Social Spaces of Music: Introduction

Background

Three interconnected themes run through much sociological work on music. First, music is an activity, or rather an inter-activity. At the most basic level, it involves interaction between artists and audiences (sometimes mediated by recordings). The former make sounds, usually in accordance with specific stylistic conventions. The latter, again drawing upon conventions, listen to and engage with those sounds, seeking out patterns and thereby ‘internal meaning’ ³ (Meyer, 1956; Green, 1997, 2008), and often linking those patterns to contexts and external referents, including personal experiences and identities (Frith, 1987), in a process which confers ‘external meaning’ ⁴ upon them (Green, 1997, 2008; DeNora, 1986). Both sound-making and listening are essential to the existence of music. Furthermore, such communicative activities often require further interactions which plan and organize them. Christopher Small (1998) captures this web of interactivity with his concept of ‘musicking’.

Second, as ‘inter-action’ suggests, musicking is collective action. Musicians may practise alone and perhaps noodle solo for their own pleasure, switching between the roles of player and audience in a manner reminiscent of Mead’s (1967) account of the dialogue between I and me (which is what it is ⁵ ), but as with Mead’s dialogues this is an individualized derivative of collective music-making, and sociologists have been primarily interested in the collective form, with its complex division of labour involving artists, audiences and a range of supporting personnel, e.g. managers, promoters, engineers and producers, to name only the most obvious.

In some respects this collective action is ubiquitous and closely interwoven with the mundane practices of everyday life (DeNora, 2000, 2003). In other respects, however, giving us our third theme, in the contemporary Western context different webs of interactivity, corresponding to different musical styles, constitute distinct enclaves within the wider social body. They form differentiated ‘spaces’ of social activity.

From Spheres to Subcultures: Early Conceptions

Isabelle Darmon’s contribution to this special issue explores what was perhaps the first sociological attempt to capture these distinct spaces: Max Weber’s conception of cultural spheres. Since Weber, however, many other conceptions have been posited and many distinct spaces, corresponding to different musical forms, have been analysed and explored (Weber was primarily focused upon what we now think of as ‘classical music’). Both Stebbins (1972) and Merriam and Mack (1960) offer analyses of what they call ‘the jazz community’, for example, and much of Howard Becker’s (1951, 1963, 1972) early work on jazz and ‘dance’ musicians was inspired and informed by this work, although Becker often frames his analyses as an investigation of a ‘deviant culture’ or subculture.

Becker’s conception of subculture draws from the work of the Chicago School, but an alternative conception, focused specifically upon the musical consumption practices of working-class youth, derives from Birmingham’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), which also shifted the focus of investigation in the direction of various forms of contemporary rock and pop (Hall and Jefferson, 1993; Hebdige, 1988; Willis, 1978; on the Chicago School concept see Gelder and Thornton, 1997: 11–82). Alienated from both the dominant culture of the middle class and the working-class culture and networks of their parents, the CCCS argued, working-class youths carve out their own culture, networks and spaces; and appropriation of and identification with particular types of music play a huge role in this process. Teds, punks, skins, hippies, bike boys and mods were all distinguished by the music they listened to (amongst other things). Music was a totem of their respective tribes.

Beyond Subculture

The work of the CCCS and its flagship concept of ‘subculture’ have been hugely influential in the sociology of music, and rightly so. They played an important role in putting music onto the sociological agenda, particularly in the UK, and pinpointed key aspects of its sociological relevance. They focused narrowly upon consumers of music, however, having almost nothing to say about wider practices and relations of musicking. Consumption is an essential aspect of the music-making process. Music exists within the auditory experience of those who hear and define it as such, and its meaning, both internal and external, is dependent upon the listener and her responses to and uses of what she hears (DeNora, 1986; Dewey, 2005; Fish, 1980; Meyer, 1956; Small, 1998). Furthermore, the willingness of audiences to pay for recordings, gigs and merchandising generates the financial basis of much musical (inter)activity. Consumption is only one element in the mix, however, and, as Laing (1985) observes in his classic study of punk, the sociology of music needs to look more widely, incorporating a focus upon artists, support personnel and their range of (inter)activities (see also Crossley, forthcoming). Becker’s aforementioned early work on jazz suggests that ‘subculture’ might be stretched to incorporate elements of this bigger picture, but the narrowness of the CCCS formulation has fuelled some to look beyond ‘subculture’ in their attempts to conceptualize the social spaces of music (Bennett, 1999; Hesmondhalgh, 2005).

