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This book argues that music is an integral part of society – one amongst various interwoven forms of social interaction which comprise our social world; and shows that it has multiple valences which embed it within that wider world. Musical interactions are often also economic interactions, for example, and sometimes political interactions. They can be forms of identity work and contribute to the reproduction or bridging of social divisions. These valances allow music both to shape and be shaped by the wider network of relations and interactions making up our societies, in their local, national and global manifestations. The book tracks and explores these valances, combining a critical consideration of the existing literature with the development of an original, ‘relational’ approach to music sociology. The book extends the project begun in Crossley’s earlier work on punk and post-punk ‘music worlds’, revisiting this concept and the network ideas underlying it whilst both broadening the focus through a consideration of wider musical forms and by putting flesh on the bones of the network idea by considering the many types of interaction and relationships involved in music and the meanings which music has for its participants. Patterns of connection between music’s participants are important, whether they be performers, audience members or one of the various ‘support personnel’ who mediate between performers and audiences. However, so are the different uses to which participants put their participation and the meanings they co-create. These too must be foci for a relational music sociology.
Globalized urban precarity in Berlin and Abidjan examines urban youth’s practices of making do in digital economies, to understand how precarious working conditions reverberate in the coming of age in contemporary cities. Through a comparative analysis of the perspectives of young men working as airtime sellers in Abidjan and food delivery riders in Berlin, the book provides innovative analytical lenses to understand urban inequalities against the backdrop of current digital urban developments. Essentially, this ethnography challenges the easy conflation of instability with insecurity, and overcomes the centrality of wage labour in research on urban livelihood, by looking at a broader set of economic practices and relational mechanisms. The analysis shows how accruing symbolic capital, a feel for the game in contexts of ambiguity, and access to care are fundamental for explaining the unequal distribution of risks for socio-material insecurities in unstable work settings.
themes, from meaning, taste and identity, through social division, cohesion and the dynamics of economic and political life, to the various social worlds (‘music worlds’ as I call them) which form around different clusters of musical interactivity. Underlying all of this, however, is a relational conception of both social life and music. There are several competing versions of ‘relational sociology’ in the literature (Depelteau and Powell 2013 ), with the perspectives of Born (e.g. 2010a ) and Bourdieu ( 1984, 1993 ) proving particularly influential within music
seeds of change which first become visible in 1980 mark it out as a suitable point. My approach: relational sociology and networks Punk and, to a lesser extent, post-punk have been analysed before. There are a number of good academic accounts and some of the journalism in the area is excellent. I have drawn and learned from these accounts. My approach is different to the others that I have come across, however, even the other sociological accounts (some of which I review in Chapters 2–3). I look at punk from a different angle, asking different questions with respect
expose the tensions between the official ethos of the school and the everyday interactions of its community. (Wilson 2014: 110) 4 Introduction Forms of relational sociology alert us to seeing schools as hubs of interaction and relationships in which class and race may be seen as ‘positions in social space rather than individual attributes’ (Crossley 2015: 82). However, at the same time, schools can be the site of the reproduction of classed and raced inequalities. Those children whose parents, through racialised and classed advantage, have more ability to get the
's conception plugs that gap and in doing so rejoins both the arguments I have been building in this book, concerning interaction, relations and networks, and the wider context of relational sociology upon which those arguments rest (Crossley 2011 ). More to the point, Blau is right to emphasise concrete interactions and relations. The atomised actor of individualist philosophies (and such statistical models as Bourdieu's) is an abstraction and a myth. As I noted in Chapter 1 of this book, we are always already connected to others; interdependent and interacting; and
by telephone systems, paperwork, and geographical triangulation points’ (Law 1999 , 7). A wider-ranging manifesto for a relational sociology (Emirbayer 1997 ) also sought to focus on ‘bonds, not essences’ (Tilly cited in Emirbayer 1997 , 292) in order to question the apparently unproblematic nature of bounded units such as nation-states. These insights alert us to the ‘spatial understandings which underwrite ideologies
LGBT equality produces political outcomes both at the international and domestic level. In order to analyse the sexual politics located within EU enlargement relations and the outcomes these produce, the book develops a relational and transnational approach to the ‘Europeanisation of LGBT rights’. Drawing insights from relational sociology (Emirbayer, 1997 ) and the relational turn in international relations scholarship (Jackson and Nexon, 2019 ; Qin, 2018 ), the book argues that the sexual politics within the EU enlargement process should
In this chapter, I argue that music is social interaction. This argument connects to one of the central claims of relational sociology, discussed in the Chapter 1 ; namely, that social interaction is the most basic unit of sociological analysis and a building brick from which the more complex structures of the social world are composed. That is one reason for making the argument. By showing that music is social interaction, I frame it appropriately for relational analysis and understanding. However, it is also important to establish that music is social
Collaborative Governance, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 22(1), 1–29. Emirbayer, Mustafa (1997) Manifesto for a Relational Sociology, American Journal of Sociology 103(2), 281–317. Esmark, Anders and Peter Triantafillou (2007) Document Analysis of Network Topography and Network Programmes, in Peter Bogason and Mette Zølner (eds.) Methods in Democratic Network Governance , Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 99–124. Evangelista, Matthew (1995) The Paradox of State Strength