‘A whole society, with its own economic system’: the reciprocal and capitalist configurations of American DIY music scenes

Social Life of Zines and Other DIY Micro-Media Constituting American DIY Communities and Scenes

“…Sometimes zines can be discarded in free boxes by their initial owners, where they are picked up by other interested readers. They in this way persist with their social lives maintained by gift exchange in zine and DIY communities (Verbuč 2023; see also Jai's quote above). However, zines can often also be diverted into nonmarket regimes of value.…”

“…I also complement this kind of anthropological, ethnographic, and dialectic approach to material and media culture in this article with the anthropological study of the social life of things (Appadurai 1986;cf. Bates 2012;Seidlová 2022;Verbuč 2023), understood here as the social life of DIY zines (and other micro-media). I scrutinize extensively in this way how these DIY media objects move through different hands, spaces, social uses, and economic (reciprocal, capitalist) and noneconomic (nonmarket, symbolic) regimes of value, and observe in this way the interrelationship between economic, material, spatial, and social relations within American DIY scenes (otherwise, we only get a very cursory look into these kinds of social processes from the existing literature on zines, e.g., Clark-Parsons 2017, 557, 558, 568;Hroch and Carpenter 2021, 262-4;Piepmeier 2009, 101, 102, 108).…”

“…In contrast to community, scenes are usually less cohesive and more heterogeneous, as well as more spatially defined social connections (Olson 1998;Straw 1991), and networks even more so (Hannerz 1980). Communities and scenes can be assembled on a variety of spatial (e.g., venues, and local or translocal networks), and social levels (through social interactions between various in-and out-groups), and articulated through a variety of types of social relations (e.g., art/music, reciprocal, participatory, collaborative, and commercial) (Verbuč 2021a(Verbuč , 2023cf. Deleuze and Guattari 1987;DeLanda 2009).…”

“…And for those receiving a flyer, as Corby Plumb puts it, they are a "reminder of a thing you must go to, a social obligation, a party and bullshit opportunity more than a band you must see" (Plumb 2019; emphasis added). The social path instigated by the gift of a flyer thus comes full circle when everybody gathers at a show promoted by the flyer (Verbuč 2023;Sahlins 1972, 193-9). Flyers make friendships, extend scenes, assemble crowds at shows, and build communities.…”