Moreover, this is not the only shortcoming of ‘subculture’, at least as conceptualized by the CCCS. It has been subject to extensive critiques in recent years, some focusing upon social changes which have apparently rendered it much less appropriate in the contemporary context, others suggesting flaws which were there all along (Bennett, 1999; Bennett and Kahn-Harris, 2004; Clarke, 1990). Again, this has fuelled numerous attempts to find an alternative way of conceptualizing the social spaces of music.

Scenes, Worlds, Networks and Fields

There has been no shortage of suggestions as to how to take the sociology of music forward, but our decision to compile this special issue, as noted above, was inspired by four of them in particular:

We have folded the concept of social networks into our concept of music worlds (e.g. Bottero and Crossley, 2011; Crossley et al., 2014; Crossley, forthcoming’; see also Crossley, 2011), as McAndrew and Everett do in this issue (see also McAndrew and Everett, 2014; McAndrew et al., 2014), and others have used it in conjunction with scenes and fields (Crossley, 2008, 2009; Reitsamer, 2012, etc.), but it can be, and sometimes is, used as a stand-alone concept.

Each of these concepts retains the sense of social differentiation entailed by ‘subculture’, and preserves the latter’s concern with both wider lifestyle markers of musical taste (e.g. clothing and argot) and the intersubjective identifications and investments of participants. As Peterson and Bennett (2004) say of scenes specifically, however, in the more recent concepts there is more recognition of varying levels and types of involvement; less of a tendency to treat music-related identities as pre-emptive, even in the case of fanatics. Without denying the existence of, for example, punk as an identity and lifestyle, the emphasis is less upon social types, more upon sets of activities and relations which actors participate in to varying degrees, in spaces and at times which, in some cases, they demarcate sharply from other aspects of their life.

The demand upon resources (e.g. time, money and energy) often required for heavy involvement may limit the number of spaces in which any one actor can become involved, at least in anything other than a superficial way. However, the shift from ‘types’ to ‘spaces’ allows for the possibility that the same actor may enjoy a moderate level of involvement in more than one, a possibility which intersects with Peterson’s (1992) well known work on the omnivore (see also Bennett, 1999). In addition, it allows for the possibility that different constituencies may be involved in the same space, perhaps attributing different meanings and deriving different pleasures from it. Bennett (1999), for example, observes how the dance scene attracted a variety of types.

Furthermore, to reiterate, these concepts widen the analytic lens of music sociology, beyond the purview of ‘subculture’, by incorporating a focus upon performers and support personnel as well as audiences and consumers. All facets of musicking and their interrelations are, at least potentially, opened up to investigation.

Social Divisions

A further departure involved in the newer concepts of music’s social spaces relates to issues of social division, social distance and the wider ‘social space’ ⁶ in which musical spaces form. Subcultures, as theorized by the CCCS, were working-class youth subcultures, and both the age and class position of their members were deemed directly relevant to the explanation of their emergence. Their participants were said to be rebelling against their subordinate position in both age and class hierarchies and their capacity for collective resistance was explained by reference to contact between them which their shared social position brought about. This class and age profiling was questionable from the outset. Hippies, for example, who formed one of Willis’s (1978) two case studies, fit squarely with the CCCS account of subculture except in the respect that they are widely agreed to have formed primarily amongst middle-class youth (Willis protested that they were still outsiders). Furthermore, many critics noted that the punks, who were a textbook exemplar of subculture for Hebdige (1988) and a strong example of working-class resistance, in fact drew upon a diverse class base (Laing, 1985; Clarke, 1990; Frith, 1997; Crossley, forthcoming). Furthermore, criticism from within the CCCS itself pointed to the neglect of gender and race in the standard account (e.g. McRobbie, 1991; Gilroy, 1987; Jones, 1988).

