Sociology has a long history of inquiry into music and the social activities surrounding it. Starting with Georg Simmel’s (1968) early reflections on music’s functions in structuring social relationships, some concern for music and the norms and values governing its production, meaning, and reception have been part of the sociological project since its disciplinary outset. While this interest in music as an aspect of social life has remained constant, during the final decades of the twentieth century, and now continuing into the twenty-first, the sociology of music has blossomed to include a variety of theoretical orientations and methodological approaches, as well as a range of topics of study. Much of this expansion has been connected to the development of cultural studies as a left-of-center sociological offshoot that has taken up an ambitious theoretical analysis of popular music as one of its central pillars. Consequently, any review of the sociological study of music would be remiss to ignore the exchanges of ideas, orientations, and methodologies that have existed between the discipline of sociology (properly defined) and this most established of its successor discourses. Acknowledging the considerable overlap and cross pollination that has occurred between the two disciplines, I present a single treatment of the state of the field – hereinafter referred to as the “sociology of music.” My purpose is less to provide a comprehensive overview than to lay out some of the major themes and concerns that have dominated the field since the mid-1970s, and to make the case that the sociological study of music makes an important contribution to our ongoing efforts to understand the human condition.
Before proceeding, a few points of clarification and qualification are in order. The United Kingdom, a nation with no notable history of rigorous sociological orthodoxy (Anderson 1968), was a logical birthplace for cultural studies. Amidst the social and political turmoil of the 1960s, and pushed by a generation of academics who came of age during the post-war changes in economies, technologies, and the music industry itself, cultural studies was born out of liberal sociologists’ and literary critics’ recognition of the undeniable social relevance of music. Its emergence within a nation that once boasted of having an empire upon which the sun never set served to nourish its engaged postcolonial stance and implicit rejection of empiricism. Cultural studies developed as a product of and logical participant in the rise of post-structural and postmodern intellectual thought, both of which brought forth a wider appreciation for interpretive frameworks of analysis. Although it has matured into a field that straddles multiple disciplines, its roots are most firmly within the tradition of sociological inquiry.
A second point of clarification regards the scope of this chapter. Given cultural studies’s British beginnings and the extent and influence of contemporary work being done by English-speaking scholars, my discussion of recent scholarship is largely centered on the Anglophone world, particularly the work of scholars situated within the United States and United Kingdom. Such a focus puts me in the somewhat delicate position of having to reconcile a British sociological tradition of heterodox approaches and orientations with an American tradition that has often aspired to emulate the technical expertise of the alleged “harder” social sciences. Of course neither this nor the dichotomy between proper sociology and cultural studies are as neat or absolute as I have presented them here. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that there are epistemic tensions surrounding the legitimation of knowledge and the relationship between researchers and research subjects found within certain corridors of the field.
The third point has to do with terminology, specifically my usage of the idiom “popular music.” There is an elaborate history within music-related scholarship of differentiating between “serious” and “popular” music forms. Serious or “art” music – that falling within the Western “classical” canon – has generally been regarded as having a musical autonomy that allows for its analytical treatment as great work existing above and outside the social contexts from which it emerges and passes through. Such a view has been especially prominent within more aesthetically oriented fields such as musicology and music theory. Popular music, on the other hand, has largely been thought of as a contaminated and/or corrupting form caught up in the intricacies of modern social life. Some recent scholarship within the sociology of music has worked to dismantle this dichotomy (see DeNora 1995). None of this withstanding, for my purposes here, it seems wise to maintain some sense of distinction and to clarify that I use the term “popular music” in reference to any of the commercially produced twentieth-century (and now twenty-first-century) music forms including but not limited to those fitting broadly within the genres blues, jazz, country, rhythm and blues, rock, reggae, rap, and electronic.
