The agency of dead musicians

McCormick, Lisa

doi:10.1080/21582041.2015.1114664

Cited by 9 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…Finally, our analysis advances our understanding of how interested promotion shapes producer legacies. Past research in this area (labelled "reputational entrepreneurship") has focused on politics and art (Fine 1996;Jansen 2007;Lang and Lang 1988;Bromberg and Fine 2002;Kahl et al 2010;McCormick 2015). This study used the context of science to analyze how a scientist's death affects the amount of interested promotion that her work receives, thus boosting positive recognition for her papers.…”

Section: The Logic Of Interested Promotionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Death of the Salesman but Not the Sales Force: How Interested Promotion Skews Scientific Valuation

Azoulay

Wahlen

Sivan

2019

American Journal of Sociology

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Whereas recent research has demonstrated how disinterested social validation may skew valuation in meritocratic domains, interested promotion may be at least as important a factor. As suggested by research on reputational entrepreneurship, a producer's death shifts promotion opportunities in two respects. First, it prevents the producer (or "salesman") from engaging in promotional activity. Second, it also mobilizes others (the "sales force") to step up their promotional activity on behalf of the deceased. Analysis of the impact made by the premature death of 720 elite life scientists on the citation trajectories of their articles indicates that death results in a long-lasting, positive increase in citation rates, relative to the trajectories for equivalent articles by counterfactual, still-living scientists. This effect seems due largely to the memorialization efforts made by the sales force as compared to recognition efforts on behalf of the still-living scientists, and is strongest for articles that had received relatively little attention prior to the death, as well as those authored by stars who died at a relatively young age. The upshot is clear evidence of informational inefficiency, which derives from the challenges of absorbing the massive volume of scientific knowledge produced. Scientists' identities thus play an important role in determining scientific valuations, despite ostensible norms that enjoin the scientific community to divorce the researcher's identity from her work.

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Section: The Logic Of Interested Promotionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Death of the Salesman but Not the Sales Force: How Interested Promotion Skews Scientific Valuation

Azoulay

Wahlen

Sivan

2019

American Journal of Sociology

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“…1 Celebrities as ‘symbols by which we narrate, negotiate, and interpret our collective experience’ (Butler Breese, 2010: 337) help ‘articulate what it is to be a human being in contemporary culture’ (Dyer, 1987: 7). Specifically, some celebrities when they die become, like Michael Jackson, the ‘special dead’ (Heinich, 1996; McCormick, 2015) and they continue to work (D’Rozario, 2016; Eaton, 2019; Jones and Jensen, 2005; Kearl, 2010; Penfold-Mounce, 2018; Petty and D’Rozario, 2009). For these ‘special’ celebrity individuals, dying does not end their high-profile career but instead leads to a posthumous career: rather than resting in peace, dead celebrities are productive of profit and value.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Value, Bodily Capital, and Gender Inequality after Death

Penfold-Mounce

2019

Sociological Research Online

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This article examines dead celebrities’ posthumous careers and considers how gendered inequalities around possession, value, and bodily capital are produced and consumed even after death. The concept of capital plays a significant role in studies of culture, usually in relation to individual possession and personal, social, and material advantage. ‘Bodily capital’ sheds particular light upon the different ways bodies can possess value and how the generation of value is unequally distributed for men and women. Through an analysis of the Forbes Magazine Top Dead Earning Celebrities List (2001–2018), the inequality of value between men and women generated from bodily capital is examined. This article extends the intellectual agenda of sociological research on gendered inequality in bodily capital through dead celebrity posthumous careers. It reveals how, why, and when value is generated unequally with celebrity women’s bodily capital becoming a symbolic resource for others to generate profit. Furthermore, it speculates upon the prospect of a revolution in the ownership and value of gendered bodily capital among dead celebrities and predicts a future shift for women’s bodily capital and value after death.

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