The symbolic economy of authenticity as a form of symbolic violence: the case of middle-class ethnic minorities

Schwarz, Ori

doi:10.1080/1600910x.2016.1156007

Cited by 24 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 35 publications

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“…Looking particularly at Tyler Perry produced movies, Harris and Tassie () found that richer Black Americans are predominantly depicted as materialistic and status‐obsessed. The negative framing of the Black middle classes as materialistic and status‐driven, an assertion essentially criticising Black people with money for spending their money, supports the ideological belief that the outward display of “middle‐class culture is [deemed] inherently inauthentic for Blacks” (Schwarz, , p. 10).…”

Section: Ideologies: Racial and Class Authenticitymentioning

confidence: 91%

A relational study of the Black middle classes and globalised White hegemony: Identities, interactions, and ideologies in the United States, United Kingdom, and South Africa

Meghji

2017

Sociology Compass

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In this paper, I explore the experiences of the Black middle classes across the United States, United Kingdom (UK), and South Africa. I argue that the similar experiences the Black middle classes face across these nations are not coincidental but represent the process of globalised White hegemony. Globalised White hegemony refers to how the middle class, transnationally, is often understood as a symbolic category informed by specific White norms, identifications, and practices. I explore globalised White hegemony through three areas of Black middle‐class experience: identity, interactions, and ideologies. Thus, I examine how across the UK, United States, and South Africa, the Black middle classes construct public identities according to White norms, encounter interactions through which their blackness negatively trumps their middle‐class status, and confront classed‐racialised ideologies, which construe the Black middle class as inauthentic. I argue in this paper that central to fleshing out the similarities in Black middle‐class experiences across the globe is engaging in relational sociology, which stresses the globalised nature of contemporary raciality.

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Section: Ideologies: Racial and Class Authenticitymentioning

confidence: 91%

A relational study of the Black middle classes and globalised White hegemony: Identities, interactions, and ideologies in the United States, United Kingdom, and South Africa

Meghji

2017

Sociology Compass

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“…First and foremost, it expands the ongoing sociological dialogue on authenticity. By building on previous work concerning the symbolic economy of authenticity ( Grazian, 2003 ; Schwarz, 2016 ), our research demonstrates how different authenticities provide symbolic capital in a field of cultural production. In contrast to previous studies, we also explore the relationships between various authenticities by examining how they are defined, policed, and learned.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 80%

Culture, Heritage, Art: Navigating Authenticities in Contemporary Hungarian Folk Singing

Nagy-Sándor

Berkers

2018

Cultural Sociology

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In Hungary, the decline of traditional peasant culture and its heritage has prompted urban revivals, leading to the acceptance of traditional Hungarian folk singing as a performing arts genre. Drawing from a series of in-depth interviews, this study shows how contemporary Hungarian folk singers navigate (define, learn, police) different forms of authenticity within the field of folk music. While we find that objectified authenticity – heritagized classification systems – is the dominant form of symbolic capital, the broader symbolic economy of authenticity is complicated by competing definitions of folk singing as, variously, culture, heritage, and art. Third-person authenticity is more highly regarded, but it is more difficult for contemporary urban folk singers to achieve because they were not socialized in peasant communities. Therefore, they use objectified authenticity such as ‘original recordings’ as a proxy for learning about living folk culture. Although objectified authenticity constrains the agency of artistic expression, it affords discriminatory creativity (choosing one’s own repertoire) and rationalized creativity (adapting traditional material to external values and contexts).

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“…Indeed, we can follow Sewell's (2005) framework that structures are in fact dual: how historical agents' thoughts, motives, and intentions are constituted by the cultures and social institutions into which they are born, how these cultures and institutions are reproduced by the structurally shaped and constrained actions of those actions, but also how, in certain circumstances, the agents can (or are forced to) improvise or innovate in structurally shaped ways that significantly reconfigure the very structures that constitute them. (p. 128) Indeed, in a symbolic economy of authenticity (Schwarz 2016), actors engaged with forms of expression numerically and/or symbolically dominated by whites can actively choose to address and replace the implicit yet dominant perspective that authentic participation is a distinctly white activity. As these practices take place online as well-and stand in direct interaction with it through the persistent use of smart phones and social media in social spaces-such change gains faster traction than in the past.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus, symbolic violence can make dominated groups act against their own interests. Schwarz (2016) describes how, in contemporary Western societies, symbolic violence is increasingly based on (different) notions of authenticity. Authenticity is widely regarded as "a claim that is made by or for someone, thing, or performance," a social construct that is "either accepted or rejected by relevant others" (Peterson 2005(Peterson :1086.…”

Section: Symbolic Violence and The Symbolic Economy Of Authenticitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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“You’re Not Supposed to Be into Rock Music”: Authenticity Maneuvering in a White Configuration

Schaap

Berkers

2020

Sociology of Race and Ethnicity

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The authors investigate how American and Dutch rock music consumers navigate the whiteness of rock music practice and discourse. In doing so, they address the complex connection between aesthetic categories (popular music) and ethnoracial categories and to what extent this relationship is open or resistant to structural change. Connecting literature on the racialization of cultural genres and on symbolic violence, the authors demonstrate how authentication through faithfulness to preestablished sociocultural configurations reinforces the whiteness of rock music consumption in both countries in very similar ways. The analysis of 27 in-depth interviews produces a threefold typology of positions that rock consumers take up vis-à-vis the sociocultural configuration of rock music authenticity: complying, amending, and replacing. From a position of complicity to this configuration, people of color are often a priori regarded as inauthentic participants, also by outsiders who consider them to “act white.” However, the analysis indicates that the shift toward a symbolic economy of authenticity enables actors to resist white hegemony as discursive authenticity at the expense of the more rigid dispositional and agentic variations underlying symbolic violence. This allows an active amending of the hegemonic configuration within the genre— authenticity maneuvering—by replacing the discourse, forging new spaces of consumption, and installing heavily policed inclusive practices.

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The symbolic economy of authenticity as a form of symbolic violence: the case of middle-class ethnic minorities

Cited by 24 publications

References 35 publications

A relational study of the Black middle classes and globalised White hegemony: Identities, interactions, and ideologies in the United States, United Kingdom, and South Africa

A relational study of the Black middle classes and globalised White hegemony: Identities, interactions, and ideologies in the United States, United Kingdom, and South Africa

Culture, Heritage, Art: Navigating Authenticities in Contemporary Hungarian Folk Singing

“You’re Not Supposed to Be into Rock Music”: Authenticity Maneuvering in a White Configuration

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