Sociological inquiries into music are chiefly concerned with the social contexts in which it is produced, circulated, consumed, and/or evaluated. As such, over the last half-century sociologists and cultural studies scholars have been pioneers in the study of popular music forms. The same perceived qualities that have encouraged music scholars within other fields to avoid popular music have made it particularly appealing to those within the sociological tradition. Popular music’s omnipresence as a feature of everyday life and its economic presence as a billion-dollar industry with important connections to several other industries make it too conspicuous for sociologists to ignore. For the most part, the sociology of music has stayed away from evaluations of “good” versus “bad” or “greater” versus “lesser” musics. In this respect, an adherence to sociology’s traditional edict of value-neutral scholarship (Weber 1949) has endured. Rather than making such evaluations, sociology of music scholars seek to understand the conditions and processes that inspire their development and contribute to their maintenance.
Contemporary sociology organizes itself around three principal theoretical perspectives, each of which can be linked to the ideas of foundational sociological thinkers. Although the various approaches and methodologies that comprise much of the recent work within the sociology of music often extend, straddle, and more generally complicate these paradigmatic boundaries, a basic familiarity with each of the three perspectives allows for a better understanding of where and how contemporary scholarship corresponds with and breaks from established sociological traditions.
The first and arguably most fundamental of these paradigms is structural functionalism. Strongly influenced by Émile Durkheim’s theories of social integration and collective conscience, structural functionalism is based on the idea that society “works” because of the stability, organization, and interdependence of its various components (see Durkheim 1947). Rather than chaos, social life is characterized by patterned behaviors and interactions – what sociologists refer to as social structures – that have evolved and continue to endure because of the particular social purposes they serve. Thus, on a grand scale, institutions such as marriage, religion, and education can each be understood and explained as having one or more social functions. John Ryan and Michael Hughes’s article “Breaking the Decision Chain” (2006) is a good example of recent sociology of music scholarship that fits within this framework. The article begins from the functionalist premise that, with the demise of genuine folk (music) communities, the music industry has come to serve the important role of mediating between music artists and audiences. Ryan and Hughes go on to structure their arguments regarding the drawbacks of contemporary do-it-yourself music production around the idea that the music producer – who occupies a prominent position in the music industry chain of production (Ryan and Peterson 1982) – plays a key function in steering the complex collaborative processes designed to ensure that music commodities are crafted to appeal to the people responsible for promoting and distributing them, and ultimately to the mass public. Consequently, in the absence of professional music production consultation, self-producing musicians struggle to reach their artistic and audience potentials.
The second perspective, which is most prominently associated with the ideas of Karl Marx, is referred to as conflict theory. In contrast to functionalists’ attention to social structures and stability, conflict theorists emphasize competition, inequality, and change as intrinsic qualities of social organization. Certainly most would agree with the functionalist view that societies exists through series of patterned activities, beliefs, and institutions, yet in doing so conflict theorists stress how social order is arrived at via social control – the distribution of power being the key variable in this dynamic. Marxism has historically had a strong presence within the sociology of music. The two most important centers of twentieth- century sociological music thought – the Frankfurt School (highlighted by the work of Theodor Adorno) and the Birmingham School – both embraced Marxist principles, albeit in vastly different ways. Adorno saw popular music as a product of commercial cultural industries designed to shape, distract, and pacify the mass public (see Horkheimer and Adorno 1993). This view is generally referred to as the massification perspective. The scholars of the Birmingham School’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) situated music at the center of collective youth associations – or subcultures – and theorized style as improvised resistance (Hebdige 1979).
The third and final sociological perspective is symbolic interactionism. Whereas structural functionalism and conflict theory both examine how broad (macro) patterns of social organization shape society, symbolic interactionism focuses on individual behaviors, shared meanings, and the ways in which people’s everyday actions shape the social construction of reality. In doing so, interactionists pay considerable attention to matters of agency as well as the dialogic relationship between self and society. Notable “forefathers” of this tradition include Max Weber, W. E. B. DuBois, and George Herbert Mead. Andy Bennett’s (1999a) study of white hip-hoppers in northeast England uses an interactionist approach to explore the various ways in which white youth, in the absence of a sizable black community, articulate their claims to hip-hop legitimacy. Interactionism’s interpretive framework has developed in opposition to functionalism’s positivist and empiricist leanings. Not surprisingly, cultural studies – with its emphases on the politics of style and meaning – has aligned most strongly with conflict and symbolic interactionist orientations.
