Production of Culture

Using a mixed-methods approach, I aspire to trace the legitimation process of reggaeton. In this research, I examine market information regimes to understand the trajectory of reggaeton from 2005 to 2019. Billboard music charts, and press coverage suggest reggaeton did not follow an exponential upward trend. Data sources indicate high numbers between 2005 and 2008, before dropping, and remaining low until 2014. Following this descent, reggaeton’s presence in the USA mainstream music market has not stopped ascending until the end of 2019, indicating an unprecedentedly high level of legitimacy and popularity. In the qualitative analysis I investigate discourses of the reggaeton scene in relation to the Latin Grammy Awards. As suggested in the literature, reward systems are important indicators of legitimation. However, reggaeton has been nearly absent in the major categories of the Latin Grammys, since their inception in 2000. I examine the longstanding relationship between the Latin Academy and reggaeton, by focusing on the claims made by the reggaeton industry for the 20th Annual Latin Grammy Awards, on November 2019. Results suggest that 1) class-based discrimination is a main factor in the Latin Academy’s lack of recognition of reggaeton as an art form, 2) two levels of racism are at play in the social perception of reggaeton, namely within the Latinx community, and from the outside, 3) the reggaeton industry is challenging the relevance, influence and authority of the Latin Grammys, and questions are raised towards its structure and ability to vote.

از آنجا آفرینش موسیقایی عملی سراسر اجتماعی است، تولید همواره از پربحث‌ترین مباحث جامعه‌شناسی موسیقی بوده است. از وبر (۱۹۵۸) و آدورنو (۱۹۷۸) گرفته تا سوروکین (۱۹۵۷) و الیاس (۱۳۹۶) به مسئلۀ تولید پرداخته‌اند. در نخستین نظریات این حوزه، مسئلۀ اصلی یافتن رابطه‌ای میان ساختار اجتماعی و تولید موسیقی بوده است.
با این پیشینۀ به نسبت غنی از نظریه‌های مختلف، درخت جامعه‌شناسی تولید موسیقی با ریشه‌ای قوی، در طول تطور و تکاملش، شاخ‌و‌برگ‌های نظری مختلفی به خود گرفته است. از مجموعۀ این نظریه‌پردازی‌ها، دسته‌بندی‌های مختلفی وجود دارد. یکی از این دسته‌بندی‌ها که متعلق به روی و داوْد (2010) است، رویکردهای جامعه‌شناسی موسیقی به تولید را به چهار دسته تقسیم کرده: رویکرد تولید فرهنگ (پترسون و اناند، 2004)، رویکرد جامعۀ هنری (بکر، 1982)، نظریۀ میدان (بوردیو، 1993 و 1390؛ پریور، 2008) و نظریۀ نونهادگرایی (جانسون و دیگران، 2006). دسته‌بندی آن‌ها البته اشکالاتی دارد. یکی اینکه تمام‌نما نیست و همۀ نظریه‌ها را پوشش نمی‌دهد و دیگری اینکه ضابطۀ جدایی نظریه‌ها از هم در آن روشن نیست. اگر در نظر بگیریم که این نظریه‌ها رویکردهایی‌اند عام که جامعه‌شناسان مختلفی با آن کار می‌کنند، روشن‌سازی ضوابط مشخص برای تمیزگذاری میان آن‌ها از اهمیت ویژه‌ای برخوردار است.
این دسته‌بندی را از سویی کوچک‌تر می‌توان کرد و از سوی دیگر به دایرۀ دربرداری‌اش افزود. این کار را با تغییر ضابطۀ آن می‌توان انجام داد. اگر این ضابطه را رابطۀ علی در نظر بگیریم، نظریه‌های تولید موسیقی را به دو دستۀ نظریه‌های از بالا‌به‌پایین و از پایین‌به‌بالا تقسیم می‌توان کرد. دستۀ نخست به نظریه‌هایی اشاره دارد که برای تولید موسیقی، علیت از بالا‌به‌پایین قائل‌اند و دستۀ دوم به نظریه‌هایی که برای تولید موسیقی علیت از پایین‌به‌بالا قائل‌اند.

The emergence of the Production of Culture and Art Worlds perspectives in the 1970s was a pivotal moment in the study of musical production. In subsequent years, the musical production literature experienced a notable growth – both in the number of works and theoretical perspectives. This paper surveys these recent works and, by attending to specific examples, provides some indication of the various perspectives now employed in the literature. It proceeds by attending to the six constraints that shape the creation, performance, and dissemination of music.

Cet article est consacré à l’analyse d’un groupe d’amateurs comme lieu d’initiation à la jazzophilie et de définition des valeurs artistiques. En observant les formes d’apprentissage informel qui se perpétuent au sein du groupe, il s’agit de montrer dans quelle mesure celui-ci fonctionne comme une instance de légitimation des oeuvres et des goûts. Ce n’est pas seulement le caractère socialisé du goût qui nous intéresse, mais aussi la façon concrète dont sa formation s’inscrit dans une dynamique relationnelle et le rapport qu’il entretient alors avec les prescriptions en provenance du champ jazzistique et les normes de la légitimité culturelle.

