David Hesmondhalgh Subcultures, Scenes or Tribes?

None of the Above

Normal Summary

In his article Subcultures, Scenes or Tribes? None of the Above, David Hesmondhalgh Professor
of Media, Music and Culture and Director of Media Industries Research Centre offers criticism
of terms governing research on youth and popular music, such as scenes, tribes (neo-tribes) or
subculture and argues that the concept of genre, articulation and homology offer a better way
to think of the relationship between music and collective identity and that the assumption that
there exists a tight relationship between youth and popular music is just the consequence of a
particular historical circumstance. The plenty sources he used researchers associated with
CCCS, British Sociological Association, Andy Bennett, Paul Willis, Johan Fornas, David Chaney,
Maffesoli, Shields, Simon Frith, Richard Middleton, Jason Toynbee helped him create a rich
theoretical framework of explaining how scene and tribe are not adequate or useful terms
and raise questions about which is the better way to think of musical collectivities in modern
societies. This concern with youth and popular music means that a new paradigm will replace
subculture (23) and how these terms theorise music-making, such as Hesmondhalgh ends his
work by questioning the existence of a relationship between the two fields of study youth and
popular music and whether this is a desirable one. Bennett wanted to find a term that will
capture the unstable and shifting cultural affiliations which characterize late modern
consumer-based identities (24), followed by Maffesolis argument that neo-tribalism offers a
recognition of instability and the temporary nature of group affiliation (24). The author argues
that genre which helps understand the relationship between production and consumption
and expresses the collective interest or point of view of a community combined with
articulation, provide a more adequate way of discussing the links between cultural and social
practices in music studies. What I found particularly interesting is how it is argued that youth
can do whatever they want with music which generates a range of moods and experiences
which individuals are able to move freely between (26) and style, a process in which
unemployment and marginalisation play a big part as an investment in leisure and style.

Fucking Long Summary

the concept of subculture heavily criticized in recent research on youth and popular
music

- 2 concepts emerged in order to offer new ways of conceiving musical collectivities

(particularly among young people) scenes & tribes (or neo-tribes)

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Author
offers criticism of both terms and argues that there is no possibility to return to the
concept of subculture (even if it may have some residual use in the sociology of youth)
discusses the potential advantages of the concepts of genre and articulation
suggests that the assumption that there is a close relationship youth popular music
was the result of particular historical circumstances

Past few decades assumed that the study of popular music is intimately connected to the
study of youth culture

- there are good reasons for this link

1. popular music is very important in the lives of young people

2. people seem to lose touch with innovations in popular music as they get older
3. the most famous popular music of the past decades seems to have been created mainly
by young-ish people for young people

BUT these ideas rely on particular notions of what popular music is, which are derived from an
era, that of the 1960s and 1970s, when popular music became tied commercially and
discursively to youth

SO:
The author suggests that popular music should not be conceived as the privileged domain of
young people

Relevant for the relationship between the sociology of youth and the sociology of popular
music = the work on youth subcultures carried out in the 1970s by various researchers
associated with the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS)

There are signs of strain in the relationship!!! those concerned with youth and popular
music have tried to find a new term to replace it subculture

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 - SCENE AND TRIBE:

SCENE TRIBE

talked about among popular music academics has been the basis of a recent effort, by Andy
as a term that has replaced subcultures as the Bennett rethink the relationship between
key way in which musical collectivities are youth, style and musical taste
conceived

has been developed in versions of popular has emerged from the interplay between
music studies more influenced by cultural youth research and popular music studies
studies and cultural geography

indicate a potentially fertile area of debate about

the problems with the concept of subculture in research on youth and popular music

raise questions about the best way to conceive

of musical collectivities / collective musical identities

The author argues that they are not useful ways to conceive of musical collectivities
in modern societies

Important points he will make:

- critical reading of Andy Bennetts adaptation of the term tribe from the work of Michel
Maffesoli
- agrees with Bennett that subculture has problems as a concept in the study of youth
and popular music, but he will argue that there are better reasons for thinking that
subculturalism is flawed
- he finds problems which undermine the proposal of neo-tribalism as a new
theoretical framework for the study of the cultural relationship between youth, music
and style (Bennett 1999)
- SCENE offered useful insights into the role of place and space in musical production and
consumption but its still a confusing term

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 - questions the search for particular terms that can reunite the study of youth and
popular music
- offers a better way to conceive of the relationship between music and collective
identity, based on the concept of genre, articulation and homology
- is the relationship between the study of youth and the study of popular music really
desirable?