More recent work on ageing in music scenes, which explores the continued participation of some into middle and even old age, constitutes the final nail in this particular coffin (Bennett, 2012; Bennett and Hodgkinson, 2012; Smith, 2009). We can no longer even claim that devotion to music and music-based collective identities are a preserve of the young. This is not to say that social divisions and distance are no longer relevant, however. Social divisions enter into most conceptions of musical spaces in at least three ways.

First, different music worlds, to use our favoured conception, recruit disproportionately from particular social ‘niches’ (on ‘niches’ see Mark, 1998). Notwithstanding the abovementioned shifts in the relation of age to music, for example, worlds sometimes differ markedly with respect to the age profile of their participants. In addition, the racial composition of worlds sometimes differs markedly too, as the persistence of ‘black music’ as a vernacular genre category suggests.

Second, beyond the general profile of participants there are often marked inequalities of opportunity for taking up specific roles within worlds for would-be participants from different social groups, and sometimes also internal conflicts concerning these inequalities. Many studies point to the disadvantages that female musicians experience in relation to participation in particular music worlds, for example (Bayton, 1998; Cohen, 1997; Green, 1997; Leonard, 2007; O’Shea, 2014a: 4), and this has given rise in some cases to collective actions within particular music worlds intended to right this wrong, the most obvious actions being those allied to Riot Grrrl, Ladyfest, Rock Camp for Girls and Female Pressure (Leonard, 2007; O’Shea, 2014a, 2014b; Reitsamer, 2012; Schilt, 2004).

Third, the flip side of this is that specific resources within a music world may be monopolized by representatives of one social status, generating a power imbalance which impacts negatively upon others. Much of the above work on gender, for example, observes the manner in which predominantly male support personnel enforce particular definitions of femininity upon the female artists whom they manage. Similarly, Kofsky (1998) has described the difficulties experienced by black jazz artists in the context of an industry whose key positions are all occupied by whites. This compounds a situation of resource inequalities and power balances which affect all involved in music worlds.

Note, however, that in the case of ‘scenes’, ‘worlds’ and ‘networks’, the existence and nature of such inequalities are not assumed to cover all music spaces to the same extent or in the same way. The impact of wider social divisions is a possibility for empirical investigation, and is assumed to vary across spaces (some versions of ‘field’, by contrast, are more theoretically prescriptive and sometimes limit their focus to those inequalities captured in Bourdieu’s conception of ‘social space’ ⁷ – namely, the unequal distribution of economic and cultural capital).

The Mainstream

The differentiation of music spaces is not only differentiation from non-musical spheres of activity. It entails the differentiation of one musical space from another (e.g. jazz from heavy metal). In Peterson and Bennett’s (2004) concept of scene, furthermore, retaining something of the oppositional flavour of the CCCS version of subculture and even, in a more tangential and critical vein, Adorno’s (1976, 1991a, 1991b) critique of popular music, it entails differentiation from the mainstream music industry:

… over 80 percent of all the commercial music of the world is controlled by five multinational firms. It is good that this is not the whole story because then music would deserve no more attention than … shower fixtures. … most music is made and enjoyed in diverse situations divorced from these corporate worlds. (Peterson and Bennett, 2004: 1)

Scenes are organized on a DIY basis, with participants forging their own means of recording, distributing, staging gigs, etc., and often doing so in self-conscious defiance of an industry whose values, both aesthetic and commercial, they reject. It is doubtful that Adorno would find much to please him in contemporary music scenes, but their efforts to dissociate themselves from ‘the industry’ are as sincere as those of the musical avant-garde whom he favours and their claim to political resistance is more persuasive.

However, their divorce from the mainstream is not absolute. Echoing the CCCS, Peterson and Bennett describe the way in which aspects of mainstream, corporate culture are appropriated and adapted by scensters to suit their specific purposes. In addition, we would add both that the lines between ‘the industry’ and independent scenes are often fuzzy and, again echoing the CCCS, that the scope for ‘the industry’ to colonize previously independent scenes, bringing them (or at least a sanitized version of them) into the mainstream, is considerable (see Hesmondhalgh, 1998, 1999). This echoes Adorno (1997) too, of course, as he believes that the emancipatory potential of art music only survives for the short period before its innovations lose their capacity to provoke, congeal into conventions and are embraced by the industry.

