Elvis Has Finally Left the Building? : Boundary work, whiteness and the reception of rock music in comparative perspective

The main research question reads: _To what extent and how do non-whites and whites navigate (construct, maintain and/or deconstruct) ethno-racial boundaries in the reception of rock music in the United States and the Netherlands?

De terugkeer van Alledaags Racisme

In recent societal debates on racism in the Netherlands, cultural anthropologist Philomena Essed has become one of the key faces of Dutch research on racism. Over three decades ago, Essed published a monograph entitled Alledaags Racisme (Everyday Racism), which gave rise to substantial debate within and beyond academia on the existence of racism – especially of a more implicit, everyday variation – in the Netherlands. For the first time since 1984, Alledaags Racisme is granted a new edition and has arguably only gained in relevance in a time when issues regarding race-ethnicity are increasingly politicized (e.g. the ‘Black Pete’ debate; ethno-racial profiling by police forces). Discussing – but also going beyond – this debate, this article reports a conversation between Julian Schaap and Essed on contemporary everyday racism, the sociology of race-ethnicity, and the epistemology and methodology of research that is distinctly political

“You’re Not Supposed to Be into Rock Music”: Authenticity Maneuvering in a White Configuration

The authors investigate how American and Dutch rock music consumers navigate the whiteness of rock music practice and discourse. In doing so, they address the complex connection between aesthetic categories (popular music) and ethnoracial categories and to what extent this relationship is open or resistant to structural change. Connecting literature on the racialization of cultural genres and on symbolic violence, the authors demonstrate how authentication through faithfulness to preestablished sociocultural configurations reinforces the whiteness of rock music consumption in both countries in very similar ways. The analysis of 27 in-depth interviews produces a threefold typology of positions that rock consumers take up vis-à-vis the sociocultural configuration of rock music authenticity: complying, amending, and replacing. From a position of complicity to this configuration, people of color are often a priori regarded as inauthentic participants, also by outsiders who consider them to “act white.” However, the analysis indicates that the shift toward a symbolic economy of authenticity enables actors to resist white hegemony as discursive authenticity at the expense of the more rigid dispositional and agentic variations underlying symbolic violence. This allows an active amending of the hegemonic configuration within the genre—authenticity maneuvering—by replacing the discourse, forging new spaces of consumption, and installing heavily policed inclusive practices

The ‘lonely raver’: music livestreams during COVID-19 as a hotline to collective consciousness?

This paper offers an explorative analysis of the online social practices of livestreamed concerts as one of the most popular cultural outlets during the COVID-19 imposed ‘lockdown’ in Europe. Ritual theory is used to investigate the potential of these virtual concerts in generating a collective consciousness, and the related feelings of social solidarity and resilience, specifically important in times of physical isolation. Through a thematic content analysis of the comments (n = 1501) posted during livestreamed techno concerts in the Netherlands, we find that both old and new ritual actions are used to form online communities. While these ritual activities mark participation and remind members of a previous collective feeling, the omission of visceral elements of a physical audience hampers the establishment of a renewed sense of social solidarity

De nieuwe Hendrix: witheid als scheidslijn in de evaluatie van rockmuziek in Nederland en de Verenigde Staten

Popular music can have a function in the creation of boundaries between groups, particularly regarding race and ethnicity. Music genres such as rock or hip-hop do not only reflect ethno-racial groups, but are often structured along ethno-racial lines. Based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of 577 rock music album reviews, this article investigates (i) to what extent ethno-racial boundaries are (re)produced and/or contested in the critical and consumer reception of rock music in the Netherlands and the United States between 2003 and 2013, (ii) to what extent professional reviewers and consumer reviewers differ from each other regarding ethno-racial classifications in their reception of rock music, and (iii) whether there is a difference between the ethno-racial context of the Netherlands and the United States. Albums by non-white artists tend to receive lower evaluations than those by white artists, particularly when reviewed by consumer critics. Although both types of reviewers often ignore talking about race ‐ echoing a colour-blind ideology, professional critics are more explicit and colour-conscious regarding non-white participation in rock music. Furthermore, five different mechanisms are employed by reviewers as part of ethno-racial boundary work: (i) ethno-racial comparisons, (ii) inter-genre comparisons, (iii) positive ethno-racial marking, (iv) negative ethno-racial marking and (v) minimization and irony

Qualitative in-depth interviews: Studying religious meaning-making in MMOs

In this chapter, Stef Aupers, Julian Schaap, and Lars de Wildt argue that a “game-centered” orient

Improving Empirical Scrutiny of the Habitus

Many studies invoke the concept of the Bourdieusian habitus to account for a plethora of stratified patterns uncovered by conventional social-scientific methods. However, as a stratumspecific, embodied and largely non-declarative set of dispositions, the role of the habitus in those stratified patterns is typically not adequately scrutinised empirically. Instead, the habitus is often attributed theoretically to an empirically established link between stratification indicators and an outcome of interest. In this research note