Sociology emerged in response to conditions of modernity. Simply put, the field could not exist without some conception of society and the complexities inherent within it. As such, the analytic focus of the discipline has followed changes in social organization, activity, and administration – particularly in the “West” but now spreading to include more of the globalized world. The contemporary state of the sociological study of music reflects this parallel evolution of society and scholarship.
A number of important occurrences preceded the discipline’s current diversity of approaches and subject matters. Within North America and Europe – the traditional homes of sociological analysis – the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries brought forth a proliferation of musical styles. Factors contributing to this include: (a) improvements in instrument making and manufacturing; (b) the myriad non-Western influences introduced through the colonial encounter; (c) the use of music in the service of nationalism; (d) the invention and development of recording technologies; and (e) the beginnings of the modern music industry (Martin 1995). Although most sociologists of the early twentieth century concentrated on Western “art” music (see Sorokin 1937; Weber 1958), their appreciation for the social factors impacting it helped to cultivate the discipline’s burgeoning interest in the ways in which music mirrored the increasing complexity and heterogeneity of modern social life.
Popular music’s ascendance as a subject of sociological study issued from a second proliferation of musical styles linked to important changes in the music industry (Peterson 1990) and the development of the post-Second World War youth market (Bennett 2001). Advances in music playback technologies, most notably the increased portability, miniaturization, and personalization of listening devices, have had an accelerating effect on the everyday nature of music experience. This expanding ubiquity of popular music has made it an important feature in research on contemporary identity construction (see Gilroy 1993; Pisares 2006).
The cultural studies-led impetus to focus on popular music was prompted by the recognition of new forms of collective identification and differentiation among British post-war youth. Both the use of popular music in the political protests of the 1960s and the recognition of subcultural style as creative resistance (see above) encouraged sociologists to abandon earlier massification models. This resulted in innovative attempts to identify music’s dynamic and varied uses.
Within the academy particularly, the establishment of offshoot fields such as black studies, ethnic studies, and women’s studies introduced new discourses which worked to further de-center the sociology of music’s traditional Western classical bias. Shifts in the size and demographic make-up of national university systems – through the GI Bill in the United States and the Robbins Report in the United Kingdom – also fueled this change. Indeed, many participants in the early wave of popular music scholarship came from relatively humble backgrounds and were themselves products of these post-war shifts. By the close of the twentieth century, the rise of a consumer-driven academic model was encouraging more topics of everyday interest into university curriculums. Beyond music’s general appeal to college-aged people, courses which examine its social implications and dynamics also satisfy the increased interest in social/market research found within the business world.
Over the last thirty years the sociological study of music has grown to feature several notable approaches which span the range of the macro–micro, empirical– interpretive, and functional–critical dualities outlined above. In terms of focus, although certainly not in terms of theory or predisposition, we can categorize these in accordance with the two major twentieth-century schools of sociology of music thought.
One major thrust of recent sociological scholarship has continued the cultural industry focus of the Frankfurt School; yet it has broken from its unidirectional slope of massification theorizing. The most prominent approach to emerge out of this branch of research is the production of culture perspective best associated with the work of Richard Peterson (see Peterson and Anand 2004). Starting from an organizational systems framework that emphasizes design, structure, and decision-making processes, and influenced by Howard Becker’s work on cooperative creativity and “art worlds” (Becker 1982), the production of culture approach only tangentially addresses the question of whether cultural commodities are products of industries of mass manipulation. Rather, this perspective recognizes cultural production as a coordinated field of activity, and maintains that the sociology of culture (or music) should be most concerned with understanding the nature of such coordination in mediating between industries and audiences (see the above discussion of Ryan and Hughes 2006). The production of culture model proposes that symbolic production takes place at the nexus of six individually analyzable constraints: technologies, laws and regulations, industry structure, organizational structure, occupational careers, and markets. This approach is by no means limited to the sociological study of music. It has been used to examine industries as distinct as book publishing houses (Powell 1985) and French wineries (Ulin 1996). Furthermore, only a handful of the music-specific scholarships go through the rigors of detailing all six aspects of the production of culture model (see Peterson 1990). Still, an analysis of any of the six (or any combination) with some attention to the importance of the others marks a project as fitting within the general production of culture approach. It is therefore regarded as one of the leading “schools” of contemporary sociology of music research.