Tribes and Neo-tribalism

Andy Bennett neo-tribalism provides a more adequate framework for the study of
the cultural relationship between youth, music and style than does the concept of
subculture (Bennett 1999)

He then identifies 2 main problems in uses of subculture as a framework:

1. the term is used in increasingly contradictory ways

2. the grounding belief of the subculturalists, that subcultures are subsets of society, or
cultures within cultures, overestimates the coherence and fixity of youth groups
(Bennett 1999)

HE TRIES to move beyond these limitations and to find a term that will capture the
unstable and shifting cultural affiliations which characterise late modern consumer-
based identities (Bennett 1999)

He finds the basis of such a term in Michel Maffesolis concept of tribe

tribe is without the rigidity of the forms of organization with which we are familiar, it
refers more to a certain ambience, a state of mind, and is preferably to be expressed
through lifestyles that favour appearance and form (Maffesoli, quoted by Bennett
1999)

The other is the Canadian geographer Rob Shields argues that the performative
orientation among tribes produces temporary groups and circles, rather than the
supposedly homogeneous identities of a perceived mass (Bennett 1999)

Maffesoli and Shields are directing their criticisms at the sociology of mass culture!!!

Beneath the theoretical language, a simple duality is shared by these writers:

fixity and rigidity versus instability and fluidity

Tribes/neo-tribalism: offers a recognition of instability and the temporary nature of group

affiliation problematic!

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 We need to know how boundaries are constituted, not simply that they are fuzzier than
various writers have assumed

Bennett about Lifestyle

the term lifestyles emphasises activity and agency, whereas structuralism emphasises
determination and that old devil called class
introduces identity

lifestyle = freely chosen game

identity = self-constructed

according to Bennett: youth can do whatever they want with music and style

How does music fit into Bennetts theory of neo-tribes?

Music generates a range of moods and experiences which individuals are able to move
freely between (Bennett 1999)

Scenes: A Fruitfully Muddled Concept?

the International Association for the Study of Popular Music (IASPM) has held an
international conference
Simon Frith observed that [t]he long domination of IASPM (sociology division) by
subcultural theory is over. The central concept now (a fruitfully muddled one) is scene
(Frith 1995)
IASPM chair Anahid Kassabian commented that scene was one of the few concepts that
popular music studies had made its own

There are two main sources for the widespread use of the concept of scene in popular music
studies

1. Influential article by Will Straw

Straw examined the difference between two ways of accounting for the musical
practices within a geographical space
He set the notion of a stable community that engages with a heritage of geographically
rooted forms against the idea of a scene, which for Straw has the advantage of taking
account of processes of historical change occurring within a larger international music
culture (Straw 1991)

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 draws attention to the way that local processes are dependent on a vast complexity of
interconnections (Massey 1998)

2. Barry Shank

Shanks approach is in contrast to Straws

Straw Shank

shows a Bourdieu-an concern with processes
of legitimation and the
competition for cultural prestige
looks upon musical practices from a distance
working within a framework that draws a
contrast between these
transformative practices and the dominant or
mainstream culture

The point = the discrepancies not only in how they read the politics of local music-making, but
also in how they THEORISE this music-making

SCENE
invokes a notion of the musical practices occurring within a particular geographical
space

DANGER!!
Other researchers might use the term merely to denote the musical practices in any
genre within a particular town or city
Meanwhile, other writers are using the term to denote a cultural space that transcends
locality

Back to Subcultures?