В статье предложен подход к пониманию культуры как совокупности культурных проектов, которые создаются в крупных культурных учреждениях. Описывается создание таких проектов от зарождения идеи до ее реализации в виде коллективных практик и участия многочисленных людей, вещей и документов. Исследование Российского этнографического музея в Санкт-Петербурге с помощью этого подхода показало, такой взгляд позволяет совместить локальный практико-ориентированный взгляд и институциональный уровень и предложить более объемное и глубокое, связанное с практиками, понимание культуры

Spring 2021 Course Description: Drawing on the latest theorizing and research in the sociology of culture and media studies, this course offers a theoretical and methodological roadmap to the study of the production of culture. Required Books:
Jean Burgess and Nancy Baym. 2020. Twitter: A Biography.
Angèle Christin. 2020. Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested
Meaning of Algorithms. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Stuart Cunningham and David Craig. 2019. Social Media Entertainment: The New Intersection of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. New York: NYU Press.
Magda Konieczna. 2018. Journalism without Profit: Making News when the Market Fails. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Paul Lopes. 2019. Art Rebels: Race, Class, and Gender in the Art of Miles Davis and Martin Scorsese. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Reece Peck. 2019. Fox Populism: Branding Conservatism as Working Class. Cambridge University Press.
Jen Schradie. 2019. The Revolution that Wasn't: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Press.

Journal of Communication Inquiry http://jci.sagepub.com/ Voices between the Tracks: Disk Jockeys, Radio, and Popular Music, 1955-60 Matthew A. Killmeier Journal of Communication Inquiry 2001 25: 353 DOI: 10.1177/0196859901025004003 The online version of this article ...

This is an exciting and transformative moment for cultural production across the globe. Our goal is to lift the veil and explore the concrete making of cultural products (music, cinema, art, digital news, television dramas, etc.) by various types of individuals and organizations, working with diverse technologies, oriented toward divergent audiences. The premise of the course is that the process is not random. There are differences across organizations, worlds, networks, and/or fields (pick your framework) and these differences are consequential for the kind of culture that gets produced, which may be normatively desirable or undesirable depending on your conception(s) of excellence and the common good. What are the differences that make a difference: organizational structures and dynamics, forms of ownership and funding, government regulatory regimes, and/or the social properties of media owners, workers, and audiences? These are complex questions, and we will attempt to answer them through comparative research – across geographical regions, time periods, and institutional fields. Drawing on the latest theorizing and research in the sociology of culture and media studies, this course offers a theoretical and methodological roadmap to such a project, incorporating a range of case studies.

Course Description: This is an exciting and transformative moment for cultural production across the globe. Our goal is to lift the veil and explore the concrete making of cultural products (music, cinema, art, digital news, television dramas, etc.) by various types of individuals and organizations, working with diverse technologies, oriented toward divergent audiences. The premise of the course is that the process is not random. There are differences across organizations, networks, and/or fields (pick your framework) and these differences are consequential for the kind of culture that gets produced, which may be normatively desirable or undesirable depending on your conception(s) of excellence and the common good. What are the differences that make a difference: organizational structures and dynamics, forms of ownership and funding, government regulatory regimes, and/or the social properties of media owners, workers, and audiences? These are complex questions, and we will attempt to answer them through comparative research – across geographical regions, time periods, and institutional fields. Drawing on the latest theorizing and research in the sociology of culture and media studies, this course offers a theoretical and methodological roadmap to such a project, incorporating a range of case studies. Teaching / Course Objectives • to provide you with an understanding of the concrete working conditions and challenges that shape the production of culture across a range of cultural fields ; • to provide you with new ideas about how to evaluate and explain how culture gets produced; • to equip you with useful knowledge of the methods you'll need to do original comparative research about cultural production, such as analysis of government and economic data, ethnography, in-depth interviewing, and discourse/image analysis; • to give you an opportunity to conduct your own in-depth research project on contemporary cultural production.

Cultural intermediaries are the taste makers defining what counts as good taste and cool culture in today's marketplace. Working at the intersection of culture and economy, they perform critical operations in the production and promotion of consumption, constructing legitimacy and adding value through the qualification of goods.

The module covers theoretical foundations and case studies: half of the lectures focus on key concepts (cultural intermediaries, taste, value, markets and the implications of the cultural production of taste); half of the lectures draw on current research and practitioner perspectives to offer a range of case studies (e.g. from the fields of food, wine, arts promotion and fashion) through which concepts are explored in more detail.

Key Text:
Smith Maguire, J. and Matthews, J. (eds) 2014. The Cultural Intermediaries Reader. London: Sage.

While much historiography on U.S. radio and popular music of the postwar period portrays disk jockeys as having a large degree of freedom, this article challenges this rendition and argues that their autonomy was constrained by a number of institutional and industry pressures. Based on discourses in industry and lay publications, the author argues that disk jockeys were pressured by recording industry largess and station management, which constrained their autonomy and public representations and contradicted the democratic ideology articulated by the U.S. broadcasting industry. Rather than neutral arbiters of public tastes, disk jockeys were complicit in a concerted effort to endow undifferentiated commodities with symbolic capital.

In this paper we investigate factors underlying the production of independent folk music (indie folk) in the Netherlands. By studying the creation, distribution and reception of indie folk music through in-depth interviewing, we argue that the social production of indie folk music is affected by a shift towards ‘participatory culture’ brought about by the rise of the Internet and Web 2.0. We note how Web 2.0 helps musicians to educate themselves and to develop careers in music. Secondly, from the perspective of both musicians and gatekeepers, participatory culture links their preferences for participatory aesthetics, decreasing boundaries between creators, distributors and users. Within the idiom of folk music, they distinguish themselves from the mainstream, creating more sincere performances. Thirdly, from the perspective of the audience, fans actively contribute by organizing small-scale events, enabling the audience to establish (trans)local scenes, reframing music as a social experience.