Paolo Magaudda

When materiality 'bites back': digital music consumption practices in the age of dematerialization.

Dematerialization of artefacts and material objects is a relevant issue in consumer studies, especially when we consider the ongoing changes regarding the consumption of cultural goods. This article adopts a theory-of-practice approach to analyse the consequences of dematerialization on the practices of digital music consumption. From an empirical point of view, the article is based on data collected during research into the appropriation of digital music technologies and based on 25 in-depth narrative semi-structured interviews with young Italian digital music consumers. The analysis mainly focuses on the appropriation of three specific technologies involved into the contemporary consumption of music: the iPod, the external hard drive and the vinyl disc. In order to understand the role of materiality in the age of dematerialization, the article adopts the ‘circuit of practice’, an explicative model that enables empirical analysis and that is aimed at highlighting the changing relationships between materiality and social practices. The analysis shows that music digitalization does not mean less materiality in the actual practice of listeners, that material ‘stuffs’ still occupy a relevant position in digital music, and that materiality nowadays seems to ‘bite back’, being even more crucial in shaping consumers’ practices.

The Broken Boundaries between Science and Technology Studies and Cultural Sociology: Introduction to an Interview with Trevor Pinch

The article introduces and comments upon the themes developed in the interview with the sociologist of science and technology Trevor Pinch in this issue of Cultural Sociology. The paper outlines the trajectory of his work since the late 1970s, from the birth of Science and Technology Studies (STS), until his current interest in the relationship between music, technologies, and society. The paper focuses on the growth of the field of STS, pointing out the many interconnections between STS and the wide intellectual universe involving cultural studies, cultural sociology and symbolic interactionism. The paper also considers the leading role Trevor Pinch has played in the shaping of the field of ‘sound studies’, an interdisciplinary field focused on the study of the sonic dimensions of societies, tracing the initial development of this area and how it represents a new set of interconnections between STS and the sociological study of culture.

Processes of institutionalisation and ‘symbolic struggles’ in the ‘independent music’ field in Italy

Over the last fifteen years, independent rock music has become a wider field of cultural production and consumption in Italy. Indeed, while during the 1970s and 1990s the production of independent music was connected predominantly to political movements, alternative subcultures and the antagonistic attitude of the ‘centri sociali’, in the present decade, independent popular music has moved towards the centre of the national music industry and the mass media of the musical mainstream. This article describes the phases of this process of institutionalisation, showing how the politically based culture of independent music is today at the centre of a symbolic struggle occurring between the values of authenticity, rooted in political youth cultures, and the strategic and pragmatic tendency towards integration into the mainstream of the national music industry. This analysis is carried out applying the Bourdieian concepts of ‘field of cultural production’ and ‘cultural capital’, together with their evolutions i...

Studying Culture Differently: From Quantum Physics to the Music Synthesizer: An Interview with Trevor Pinch

This interview with Trevor Pinch, one of the most significant scholars in contemporary Science and Technology Studies (STS), reconstructs his career from the second half of the 1970s onwards, emphasizing the various points of contact and differences between social studies of science and technology, and several different approaches and authors in cultural sociology, cultural studies and culturalist approaches to the study of society. In doing so, the interview traces the evolution of debates in the sociological study of culture in relation to contemporaneous developments in the social study of science and technology. The interview moves on to explore one of the areas where Trevor Pinch has been active in recent years, namely the social and cultural study of music technologies. The interview ends with a reflection upon the political perspectives implicit in studies of science and technology generally, and in the work of Trevor Pinch particularly.

Bottom-up Infrastructures: Aligning Politics and Technology in building a Wireless Community Network

Contemporary innovation in infrastructures is increasingly characterized by a close relationship between experts and lay people. This phenomenon has attracted the attention from a wide range of disciplines, including computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), science and technology studies (S&TS), organization studies and participatory design (PD). Connecting to this broad area of research, the article presents a qualitative case study concerning the building and maintenance of a grassroots, bottom-up information infrastructure in Italy, defined as wireless community network (WCN). Methodologically, the research is based on qualitative interviews with participants to the WCN, ethnographic observations and document analysis. The aim of the article is to understand the alignment between the technical work implied in building this bottom-up infrastructure and the political and cultural frameworks that move people to participate to this project. Relying on the field of science & technology studies, and in particular on the notions of ‘inverse infrastructure’ and ‘research in the wild’, we disclose the WCN’s peculiar innovation trajectory, localized outside conventional spaces of research and development. Overall, the presentation of the qualitative and ethnographic data allows to point out a more general reflection on bottom-up infrastructures and to enrich the academic debate concerning bottom-up infrastructuring work and other similar typologies of collaborative design projects in the domain of infrastructures.

Abriendo la caja negra de la investigación académica: evaluación, publicación y perspectivas críticas

What does it mean today to take a critical stance on scientific knowledge, its production and its dissemination? And what tactics should one adopt for this purpose? These questions are relevant to all disciplines; but for STS they are crucial, because the processes by which knowledge is produced and institutionalized are among the main themes of the entire STS field of study. This paper tries to answer the above questions by outlining the main features of the scenario in which the production and assessment of scientific knowledge today take place. It then concentrates on a concrete case in the field of open-access scientific publishing in order to show some of the tactics useful for pursuing a critical perspective on both the production and dissemination of knowledge at academic level.

Dalle periferie al museo. Note sul processo di legittimazione culturale della musica elettronica da ballo

The article traces a specific portion of the trajectory of cultural legitimation of electronic dance music since the eighties. This trajectory has consisted in the change from considering dance music as a recurring dimension of youth deviance, to represent, since the twenty-first century onward, a fully accepted and recognized form of art. This evolution is addressed by comparing two particular cultural phenomena related to electronic dance music both located in Spain. On the one hand, the dance movement known as the ‘Ruta del Bakalao’ or ‘Ruta Destroy’, developed in Spain, especially in the province of Valencia, during the Eighties. On the other hand, the Sonar Festival in Barcelona, launched in 1994 and turned into the most important electronic music festival in the world. These two examples are considered to reflect on the process of legitimation of electronic music as form of art over the last thirty years.

Introduction: Nanotechnologies and the Quest for Responsibility

This chapter provides an introduction to the issue of responsibility in nanotechnology development. After introducing the growing relevance of responsible development in nanotechnology policy and regulation, the chapter illustrates the structure of the volume and highlights three major aspects of responsibility that the book addresses: (1) responsibility and social relationships; (2) responsibility, division of social labour and institutional settings; (3) responsibility and orientation to the future. Eventually, the chapter suggests that the considerations proposed in the book about the responsible development of nanotechnologies offer useful entry points to frame a broader discussion on the responsible governance of emerging technologies.

Nanotechnology and Configurations of Responsibilities in Boundary Organizations

The chapter focuses on the way responsibility is performed in the actual work of a nanotechnology facility in Italy, called Nanofab. In this case, the attention of the analysis is moved on the activation of different forms of mutual responsibility between the actors involved in the work of nanotechnological innovation. Nanofab is described as a “boundary organization” working at the intersection between different spheres (political, economical, scientific). The analysis highlights that the construction of frameworks of responsibility in this situation is linked to at least two aspects: on the one hand to the organizational forms developed to give life to the collective actors emerging during the planning of the research centre considered; and on the other hand to the strategies and practices of collaboration with other actors, implying the establishment of frameworks of responsibility as well as of distribution of risks and of the construction of regimes of reciprocal trust.