as freedom, democracy and equality, the proposed memory initiative breaks open a Pandora’s box that illuminates and underlines polluting qualities such as ambivalence, intolerance and inequality. The critical discussion currently going on in the UK around the memory initiative is so much more than merely a problem of commemoration or location; rather, it embodies the broader identity crisis that affects many in the British public nowadays. Contributing to memory studies and cultural sociology, this research demonstrates how a collective’s narrative of self is constantly negotiated, mediated through public discourse in ways that could potentially pave the way to civil repair.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-07-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47914375","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"On The Making of White American Identity: Ron Eyerman and Eric Taylor Woods in Conversation","authors":"R. Eyerman, E. Woods","doi":"10.1177/17499755231175726","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755231175726","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, Eric Taylor Woods asks Ron Eyerman about the motivations, methods, and ideas that informed the writing of his recent book, The Making of White American Identity (2022). The conversation focuses particularly on the significance of racism, the Civil War, and popular culture in the founding and sustaining of white American identity as a mobilizing force in American politics. Along the way, Woods and Eyerman discuss the comparability of white American identity with other collective identities, including Northern Irish Unionism; Serbian Identity; and Afrikaner Identity. The aim of printing this conversation is to provoke further research and debate on the cultural sociology of white American identity.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-07-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45525415","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Music Worlds and Event Networks: An Exposition","authors":"N. Crossley","doi":"10.1177/17499755231180182","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17499755231180182","url":null,"abstract":"Musical activity in contemporary societies clusters in distinct ‘music worlds’, centred on such factors as style and/or locality. A number of studies have analysed these music worlds as networks of participants, linked in a variety of ways. This is useful but only captures some aspects of music worlds, neglecting others. In this article I introduce the concept of ‘event networks’ as a complement which allows us to capture much that ‘participant networks’ exclude. An event network is a sequence of events, such as gigs, certain pairs of which are linked by a flow of both participants (e.g. artists, audience members and support personnel) and the various resources and (evolving) conventions those participants carry with them. It forms an important part of the social structure of a music world and we can analyse it, empirically, using social network analysis (SNA). In the first part of the article I elaborate theoretically upon the concept of event networks and its significance in relation to music worlds. In the second part I develop this via an illustrative analysis of an empirical event network. The purpose of this analysis is to stimulate further discussion of event networks, of the interpretation of their properties and of possibilities for future analyses.","PeriodicalId":46722,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Sociology","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.9,"publicationDate":"2023-07-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46410915","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}