A notable derivative of the production of culture perspective is the circuit of culture model developed by Paul du Gay. Rather than using the organizational field of production as its central focus, the circuit of culture looks to examine the representations, social identities, production activities, consumptive uses, and regulations surrounding specific cultural objects. Du Gay’s pioneering application of this model was used to construct a sociological biography of the Sony Walkman (1997). Similar music-based applications have been conducted on 12-inch singles (Straw 2002), hip-hop cassette tapes (Harrison 2006), and compact discs (Straw 2009).
One of the chief criticisms leveled against the production of culture perspective is that its attention to organization and process has come at the expense of issues of power (Hesmondhalgh 2002). This criticism is tempered by the realization that analyses of the production arena often furnish some understanding of who benefits. But at its core, the production of culture perspective adheres more to Durkheimian notions of functional operation than Marxian views on competition and inequality. This, if nothing else, marks a significant departure from the Frankfurt tradition. There have been cultural industry analyses that more systematically take up questions of power and resistance. A key tension in much of this work has been the relationship between independent and majors record labels (see Roberts 2002) – particularly in an era when lines separating the two are often difficult to discern (Negus 1999). Other studies have explored the creative autonomy of local musicians and the role of music-making activities in structuring social life (Finnegan 1989).
Although the market forms one of Peterson’s six production of culture factors, it is rarely treated as a powerful determinant. To the contrary, the production of culture perspective tends to disempower audiences by emphasizing the creation of demand. The focus on consumers becomes the domain of a broad network of approaches that I collectively lump under the heading “music and identification.” There is a lengthy history within the sociology of music generally and the study of popular music specifically of investigating the appeal of particular music genres to defined taste publics – usually delineated along the axes of generation, class, race, ethnicity, and sometimes gender. Such approaches commonly involve survey research. These models often show parallels between a demographic group’s history of participation and representation in a given music genre and their appreciation of it. More elaborate theorizing has been prompted by the need to explain seeming disjunctures – for instance, the appeal of reggae music among white British youth (Jones 1988).
The early work by the CCCS sought to apply a logic of parallels to the music preferences of specific youth subcultures. This came to be known as homology theory (Willis 1978). The concept of homology is based on a synchronism between the values and aesthetic codes that members of a subculture aspired toward and the music they listened to. Thus, to cite a classic study done by Dick Hebdige, the “soulless, frantically driven music” of punks, was consistent with their ripped fashions, spiked hair, drug preferences, and “insurrectionary poses” (1979: 114). Research of this sort has been critiqued for being overly abstract, subjective, and problematically deterministic (Clarke 1990). Nevertheless, a general adherence to the homology principle, whether applied to style, social structure, or local culture, continues to inform a good deal of sociology of music research. For example, homological considerations typically underlie content analyses of cultural materials. The interpretive frameworks employed in much of this work have made it more accepted within cultural studies than within the discipline of sociology properly defined.
In the early 1990s, research conducted on music taste groupings began to reveal new patterns of eclectic high-status consumption. This came to be known as the omnivore thesis (Peterson and Simkus 1992). It proposes that whereas elite consumers once distinguished themselves through the consumption of high-brow cultural products, by the end of the twentieth century such statuses were increasingly conveyed through diverse tastes. Thus, rather than through just classical music, high cultural standing may be communicated through music collections that include jazz, blues, rock, reggae, Brazilian samba, and Moroccan Gnawa trance. There are good indications that such omnivorous tendencies are also increasingly found among middle-class consumers. In an era of rising omnivorousness, I believe sociologists have been right to pay particular attention to the popular music varieties that are often left off omnivores’ music playlists (Bryson 1996) – for any assertion of taste is also an assertion of distaste and research suggests that even omnivores are selective in their taste patterns (Peterson and Simkus 1992).
