Putting a Glitch in the Field: Bourdieu, Actor Network Theory and Contemporary Music

Prior, Nick

doi:10.1177/1749975508095614

Cited by 66 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…In different ways, they reveal the multidimensionality of how people co-operate, conflict and coalesce in time and space. Shifting concepts and scales also avoids falling into the trap of a bifurcated analysis of music spaces according to their micro and macro dimensions as if actions and positions belonged to two different and incommensurate ontological planes (Prior, 2008). If we need to know how music cultures are "in" the social then we need to attend to how they are "fused in the ongoing flow of activities in everyday life" (Martin, 2006: 9).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘It’s A Social Thing, Not a Nature Thing’: Popular Music Practices in Reykjavík, Iceland

Prior

2014

Cultural Sociology

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Over the last three decades, Iceland’s reputation has been increasingly tied to the prominence of its popular music. Associated with an effervescent independent scene and the global successes of the band Sigur Rós and the singer Björk, the country has been positioned as one of the world’s most vibrant cultural hotspots. With particular reference to Reykjavík, the paper aims to show how the city’s spatial configuration favours the development of dense creative networks and attendant forms of knowledge, conflict, diversity and collaboration. It assesses the integrative nature of music education on the island, the formation of a small but influential punk scene and the global marketing of the country’s music through an agile cluster of cultural agencies and intermediaries. Getting a sense of the city’s routine musical practices, it will be argued, opens an aperture on the location of place-based musics within prevailing social and economic conditions.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘It’s A Social Thing, Not a Nature Thing’: Popular Music Practices in Reykjavík, Iceland

Prior

2014

Cultural Sociology

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“…There is in fact a wealth of resources from the sociology of culture, in particular Bourdieu's approach to the study of cultural fields, which could assist the analysis of relations between social agents in the 'MOOC space' as they negotiate positions grounded in forms of power and capital (Bourdieu & Nice, 1980). Some have already noted parallels between ANT's notion of ontological politics and Bourdieu's emphasis on 'thinking relationally' about the political actions of agents who 'connive and collude' to claim symbolic and material capital, thus defining the contours of cultural fields (Prior, 2008). What is arguably missing from Bourdieu's repertoire is an account of how technologies become bound with social and individual dynamics.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The rise of the video-recorder teacher: the sociomaterial construction of an educational actor

Perrotta

Czerniewicz

Beetham

2015

British Journal of Sociology of Education

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This paper draws on Actor Network Theory (ANT) and on the sociology of cultural consumption to examine the phenomenon of corporate Massive Open Online Courses (X-MOOCs). Through the analysis of texts available in the public domain, the paper argues that over a short period (between 2012 and 2013) digitisation technology became associated with the emergence of a hybrid 'actor': the DVR (Digital Video Recorder) Teacher. A parallel is drawn between the 'interactive affordances' of digital instruction and the playback and cataloguing options that have contributed to shifts in TV viewing habits. The DVR teacher is described as an artefact in the service of a postmodern project of self-improvement through cultural consumption, which recruits digitisation to meet a growing demand for 'upgrades to the self'. In the conclusion, the paper explores how the study of digital education could benefit from an interface between sociomaterial studies and the sociology of culture.

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“…During the last two decades, Bourdieu's field theory has become increasingly popular among scholars concerned with the study of contemporary cultural production, particularly in fields such as cultural sociology (Regev 1994, Santoro 2002, Prior 2008 and media studies (Benson 1999, Hesmondhalgh 2006, Bolin 2009). In this respect, there has been considerable debate about the potentialities and limits of field theory vis-à-vis the study of contemporary media industries.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cultural production and the morality of markets: Popular music critics and the conversion of economic power into symbolic capital

Varriale

2015

Poetics

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This article examines the strategies through which cultural producers may convert their market success into a form of symbolic capital, that is, into a range of distinctive moral values and symbolic boundaries. This question is explored in relation to the rise of popular music criticism in Italy. Drawing on Bourdieu's field theory, this article reconstructs the field's historical genesis and examines the strategies of a heteronomous organisation (the music weekly Ciao 2001). In doing so, it counterbalances the focus of field studies on small scale cultural production, and argues that commercially-oriented producers may contribute to the broader legitimation of market imperatives. Further, this article argues that producers' position in the global cultural field is likely to shape their understanding of heteronomous forces, and thus the way they mobilise and convert different capitals. This article provides an empirical contribution to debates about the impact of market forces on cultural production, and to the growing scholarship on global cultural fields and cultural criticism. Theoretically, it argues that autonomy and heteronomy should not be addressed as mutually exclusive ideal-types, but as dispositions embedded in concrete practices and fields of relations, which may co-exist in the work of both avant-garde and large-scale cultural organisations.

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Putting a Glitch in the Field: Bourdieu, Actor Network Theory and Contemporary Music

Cited by 66 publications

References 18 publications

‘It’s A Social Thing, Not a Nature Thing’: Popular Music Practices in Reykjavík, Iceland

‘It’s A Social Thing, Not a Nature Thing’: Popular Music Practices in Reykjavík, Iceland

The rise of the video-recorder teacher: the sociomaterial construction of an educational actor

Cultural production and the morality of markets: Popular music critics and the conversion of economic power into symbolic capital

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