Processes of institutionalisation and ‘symbolic struggles’ in the ‘independent music’ field in Italy

Abstract

Over the last fifteen years, independent rock music has become a wider field of cultural production and consumption in Italy. Indeed, while during the 1970s and 1990s the production of independent music was connected predominantly to political movements, alternative subcultures and the antagonistic attitude of the 'centri sociali', in the present decade, independent popular music has moved towards the centre of the national music industry and the mass media of the musical mainstream. This article describes the phases of this process of institutionalisation, showing how the politically based culture of independent music is today at the centre of a symbolic struggle occurring between the values of authenticity, rooted in political youth cultures, and the strategic and pragmatic tendency towards integration into the mainstream of the national music industry. This analysis is carried out applying the Bourdieian concepts of 'field of cultural production' and 'cultural capital', together with their evolutions into the notion of 'subcultural capital'. This theoretical framework is applied in order to show both the process of institutionalisation this cultural field is undergoing, and the symbolic struggle taking place between the original values of the political and cultural autonomy of music and the commoditisation of musical objects in the mainstream mass media and national industrial sector. Finally, it is shown how new agents who represent the independent popular music industry at the national level need to deal with claims for authenticity raised by the alternative and extreme wings of the independent music scene.

‘Boxing Is Our Business’: The Embodiment of a Leftist Identity in Boxe Popolare

“…In this section, I argue that the organisation of boxe popolare embodies the "antagonist attitude" of the far-left milieus reflecting the evolution occurring in the values and the logics of their conflicting collective actions [16]. Boxing marks a general trend: the shifting from power-achieving strategies-characterising the first generation of grassroots organisations-to daily-resisting tactics.…”

“…Further studies have considered the leftist grassroots group nodes of the "centri sociali autogestiti (social centres) social movement" [15]. A few studies examine how the practices of the leftist groups interact with mainstream society, producing cultural change; for instance, in music festivals and soccer [16,17].…”

Multi-Tasking and Making a Living from Music: Investigating Music Careers in the Independent Music Scene of Milan

“…Today, however, as a result of the crisis and the redefinition of social movements and social centres subsequent to the violent events of G8 in Genoa in 2001, social centres no longer play the political and cultural role they used to; at the same time the underground and independent music scene has experienced an evolution characterized by de-politicization, individualization and commercialisation. Moreover, as Magaudda (2009) and several respondents have described, especially in 1990s many independent bands (such as Subsonica, Afterhours and many others) started to obtain commercial success. In these years, there was a process of integration of independent music into the mainstream music industry.…”

Engaging Black Males on Their Own Terms: What Schools Can Learn from Black Males Who Produce Hip-Hop

“…Cultural capital mediates these social judgments and appraisals. Whereas teachers and adults hold cultural capital in schools, young Black males hold subcultural capital (Magaudda, 2009) in the field of hip-hop that educators do not have. For these reasons, we ask how might hip-hop production sites help us to understand how Black males learn on their own terms?…”

“…In our analysis, hip-hop is conceptualized as a domain or world, a uniquely symbolic space that requires, in this case, subcultural capital (Magaudda, 2009) -hip-hop knowledge, authenticity, knowledge, and skills -to participate fully in production processes. Hip-hop in this regard is not unlike the domains of politics, business, or religion.…”