Another significant music and identification approach looks specifically at how music is employed in the service of identity construction. From this perspective, musical experiences (whether performing or listening) are seen as instances of self-in-process (Frith 1996). Such scholarship is founded on earlier research examining the social–psychological functions of music in society – which include helping to manage and express emotions, and organizing memories (Frith 1987). The notion of subcultural capital (Thornton 1995), which – building off the theories of Pierre Bourdieu (1984) – is defined as an alternative taste hierarchy within the terrain of youth culture, has become an important concept through which identity construction via music activity is theorized. Mapping subcultural capital becomes a means of understanding dynamics of boundary maintenance, belonging, and power within youth social collectivities.
Critiquing the rigidity of subculture as a serviceable analytic construct, starting in the 1990s popular music scholars began using alternative, multifocal models such as post-subculture (Muggleton 2000), neotribe (Bennett 1999b), and music scene (Straw 1991). Of these, the music scene perspective has gained the most currency. Music scenes are theorized as social spaces in which producers, musicians, and fans come together to create and sustain structures and sentiments of social cohesion (Peterson and Bennett 2004). Such a framework succeeds in consolidating the two dominant foci of sociological music scholarship – namely, production and consumption – through an emphasis on locality. The wide-scale acceptance of this perspective was preceded by research examining music’s role in the construction of space and place (see Stokes 1994). It was also fueled by a tradition of research on local music-making practices (see Cohen 1991). Recent music scene scholarship has expanded to include translocal and virtual scenes (Peterson and Bennett 2004). This perspective has been additionally effective in promoting the use of qualitative and particularly ethnographic research methods (Cohen 1993) – once primarily the domain of ethnomusicology. And there is an emerging body of sociological music research that uses ethnography to explore music’s role in ordering aspects of everyday life (see DeNora 2000).
One area where the sociology of music has been sparse is in its examination of music within non-Western societies – again, most of this work has been left to ethnomusicologists. This is unfortunate since comparative cross-cultural analyses would likely lead to better understandings of particulars and universals with regards to music. Certainly enough has transpired to illustrate how ethnocentric notions about Western classical music’s inherent superiority once limited the field. The favorable reception of the music scene model could very well encourage more sociological studies of localities outside the traditional sociological geography.
During the last twenty years, the concept of authenticity has become central to the sociology of music theorizing. Authenticity gets fabricated through the music industry (Peterson 1997). It is also a prized feature of subcultural capital (Harrison 2009). Similarly most music enthusiasts seek out authentic musical experiences (Grazian 2003). Authenticity’s appeal as a conceptual unit lies in the fact that it provides music sociology scholars with a means to negotiate the treacherous terrain of music evaluation. Rather than judging music as better or worse, authenticity, which is never naturally occurring but rather “a discursive trope of great persuasive power” (Stokes 1994: 7), functions as the essential quality that for most listeners makes music good.
Further research in the sociology of music would do well to explore the zones in which inauthentic music is most widely appreciated. Even with some awareness of the music industry’s hit-making practices – think “American Idol” – millions of people still enjoy the most popular of inauthentic “pop music” forms (see Frith 2001). In some respects, the music and identification field’s focus on subcultures and distinct music scenes has limited its attention to the dynamics impacting pop music identification. There is still much consolidating to be done.
The last thirty years have brought tremendous advances to sociological music scholarship, including the development of sophisticated theoretical models, the adoption of various methods of inquiry, and the introduction of new epistemological paradigms. Sociological studies of music proceed from the recognition that music is both a product of and an instrumental force in shaping social processes. Music’s creation, reception, and evaluation are influenced by the nature of the circumstances in which they occur; at the same time, music is regularly pressed into action within a variety of social settings (DeNora 2000). The sociology of music therefore seeks to understand and explain music as a dynamic societal phenomenon embedded in a wide range of social contexts.