More importantly, in our view (and to use our preferred term), the mainstream is itself just another music world, albeit an economically dominant world, constituted as all worlds are by particular networks, actors, spaces, conventions and resource streams. For example, it typically involves big venues, BBC radio playlists, radio-friendly styles and mixes, showbiz parties, the financial resources and influence of major labels, etc. There is a mainstream, commercial music world; there are various elite music worlds (including Adorno’s avant-garde), often funded by government; and there are numerous underground and marginal DIY worlds, excluded from and/or kicking against the mainstream (and also, in some cases, against each other). Each of these worlds is of sociological interest, as are comparisons across and relations between them in the wider musical universe which they collectively constitute.

As a final observation regarding this point, we suggest that Peterson’s (1990) important work on rock ‘n’ roll provides a crucial key to understanding the mainstream world (see also Peterson and Berger, 1975). Though Peterson frames it as a study of innovation, it is, as an early paper on jazz better illustrates (Peterson, 1967), more precisely a study of the conditions which allow underground innovations to break into the mainstream. As such it illuminates the boundaries around and gateway into the mainstream as a distinct music world. The contemporary relevance of this work has been questioned (e.g. Dowd, 2004), but at the very least it affords a basis from which to begin thinking about these questions.

Space: Social and Geographical

The spatiality of music spaces in not only ‘social’, at least not in a narrow sense. It is geographical. Whilst ‘territory’ was important in some accounts of subculture, and ‘place’ was nicely drawn out in Willis’s (1978) ethnographic work, the ‘where’ of subculture was not always clear, particularly as the concept began to be used in more abstract and generalized ways (e.g. Hebdige, 1988). Becker (2004) rectifies this in some part in his concept of worlds. ‘Every artwork’, he says in characteristically casual tone, ‘has to be some place’, and he pursues that through a discussion of ‘jazz places’ (see also Crossley, forthcoming). Peterson and Bennett (2004) elaborate further in their work on scenes, however, in the distinction that they draw between local, translocal and virtual scenes (the adjectival distinctions might equally be applied to worlds, networks or fields, but we will stick with ‘scene’ for now). Local scenes involve face-to-face interactions and therefore typically take place in localized spaces which become associated with a scene, e.g. venues, record shops, cafes, etc. They are associated with a specific town or city. Translocal scenes arise, by contrast, when ‘local clusters of producers, musicians and fans with shared musical tastes interact with other local music scenes through the exchange of recordings, people and objects’ (Reitsamer, 2012: 401). In many cases this involves the movement of bands and audiences between towns and cities, but it may entail the convergence of participants from different towns upon a specific space at a particular time (see Hodkinson, 2004). Festivals are an obvious example of this (Hodkinson, 2004; Dowd et al., 2004). In the contemporary context it will also almost certainly involve some form of virtual communication. When members of a scene only ever interact online, however, Peterson and Bennett refer more specifically to a virtual scene.

Beyond the Bun Fight

The four concepts we have identified here (scene, field, world and network) might be perceived as competing. The field concept is often posited as a preferable alternative to the art world and network concepts, for example, not least by Bourdieu (1993) himself. Similarly, Becker (2006a) has offered a critique of Bourdieu, and we have identified what we believe to be the advantages of the world concept, particularly when embellished through a formal consideration of social networks over, ‘fields’ (Bottero and Crossley, 2011; Crossley and Bottero, 2014; but see Fox (2014); see also Crossley, 2011, 2014). Such debates will no doubt continue and they are mostly healthy. However, there is variation and inconsistency in the use of each of these concepts (on scenes see Hesmondhalgh, 2005; on fields see Savage and Silva, 2013), such that differences between them are often muddied by differences within them. Furthermore, it is clear both that they tend to converge upon key analytic foci (e.g. spaces, resources, relations, inequalities, conventions), and that advocates of each borrow from the others. Peterson and Bennett (2004) explicitly acknowledge their borrowing from Becker and Bourdieu, for example, and we would equally acknowledge the indebtedness of our concept of music worlds to work on scenes and fields, in addition to our more obvious engagement with the social networks literature (Crossley’s (2008, 2009) earlier work on punk and post-punk networks used the scene concept).

