Classifications in Popular Music: Discourses and Meaning Structures in American, Dutch and German Popular Music Reviews
Year: 2004
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Popular music is one of the cultural fields – together with film,\nphotography, and jazz – which in the second half of the twentieth century\nhave apparently gained much in status and recognition (Janssen, 1999;\nJanssen, Kuipers & Verboord, 2009). Popular music has become\n‘aesthetically mobile’ - developing from a devalued form of\nentertainment to the status of art. This reordering of the position of\npopular music seems to be an aspect of a more general change in cultural\nclassification systems of modern western societies. DiMaggio (1987,\n1991) has argued that the cultural classification systems of western\nsocieties have become more differentiated, less hierarchical, with weaker\nboundaries and less universal. The number of genres has expanded,\ngenres are no longer ranked in a hierarchical status hierarchy, the\nboundaries between genres have become less potent and less strongly\ndefended and the consensus on how to classify cultural genres has\ndiminished. The hierarchical, universal classification of ‘popular’ and\n‘high culture’ seems to have eroded and given way to a multitude of\ngenres that cannot be ranked in one hierarchical dimension and broad\nclassifications such as high vs. low seem to have been displaced by more\nfinely grained classifications and distinctions. Although genres such as\npopular music, jazz, literature and theatre can no longer be placed easily\nwithin ‘high’ or ‘low’, new hierarchies seem to have appeared within\n(previously ‘popular’) genres (Holt, 1997; Baumann, 2001).\nIn this dissertation, I study the way in which popular music critics\ncreate, maintain and contest new and old symbolic boundaries and\nclassification structures within popular music. How do critics within the\nfield of popular music ‘make sense’ of cultural products? What kind of\ncriteria do they use to evaluate popular music and how do they classify\nartists into categories? Do they create or draw upon established\nhierarchical boundaries such as ‘art’ vs. ‘commerce’ in making\ndistinctions? Do they classify along other lines?
Author: Alex van Venrooij
Language: English
Topic: Music History and Culture
Subfield: Music
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1720262476