Early sociological studies of music tended to use it as a case study through which to illustrate a particular theoretical claim (Martin 1995). In the post-war period, music forms themselves became subjects of sociological investigation. Recent sociology of music scholarship has matured to the point of recognizing music as a highly synergetic process which organizes social activity and structures social relations.
Thus, music sociology has taken up the difficult challenge of uncovering the situational bases upon which everyday evaluations of music are made, as well as the commercial operations that often underlie them. In this respect, the music sociologist must also be a social critic. It is his or her task to examine and make sense out of the distinct connections between aesthetic conventions, social structures, and social relations that comprise musical life.
See also Adorno (Chapter 36), Continental philosophy and music (Chapter 26), Ethnomusicology (Chapter 49), Music and politics (Chapter 50), Popular music (Chapter 37), and Rock (Chapter 38).
Anderson, P. (1968) “Components of the National Culture,” New Left Review 50: 1–57.
Becker, H. (1982) Art Worlds, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Bennett, A. (1999a) “Rappin’ on the Tyne: White Hip Hop Culture in Northeast England – an Ethnographic Study,” Sociological Review 47: 1–24.
—— (1999b) “Subculture or Neo-tribes? Rethinking the Relationship Between Youth, Style and Musical Taste,” Sociology 33: 599–617.
—— (2001) Cultures of Popular Music, Philadelphia: Open University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1984) Distinctions: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. R. Nice, Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Bryson, B. (1996) “‘Anything But Heavy Metal’: Symbolic Exclusion and Musical Dislikes,” American Sociological Review 61: 884–99.
Clarke, G. (1990 [1981]) “Defending Ski Jumpers: A Critique of Theories of Youth Subcultures,” in S. Frith and A. Goodwin (eds) On Record: Rock, Pop and the Written Word, London: Routledge, pp. 81–96.
Cohen, S. (1991) Rock Culture in Liverpool: Popular Music in the Making, Oxford: Clarendon.
—— (1993) “Ethnography and Popular Music Studies,” Popular Music 12: 123–38.
DeNora, T. (1995) Beethoven and the Construction of Genius: Musical Politics in Vienna 1792–1803, Berkeley: University of California Press. —— (2000) Music in Everyday Life, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
du Gay, P. (1997) “Introduction,” in P. du Gay, S. Hall, L. Janes, H. Mackay, and K. Negus (eds) Doing Cultural Studies: The Story of the Sony Walkman, London: Sage, pp. 1–5.
Durkheim, É. (1947 [1893]) The Division of Labor in Society, trans. G. Simpson, New York: Free Press.
Finnegan, R. (1989) The Hidden Musicians: Music-Making in an English Town, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Frith, S. (1987) “Towards an Aesthetic of Popular Music,” in R. Leppert and S. McClary (eds) Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance and Reception, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 133–49.
—— (1996) “Music and Identity,” in S. Hall and P. du Gay (eds) Questions of Cultural Identity, London: Sage, pp. 108–27.
—— (2001) “Pop Music,” in S. Frith, W. Straw, and J. Street (eds) The Cambridge Companion to Pop and Rock, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 26–52.
Gilroy, P. (1993) The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, London: Verso. Grazian, D. (2003) Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Harrison, A.K. (2006) “‘Cheaper Than a CD, Plus We Really Mean It’: Bay Area Underground Hip Hop Tapes as Subcultural Artefacts,” Popular Music 25: 283–301.
—— (2009) Hip Hop Underground: The Integrity and Ethics of Racial Identification, Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Hebdige, D. (1979) Subculture, The Meaning of Style, London: Methuen.
Hesmondhalgh, D. (2002) The Cultural Industries, London: Sage.
Horkheimer, M. and Adorno, T.W. (1993 [1944]) Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. J. Cumming, New York: Continuum.
Jones, S. (1988) Black Culture, White Youth: The Reggae Tradition from JA to UK, London: Macmillan.