Each of the four concepts has much of value to contribute to our understanding of the social spaces of music. Each has shown itself to be on to something, both theoretically and empirically, and, for all of their intellectual value, academic turf wars must not be allowed to obscure the bigger picture which these different contributions collectively paint. It is in this spirit that we have tried in this special issue to bring together contributions representing a number of different approaches, in the hope both of illuminating commonalities and pooling insights and observations.

The Contributions

In a fascinating recovery of a neglected (and misunderstood) aspect of Weber’s sociology, Isabelle Darmon explores Weber’s (1958) conceptualization of music as a cultural ‘domain’ which unfolds according to its own logic, concerns and dynamics. This account significantly predates sociological talk of ‘worlds’, ‘fields’, or ‘scenes’, but anticipates some of the key issues explored within such concepts. Darmon shows how Weber’s account of Western (‘Classical’) music is part of his more general understanding of distinct spheres of human action as ‘orders of life’ in which initial principles of organization create intrinsic logics of deployment. This idea of an inner momentum created within domains of cultural life is elaborated in Weber’s Music Study, where he depicts the historical unfolding of Western musical aesthetics and practice resulting from the adoption of the harmonic (as opposed to the melodic) resolution to organizing sound intervals. This gives rise to a distinctive ‘system’ or type of music found in the Western music tradition’s particular approach to tonality and pitch. The development of a fixed musical notation system (organizing and reining in tonal ambiguity), and the development and popularization of musical instruments with fixed harmonic intervals – particularly the piano – has helped train Western ears to recognize, enjoy and anticipate harmonic ratios and dampened the ability to distinguish finer intervals. This is an account of musical taste and practice in terms of an internal logic of aesthetics, tracing how the Western ‘hearing’ of sound became culturally shaped by the creation of a harmonic disposition of the ear.

As Darmon notes, the idea of distinct domains of cultural activity operating according to their own specific logic is an idea found in a number of contemporary accounts of culture, including the cultural sociology of Bourdieu. But where Bourdieu sees the logic of specific cultural fields as ultimately expressing the broader logic of the field of power, Weber’s conception is one in which cultural spheres are relatively autonomous of all other spheres. Ultimately for Weber, the domain of music must be seen as sui generis and understood in terms of its own inner logic. Of course, Weber stresses the need to understand the relations between ‘cultural contents’ and economic forms. So, for example, he sees an interplay between the Western music domain and the capitalist economy through the role of the piano – where the dominant role of the piano in musical education and accompaniment (and so as the carrier of the harmonic ratio) has been sustained by its mass production and consumption. However, whereas Bourdieu sees the struggles and tensions of cultural fields in terms of positional power relations, Weber focuses on cultural struggles as part of the tensions arising from the intrinsic logic of music orders.

In Weber’s account neither the harmonic nor melodic ‘systems’ can be entirely consistent principles of organization (empirical sound intervals are more chaotic than either of these systems), which creates an inner dynamic (and so also spaces for creativity) within music systems in the unfolding tension between the expected and the empirical ‘behaviour’ of sounds. Listeners, instrument manufacturers and creators of music must all grapple with this immanent dynamic which helps create the unfolding internal logic of music domains.

Crossley and Bottero’s paper extends their account of ‘music worlds’ (Bottero and Crossley, 2011; see also Crossley, forthcoming; Crossley et al., 2014) by exploring the internal and intrinsic pleasures that participants derive from music worlds. The pleasures of musical participation have often been noted, but the mechanisms and dynamics by which such pleasure comes about have been less explored. Crossley and Bottero’s paper is focused not on the investigation of pleasure per se but instead on the deconstruction of musical pleasure as a concept (that is, taking pleasure not as the thing that explains but rather as the thing to be explained). They argue that the pleasure that enthusiasts (whether players, audiences or support personnel) derive from a particular musical world needs to be understood intrinsically, in terms of participants’ increasing commitment to the internal goods and conventions of that world. Drawing on Alasdair MacIntyre’s (1985) concept of ‘internal goods’ (those rewards which derive from possession of the know-how or skills specific to a practice and which are pursued for their own sake), the authors argue that the internal logic of a world shapes the values and satisfactions of participants, and that the dynamics of participation create changing motivations and rewards for people with differing levels of involvement. The role of convention within music worlds is significant here, not just through its role in coordinating participants but also through its role in the production of pleasure and commitment.

