Reconceptualizing Aesthetic Cosmopolitanism: Evidence From the Early Consecration of Anglo-American Pop-Rock in Italy

Abstract

This article explores how foreign, recently imported cultural forms can redefine dynamics of legitimation in national cultural fields. Drawing on archival research, the article discusses the early consecration of Anglo-American pop-rock in 1970s Italy and analyzes the articles published by three specialist music magazines. Findings reveal the emergence of a shared pop-rock canon among Italian critics, but also that this "cosmopolitan capital" was mobilized to implement competing editorial projects. Italian critics promoted both different strategies of legitimation vis-à-vis contemporary popular music, and opposite views of cultural globalization as a social process. Theoretically, the article conceptualizes "aesthetic cosmopolitanism" as a symbolic resource which can be realized through competing institutional projects, rather than as a homogeneous cultural disposition.

Elites and Culture: Social Profiles in the Cultivated Population

“…The second logic can be understood in a musical market in which, both local-national and international genres, composers, groups and singers, operate successfully. We observed that the cultivated syncretics are more pro local-national genres, while both cultivated classicals (with jazz, blues, world music) and cultivated moderns (with foreign pop/rock, rap, reggae or hip-hop) are more inclined towards the prestige of international productions (Bellavance, 2008;Holt, 1997;Varriale, 2018).…”

Cultural Capital in China? Television Tastes and Cultural and Cosmopolitan Distinctions Among Beijing Youth

“…Thus, both high status and low status are signalled by non-local tastes. This reminds us that cosmopolitan distinctions are shaped by transnational fields (Varriale, 2021). The 'chain of disdain' reflects the hierarchies and logics of two transnational fields: a global cultural field with English-speaking centres (Kuipers, 2011) and a regional East Asian cultural field with Korean cultural industries at its apex.…”

“…Highbrow cosmopolitan taste is associated with indicators of culturally and economically privileged parental backgrounds and thus works as ‘enhanced’ cultural capital (cf. Varriale, 2021). In addition, what makes Chinese cosmopolitanism uniquely Chinese are its Others: popular Chinese TV, and Hong Kong and South Korean TV.…”