Categorical ambiguity in cultural fields: The effects of genre fuzziness in popular music

Venrooij, Alex van; Schmutz, Vaughn

doi:10.1016/j.poetic.2018.02.001

Cited by 35 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…Hsu’s (2006) work, which demonstrates the negative impact of spanning multiple genres on the critical and consumer reception of films, is a notable example. Yet while her research as well as similar studies in other fields highlights the negative effects of category spanning on audience reception, studies in popular music have found positive associations with status among peers and critics (Lena & Pachucki, 2013, van Venrooij & Schmutz, 2013, 2018). Therefore, we expect that spanning multiple categories is associated with lower popular legitimacy but is unlikely to reduce professional or critical forms of legitimacy.…”

Section: Other Predictors Of Consecrationmentioning

confidence: 74%

“…For example, studies have used professional awards (i.e., Oscars in film, Grammys in music) as indicators of specific legitimacy, critical acclaim as an indicator of bourgeois legitimacy, and box office or pop chart success as indicators of popular legitimacy (Allen & Lincoln, 2004; Schmutz, 2005). While the popular music field shows clear evidence of a distinction between a “heteronomous” pole that tends to provide commercial rewards to music typically released by major labels and an “autonomous” pole that often grants critical acclaim to albums released by indie labels (van Venrooij & Schmutz, 2013, 2018), this article examines the extent to which these forms of legitimacy may converge over time.…”

Section: Cultural Legitimacy and Retrospective Consecrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Harmonizing Forms of Legitimacy in the Consecration of Popular Music

Schmutz

Venrooij

2018

American Behavioral Scientist

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Recent sociological research has focused attention on formal instances of retrospective cultural consecration in the United States. In the fields of film, sport, and popular music, this has largely involved comparing the effects of various forms of cultural legitimacy on the odds of retrospective consecration. Such studies have used the three “competing” principles of cultural legitimacy identified by Bourdieu (1983)—specific, bourgeois, and popular—as predictors of consecration. Although Bourdieu (1983) refers to these as “competing” forms of cultural legitimacy, elsewhere he describes consecration as the collective product of “all the agents involved in the field of production.” Based on 3,234 popular music albums released from 2000 through 2007, we analyze factors associated with immediate, intermediate, and retrospective forms of consecration to explore the extent to which such forms of legitimacy compete and converge over time. Our findings suggest that rites of consecration can serve to reveal conflicts as well as build consensus regarding the reputations of artists and their works. The increasing consensus surrounding consecrated albums is particularly striking.

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Section: Other Predictors Of Consecrationmentioning

confidence: 74%

Section: Cultural Legitimacy and Retrospective Consecrationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Harmonizing Forms of Legitimacy in the Consecration of Popular Music

Schmutz

Venrooij

2018

American Behavioral Scientist

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“…The question of whether simplicity or complexity is more advantageous relies on one’s location in reference to a point at which a multivalent identity is construed as no identity at all [ 34 ]. van Venrooij and Schmutz [ 40 ] assert that genre ambiguity has a negative effect within a commercial subfield, but not in an artistic subfield. Additionally, Noh and Tolbert [ 41 ] segmented art museum visitors in detail from professional critics to general consumers, and found that all categories of visitors responded differently to museums with complex versus simple identities.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stars inside have reached outside: The effects of electronic dance music DJs’ social standing and musical identity on track success

Lee

2021

PLoS ONE

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The social standing of an artist provides a reliable proxy for the value of the artist’s product and reduces uncertainty about the quality of the product. While there are several different types of social standing, we focus on reputation among professional artists within the same genre, as they are best able to identify the artistic value of a product within that genre. To reveal the underlying means of attaining high social standing within the professional group, we examined two quantifiable properties that are closely associated with social standing, musical identity and the social position of the artist. We analyzed the playlist data of electronic dance music DJ/producers, DJs who also compose their own music. We crawled 98,332 tracks from 3,164 playlists by 815 DJs, who played at nine notable international music festivals. Information from the DJs’ tracks, including genre, beats per minute, and musical keys, was used to quantify musical identity, and playlists were transformed into network data to measure social positions among the DJs. We found that DJs with a distinct genre identity as well as network positions combining brokerage and cohesion tend to place higher in success and social standing.

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“…For example, while the category of classical music has been used to indicate highbrow musical tastes (Peterson and Kern, 1996), many listeners of classical music encounter it in less-highbrow situations (Savage and Gayo, 2011). Genre meanings change over time (van Venrooij, 2009) and musical objects are often ambiguous in their genre classification (van Venrooij and Schmutz, 2018). All of this suggests that genres are dynamic entities that necessitate inductive analysis (Lena, 2015).…”

Section: Race Gender and Musical Relationshipsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Musical Relationships: Intersections of Race, Gender, Genre, and Listening Situation

Sonnett

2020

Cultural Sociology

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The ways that music creates bridges and boundaries between people has long been of interest in the sociology of music, and a core problem is understanding patterns in relationships between consumers and producers. Survey research details the comparative context of who likes or dislikes various musical genres, but has little to say about what those categories actually mean to listeners. Ethnographic and interview research offers insight into musicking in particular situations, but seldom compares listeners, artists, and genres in a larger musical field. This study uses a mixed methods approach to examine the bridging and bounding processes organizing relationships between listeners and artists. Based on a survey of students at the University of Mississippi, I examine how musical relationships are shaped by race, gender, genre, and listening situation using a combination of social network analysis and correspondence analysis. Results show an overall pattern of racial segregation in musical tastes that is intersected by multiple paths of racial crossover, from relatively private to public situations. Black musical styles are central to racial crossover in the musical field, creating ambivalent spaces of cultural integration in the context of social segregation. Music profiles of listeners illustrate how situational meanings and comparisons of artists within genres shape musical relationships and mark social distance. The conclusion draws implications for the study of musical practices, racialized musical fields, and mixed methods approaches in cultural sociology.

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Categorical ambiguity in cultural fields: The effects of genre fuzziness in popular music

Cited by 35 publications

References 61 publications

Harmonizing Forms of Legitimacy in the Consecration of Popular Music

Harmonizing Forms of Legitimacy in the Consecration of Popular Music

Stars inside have reached outside: The effects of electronic dance music DJs’ social standing and musical identity on track success

Musical Relationships: Intersections of Race, Gender, Genre, and Listening Situation

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