In the second part of their paper, Crossley and Bottero further explore how people’s investment in the conventions of music affords pleasure and value by developing a line of thought on the pleasures of musicking which can be traced from Schutz (1976a, 1976b), through Dewey (2005) and Meyer (1956) to Becker (1982). In this account, the effect of music derives from the listener’s ability to ‘tune-in’ and ‘learn to hear’ its conventions, in which seeking and finding patterns to make sense of what they hear creates pleasure in an embodied, visceral manner. And since engaging with a piece of music involves tacit expectations of what we will hear, composers and performers play with these expectations, teasing the audience by manipulating conventions to generate and then release pleasurable tension in the listener. The embodied, emotional effect this produces is only possible because of the conventions which are shared between composer and audience – from the expectations which are rooted in habitual familiarity with the conventions of a musical style. Since pleasure derives both from tuning into convention and from deviation from convention and the manipulation of expectation, this creates an internal dynamism within music worlds, over and above any positional stances, with innovation itself an internal good within many music worlds. This is reminiscent of Weber’s account of how the tension between the expected and the empirical ‘behaviour’ of sounds creates an inner dynamic within the Western music domain, but here located within the more differentiated conventions and social ecologies of specific music worlds.

Building upon their own earlier work on worlds and networks (McAndrew and Everett, 2014), Siobhan McAndrew and Martin Everett’s paper involves a social network analysis of British composers of classical music in order to examine music as ‘a collective invention’. Taking as their starting point the idea that creative work depends upon interaction and collaboration, they explore the structure of social ties between composers (whether through teaching and conservatoire links, friendship, family ties or mentorship, or correspondence and collaboration), in order to see how the patterning of such ties might have helped to share or consolidate new musical ideas and to create spaces for innovation – ‘hotspots of creativity’. Using the biographical data on composers in Britain (from 1870–1969) contained in the New Grove Dictionaries of Opera and Music and Musicians, McAndrew and Everett explore the way in which social ties (and questions of network centrality, density, brokerage and isolation) are related to distinct musical ‘schools’ (such as the English pastoral school) and also to an individual’s prestige and success (using as a measure of success the inclusion of a composer’s works in the Promenade concerts). They note that a number of distinct groupings – or communities – in the network are clearly linked to ties emerging from colleges of music or notable teachers (such as the ‘Manchester School’ centred around the Royal Northern College of Music, or a cluster centred on the composer and teacher Lennox Berkeley), and show that some of the most successful composers – such as Vaughan Williams – were also highly connected. But whilst success at the Proms was clearly linked to network centrality, the most central figures were not necessarily the most successful and some marginal figures were financially successful. McAndrew and Everett’s analysis suggests, however, that network centrality is associated with aesthetic distinctions, with central figures composing more ‘serious’ works, whilst the success of individuals more peripheral within networks was apparently linked to their specialism in lighter and more popular works. In addition, their analysis shows how a formal analysis of social connections can help in examining some of the assumptions made in music histories about marginalized or ‘outsider’ figures, with the data showing, for example, that whilst female composers were under-represented in networks they were not poorly connected or peripheral within them.

In developing their argument, McAndrew and Everett note that studies of the arts and innovation have indicated the significance of spatial relationality and proximity for creativity, whether for the diffusion of knowledge, for the emergence of critical mass, or for economies of scale. Social network analysis uses the idea of distance and proximity within social networks to explore the same issues, focusing on relationality within a social – rather than geographical – space. But as they observe, both spatial and network approaches share an interest in the importance of context for social action, with proximity within a context (whether that is a place or a network) affecting the transfer of information and social influence between agents.