Martin, P.J. (1995) Sound and Society: Themes in the Sociology of Music, Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.
Muggleton, D. (2000) Inside Subculture: The Postmodern Meaning of Style, Oxford: Berg.
Negus, K. (1999) Music Genres and Corporate Cultures, London: Routledge.
Peterson, R.A. (1990) “Why 1955? Explaining the Advent of Rock Music,” Popular Music 9: 97–116.
—— (1997) Creating Country Music: Fabricating Authenticity, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Peterson, R.A. and Anand, N. (2004) “The Production of Culture Perspective,” Annual Review of Sociology 30: 311–34.
Peterson, R.A. and Bennett, A. (2004) “Introducing Music Scenes,” in A. Bennett and R.A. Peterson (eds) Music Scenes: Local, Translocal, and Virtual, Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, pp. 1–15.
Peterson, R.A. and Simkus, A. (1992) “How Musical Tastes Mark Occupational Status Groups,” in M. Lamont and M. Fournier (eds) Cultivating Differences: Symbolic Boundaries and the Making of Inequality, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 152–86.
Pisares, E.H. (2006) “Do You Mis(recognize) Me: Filipina Americans in Popular Music and the Problem of Invisibility,” in A.T. Tiongson, E.V. Gutierrez, and R.V. Gutierrez (eds) Positively No Filipinos Allowed: Building Communities and Discourse, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 172–98.
Powell, W.W. (1985) Getting into Print: The Decision Making Process in Scholarly Publishing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Roberts, M. (2002) “Papa’s Got a Brand-New Bag: Big Music’s Post-Fordist Regime and the Role of Independent Music Labels,” in N. Kelley (ed.) Rhythm and Business: The Political Economy of Black Music, New York: Akashic Books, pp. 24–43.
Ryan, J. and Hughes, M. (2006) “Breaking the Decision Chain: The Fate of Creativity in an Age of Self-Production,” in M. Ayers (ed.) Cybersounds: Essays on Virtual Music Culture, New York: Peter Lang, pp. 239–53.
Ryan, J. and Peterson, R.A. (1982) “The Product Image: The Fate of Creativity in Country Music Songwriting,” in J.S. Ettema and C.D. Whitney (eds) Individuals in Mass Media Organizations: Creativity and Constraint (Sage Annual Reviews of Communication Research 10), Beverly Hills: Sage, pp. 11–32.
Simmel, G. (1968 [1882]) “Psychological and Ethnological Studies on Music,” in The Conflict in Modern Culture and Other Essays, trans. K.P. Etzkorn, New York: Teacher’s College Press, pp. 98–140.
Sorokin, P.A. (1937) Social and Cultural Dynamics, vol. 1, New York: Bedminster.
Stokes, M. (1994) “Introduction,” in M. Stokes (ed.) Ethnicity, Identity and Music: the Musical Construction of Place, Oxford: Berg, pp. 1–28.
Straw, W. (1991) “Systems of Articulation, Logics of Change: Communities and Scenes in Popular Music,” Cultural Studies 5: 368–88.
—— (2002) “Value and Velocity: The 12-inch Single as Medium and Artefact,” in K. Negus and D. Hesmondhalgh (eds) Popular Music Studies, London: Edward Arnold, pp. 164–77. —— (2009) “The Music CD and Its Ends,” Design & Culture 1: 79–92.
Thornton, S. (1995) Club Cultures: Music, Media and Subcultural Capital, Cambridge: Polity.
Ulin, R.C. (1996) Vintages and Traditions: An Ethnohistory of Southwest French Wine Cooperatives, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press.
Weber, M. (1949 [1904]) “‘Objectivity’ in Social Science and Social Policy,” in E.A. Shils and H.A. Finch (eds and trans) Max Weber on the Methodology of the Social Sciences, New York: Free Press, pp. 50–112.
—— (1958 [1921]) The Rational and Social Foundations of Music, trans. D. Martindale, J. Riedel, and G. Neuwerth, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.
Willis, P. (1978) Profane Culture, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.