Vaughn Schmutz

Change and Continuity in Newspaper Coverage of Popular Music since 1955: Evidence from the United States, France, Germany, and the Netherlands

In this article, we describe general features of popular music coverage in elite newspapers in the United States, France, Germany, and the Netherlands from 1955 to 2005. Drawing on data from content analysis of over 4,000 newspaper articles sampled in four reference years (1955, 1975, 1995, and 2005), we document broad changes and continuities in the extent, focus, and form of popular music coverage in mainstream media outlets of each country.

World heritage and the scientific consecration of ‘outstanding universal value’:

Since World War II, the world heritage movement generated widespread support for preserving various sites of natural and cultural significance deemed to have outstanding universal value (OUV) for humanity. While the designation and evaluation of OUV were initially ambiguous, this process underwent expansive rationalization over time. Building on world society scholarship, we argue that specialized international nongovernmental organizations (INGOs) played a particularly prominent role in defining OUV, formalizing the process of evaluation, and reinforcing the legitimacy of world heritage by promoting scientific standards and techniques. To support these claims, we systematically examine 811 ‘advisory body’ evaluations produced by associated INGOs from 1980 to 2010 to illustrate (a) the expansive rationalization of evaluative procedures related to world heritage and (b) the increasing reliance on scientific legitimacy to define and validate OUV, particularly for cultural sites. Overall, our findings lend support to institutional theories of globalization.

Diffusion and decoupling in the world heritage movement: exploring global/local tensions in Africa

ABSTRACTA common critique of world society theory is that it overemphasises processes of institutional expansion and isomorphism, and underemphasises instances of decoupling and local variation. We address this concern head-on through an analysis of the world heritage movement. On the one hand, we detail how this movement has expanded into a global institution with highly standardised procedures for evaluating the ‘outstanding universal value’ of cultural and natural sites around the world. On the other hand, we detail how these procedures involve rational-scientific assumptions about evaluation that lead to regional inequality, hindering the ability of less developed countries to successfully nominate, inscribe and manage world heritage sites. With a specific focus on African countries, we identify how decoupling occurs in two distinct ways that hamper their participation in the world heritage movement: (1) a lack of scientific and technical expertise and (2) a cultural mismatch between local and global ...

De categorische imperatief in de populaire muziek

Recente studies hebben aanwijzingen gevonden voor het bestaan van een ‘categorische imperatief’. Objecten die niet op eenduidige wijze te classificeren zijn binnen de categorieen van hun veld betalen daarvoor een prijs: ze worden genegeerd of lager gewaardeerd. In dit artikel onderzoeken we of deze categorische imperatief ook van toepassing is op de classificatie van popalbums in genrecategorieen en vergelijken de gevolgen van genreambiguiteit binnen twee (sub)velden van de populaire muziek. De resultaten tonen dat genreambiguiteit een negatief effect heeft binnen het commerciele subveld, maar een positief effect binnen het artistieke subveld.

Vinyl: The Analogue Record in the Digital Age

After appearing to be on the verge of extinction, many music industry observers have noted a steady uptick in vinyl record sales for the past decade. In Vinyl, Dominik Bartmanski and Ian Woodward provide their explanation for the rebirth of analogue records during the digital age. Building on Bartmanski’s work with Jeffrey Alexander, this account emphasizes the status of vinyl as a cultural icon with widely recognized symbolic meaning and autonomous causal potency. Echoing the recent focus on materiality among cultural sociologists, this potency is largely attributed to the concrete and objective qualities of vinyl records in contrast to the less tactile character of digital music media such as the compact disc (CD) and MP3. While vinyl’s recent comeback provides a timely hook for the opening chapter, the book is ultimately about a specific community of cosmopolitan music lovers (i.e., the electronic music scene in Berlin) that holds the analogue record sacrosanct. Thus, the preface transports the reader to record stores in trendsetting neighborhoods like Kreuzberg and Neukölln where devotees find refuge from cold Berlin nights amid stacks of vinyl. The reader is also introduced to thirteen key informants, most based in Berlin, who are involved in aspects of independent vinyl production or distribution as well as electronicmusic DJs who use vinyl in their performances. Along with lengthy interviews and participant observation at record stores, clubs, and other sites in the electronic music scene, the authors describe their methods as a combination of ‘‘phenomenologically inclined observation and hermeneutic ‘thick description’ of both extant media texts and textual data generated through [their] own interviews’’ (p. 168). From the outset, the authors and their passionate informants portray vinyl as the most tactile, sensual, aesthetically pleasing, and socially relevant music medium. Vinyl is esteemed as a holistic work of art that brings music, sculpture, visual art, and book into material form. The authors seem to target a broad audience interested in the resurgence of vinyl. Perhaps as a result, they quote David Byrne (the musician) where they could quote Howard Becker (the sociologist) to make the same point, and there is little engagement with sociologists who have written on relevant topics like music scenes, the coexistence of music formats, or the uses of music in everyday life. While music sociologists are likely to notice this absence, many readers will take pleasure in the reverent, at times poetic, language with which vinyl records are depicted throughout. In this account, DJs are ‘‘revolutionaries’’ who kept analogue records afloat in the tidal wave of digitalization and who remain at the cutting edge of vinyl’s rebirth. Above all, the authors focus on the importance of materiality in the handling and hearing of vinyl records. Drawing on sociologist Terence McDonnell, the concept of ‘‘affordances’’ is used to articulate the relations and rituals enabled through interactions with vinyl. They employ the idea of ‘‘entanglements’’ to argue vinyl cannot be disconnected from its objective properties that one can touch, see, and smell. Devoted listeners characterize the sound of vinyl as warmer, richer, and more intimate than other formats. 284 Reviews

Classifications in popular music

The categorical system of popular music, such as genre categories, is a highly differentiated and dynamic classification system. In this article we present work that studies different aspects of these categorical systems in popular music. Following the work of Paul DiMaggio, we focus on four questions: How does the position of popular music vary in terms of its place in the cultural hierarchy and the manner in which it is legitimated? How do social and symbolic boundaries mutually shape each other? What are the consequences of boundary crossing in popular music, and do these effects vary across different subfields of popular music? How do classification systems in popular music change over time?

World Cultural Heritage: Conventions

The conceptualization and definition of world cultural heritage, as well as the principles guiding its preservation, have gradually emerged through a series of international conventions and other agreements since the nineteenth century. The most influential of these agreements has been the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, also known as the World Heritage Convention (WHC), adopted by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 1972. The WHC represents a comprehensive effort to formalize and globalize the process by which world cultural heritage is identified and preserved. Subsequent conventions have sought to expand UNESCOs original interpretation to include underwater and intangible heritage, for example, and have taken measures to protect world heritage sites from a variety of threats, such as globalization. Keywords: culture; globalization

Globalization and Musical Hierarchy in the United States, France, Germany, and the Netherlands

This chapter builds on comparative research on shifting cultural hierarchies and cultural globalization by considering changes in the musical field in the United States, France, Germany, and the Netherlands from 1955 to 2005. Using newspaper coverage in the four countries as an indicator, we consider the extent to which there is an increasingly global orientation to musical actors over time. Amid globalization, newspaper coverage of classical music was resilient to change, remaining highly focused on European musical actors. By contrast, popular music is in much greater flux since 1955 with a heightened focus on American and Anglophone musical actors. Our findings highlight the complex relationship between domestic and transnational fields of music as well as the role of media attention in processes of cultural globalization.