The same focus on the context of musical collaboration, albeit this time a socio-geographic context, is found in Nick Prior’s detailed ethnographic exploration of musicking in a specific location – Iceland – in which he explores the question: ‘does Iceland “punch above its weight” musically?’ In doing so, Prior examines the play of the (socio-geographic) ‘spatial’ within the social spaces of music. Iceland (Reykjavik in particular) is often seen by music journalists as offering a globally successful ‘alternative’ and ‘authentic’ music culture radically disproportionate to its small size. Sometimes this success has been linked to Iceland’s environment and geography – both to its geographical isolation and harsh climate, but also its ‘glacial’, ‘desolate’ yet awesome and ‘rousing’ natural landscape. Prior casts a sceptical eye over such ‘Borealism’ (seen as a cliché by Icelandic musicians themselves), arguing that whilst the poetics of the Icelandic landscape may get ‘into’ the music, it is more fruitful to look at how creative endeavours are collective accomplishments situated and contextualized in specific locations. In exploring the significance of place in social space, Prior argues for the importance of seeing such ‘social spaces’ as produced within material and embodied relations, and so stresses the need to examine how and where music practices take place. Using an eclectic range of concepts (employing ‘world’, ‘scene’, ‘field’ and ‘network’), Prior argues that the influence of place can be observed in a number ways, as the spatial configuration of Reykjavik (with its packed and bustling downtown area of venues, record stores and labels) helps to cluster music activities, creating cultural density and a cohesive social world, whilst compact, close-knit networks support fluidity and cross-fertilization of styles. But such density also fosters conflict and intra-field position-taking, with judgements of distinction overlaid onto place, mapping onto the different zones and venues of the city.

Prior notes that such distinctions also show how the configuration of the city affects everyday musical practices. A shortage of affordable venues means bands must often share rehearsal space and rehearse side-by-side, and so feel under pressure to sound different and to outdo each other. Here distinction is seen to co-evolve with spatial practices and urban materiality. The paper not only traces out the play of the (socio-geographic) ‘spatial’ within the conceptual architecture of ‘worlds’, ‘scenes’, ‘fields’ and ‘networks’, but also explores what can be accomplished in bringing together what are often seen as competing concepts. Prior argues that in order to capture the interplay of global, urban and local processes it is useful to deploy such concepts strategically so as to complement each other, in order more fully to capture different scales, characteristics and emphases in the analysis of the social spaces of music.

A similar emphasis on the importance of place, space and context in the social spaces of music, but this time with a greater emphasis on corporeal participation in scenes, is to be found in Christopher Driver and Andy Bennett’s paper ‘Music Scenes, Space and the Body’. Extending Peterson and Bennett’s (2004) distinction between local, translocal and virtual scenes, Driver and Bennett argue that whilst ‘scene’ as a concept has been useful for exploring the spatial and associational elements of musicking (at varying levels), a crucial element often missing from such accounts is a proper consideration of music scenes as embodied phenomena. Yet embodiment is critically important for how music scenes are constructed, enacted and maintained by participants, and Driver and Bennett seek to re-theorize the concept of scene in a way that acknowledges the importance of the body, drawing on an empirical case study of the hardcore scene in Southeast Queensland, Australia, to illustrate their argument. Starting with a useful theoretical review, Driver and Bennett note that the development of the concept of ‘scene’ has seen a movement away from framing scenes as subcultural communities which derived from common experiences of class and class-based taste predispositions, to instead focus on scenes as ‘affective communities’ in which popular music is itself seen as capable of driving and transforming aestheticized responses. Driver and Bennett argue, however, that embodiment is still too often elided in such accounts, and they stress the importance of recognizing that bodies are not just the ends of doing music scenes but are also the means by which scenes are continuously re-produced, and so are the medium of ‘affective exchange in the co-constitution of self and place’. In this argument, the significance of scenes in shaping and developing participants’ embodied dispositions is key.

Driver and Bennett draw a comparison to research on participation in lifestyle-oriented sports (such as surfing), which has shown the corporeal impact of subcultural participation on the practitioners of such sports, as participants must develop an ‘affective attunement’ (which includes bodily comportment, emotional predisposition and modes of desire) and metamorphosis of perception to local ecologies of practice, in order to be able to participate competently. Driver and Bennett use their case study of the Southeast Queensland hardcore scene to investigate how long-term participation in such music scenes is characterized by a wider impact on participants’ general behaviours and dispositions, with a focus on the development of corporeal knowledge as a distinctive form of dexterity, as participants ‘come to grips’ with the environment of the scene.

In the case of the hardcore scene, Driver and Bennett argue that coming to (embodied) grip with the environment entails not just acquiring an aesthetic disposition for hardcore music, but also for the myriad practices (moshing and stagediving, ‘fist-pumping and shouting along’ in small, crowded, heat-filled and male-dominated industrial warehouses) that help to constitute the scene and lend it its particular ‘feel’. Key to their argument is the embodied process by which the ‘affective richness’ of a scene (as a cultural phenomenon) is produced in the first place. In the Queensland hardcore scene, ‘realizing’ hardcore as a visceral experience is contingent upon competent corporeal practice (the ability to simultaneously manage and produce the scene environment), and thus to the collective ability of those present in a particular space to conjure a distinctive feel. They argue that too often the concept of scene has left no room for bodies, or else has cast bodies in limited terms as the ‘vessels’ through which scene identities are acted out in particular spaces, and so as merely the product of the physical spaces and times – in clubs, venues, festivals, etc. – in which scenes manifest themselves. By contrast, Driver and Bennett recast the body not just as the product of the physical enactments of music scenes but rather as constitutive of them, and so pivotal to how scenes are constructed and maintained. The affective ‘success’ of the scene is, according to this argument, contingent on the unique configuration of participants (and their embodied competences) who collectively produce the scene at any given time.

Conclusion

Whilst the concepts of scene, field, world and network are often framed as competing, in this special issue we have drawn together a range of work drawing on these concepts less in an attempt to adjudicate on the merits of different approaches and more in the spirit of mutual engagement and exploration.

We do not want to understate the incompatibilities and disagreements which the different theoretical approaches generate, but that has not been our main focus here. We are instead interested in how the contrasts and convergences of each of the papers might help us to consider the broader theoretical and empirical implications of understanding ‘musicking’ in terms of the ‘social spaces of music’. Whilst there is not the (page) space to explore this in any great detail, we would reiterate our earlier point, that the varying approaches to understanding the ‘social spaces of music’ overlap in important respects, tend to converge upon key analytic foci (e.g. spaces, resources, relations, inequalities, conventions), and that advocates of each often borrow from the others. This is amply demonstrated by the articles in this issue.

More particularly, the articles here all raise questions about the material, embodied, sensuous and contextual nature of music spaces, albeit in interestingly contrasted ways. For Darmon, and Crossley and Bottero, music spaces generate creative tension and pleasurable affect through the play of expectation and innovation in the manipulation of embodied convention. These papers stress the importance of convention, and the internal logic of expectation created by (varying) participation in music domains or worlds in shaping both the affect and the creative dynamics produced within such spaces. These authors differ in their emphasis on the extent to which the spaces of music represent differentiated social ecologies, but there is nonetheless agreement that people’s participation in such spaces dynamically transforms what they hear, expect and feel. Rather different takes on ‘social space’ are pursued by Prior, and McAndrew and Everett, but both these papers emphasize the significance of context, with the ‘social spaces of music’ produced within material and embodied relations, resulting in a need to examine in specific detail how, where and through what social connections music practices take their shape.

A further emphasis on place, space and context in music scenes is found in Driver and Bennett’s paper, but this time with a focus on embodied participation in scenes, and the development of corporeal knowledge and dispositions as participants ‘come to grips’ with the environment of the scene, and in doing so help to shape the scene’s distinctive ‘feel’. So with a shared interest in the material, embodied, sensuous and contextual nature of music spaces, these five papers nonetheless unpack different elements of their common concerns. In reflecting on the collective contribution of the papers in this special edition on the ‘Social Spaces of Music’, then, our overarching conclusion is that, notwithstanding our own partisan theoretical preferences, there are considerable insights to be gained by exploring the same issues in different ways.