In his recent book, Goth: Identity, Style and Subculture, Paul Hodkinson argues that we
need to differentiate those groupings which are predominantly ephemeral from those
which entail far greater levels of commitment, continuity, distinctiveness, or, to put it in
general terms, substance (Hodkinson 2002)

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 substance consistent distinctiveness of a group over time, commitment,
autonomy from wider social and economic relations, and a sense of like-mindedness
with others of the same group (Hodkinson 2002)

Paul Willis Case Study: Analysis of bikers and their preferred music in Profane Culture
(1978)

the relationship between music and the social

emphasise the creativity and activity of the biker boys in making connections between
pop music and their own lives
the relationship was much more than an arbitrary or random juxtaposition (Willis
1978)
Rather, there was a real, though limited, dialectic of experience based on a
relationship between the music they liked and their own exact and searching selection
of music
he suggests that the dialectic of experience involved in the biker culture brought
about very clear basic homologies between the social group and its music

The term homology is significant here. It derives from the Greek for same relation

Marxian sociology relationships between art and societ

Willis refer to relationships between collectivities of people and cultural forms
(music)

of course, there are still problems with this

Middleton comes in his analysis suggests that subculture should not be revived as a
key concept in the analysis of popular music (although it may have its uses in the
sociology of youth) because it was never a concept of much use to socio-musical
analysis anyway

***beat that, bitch***

Understanding Musical Collectivities: Genre and Articulation

we need an eclectic array of theoretical tools to investigate subculture, scene and tribes

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 the author proposes genre:

a much more satisfactory starting point for a theorisation of the relationship between
particular social groups and musical styles than are subculture, scene or tribe

a term that has been used extensively in media and cultural studies to
understand the relationship between production and consumption a necessary
stage in the analysis of audiences for symbolic goods in any society

Steve Neale genres as systems of orientations, expectations and conventions that

link text, industry and audience (Neale 1980) rather than as taxonomic lists of texts

In music studies genre:

- understand the importance of categories in making value judgements about music (Frith
1996)
OR
- how to analyse how genres inform the organisation of music companies and the
perceptions of audiences (Negus 1999)

Jason Toynbee
Toynbee points out that in popular music, the link between groups of texts and social
formations has often been conceived in quasi-political terms as a form of
representation:

Genre is seen to express the collective interest or point of view of a community

(Toynbee 2000)

however the concept of genre is not sufficient in itself to understand the

relationship between social experience of community and musical form/style

The most heavily critiqued aspect of subculturalisms understanding of this relationship = the
notion of homology

BUT a more important element in subculturalisms efforts to theorise the relationship

between symbolic practice and social process, formation or experience is articulation

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articulation (defined by Stuart Hall) = the form of the connection that can make a unity of two
different elements, under certain conditions. It is a linkage which is not necessary, determined,
absolute and essential for all time

taken up very widely in cultural studies

Middleton uses the concept to discuss the complex, mediated relationships between
musical forms and practices and social structure

Georgina Born
there is a need to acknowledge that music can variably both construct new identities
and reflect existing ones
sociocultural identities are not simply constructed in music

a differentiated and gradated range of relationships between music and the social

Combined with the term genre, with its ability to connect up texts, audiences and
producers, the notion of multiple articulations provides a much more promising
theoretical basis for theorising empirical research

Articulation

General metaphor for complexity of determination

it carries connotations of the importance of agency and struggle

combined with the key concept of genre it provides the means to discuss musical
collectivities in a more promising way than scenes + tribes

Popular Music Studies and Youth Studies: Time for an Amicable Separation?

the close relationship between the study of youth and that of popular music was the
result of particular historical circumstances
the privileging of youth in studies of music is an obstacle to a developed understanding
of music and society

they should be free to go their own ways in an amicable separation

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 there will be times when the two will be reunited because they still have much to learn
from each other

CONCLUSION

Bennett: he attempts to maintain the link between the sociology of popular music and
the sociology of youth, but.

his notion of tribe makes the connection between young people and particular musics so
malleable and fluid that effectively the link could take any form whatsoever this is no
adequate theorization

The concept of scene is richer, provides new understandings of musical collectivities in

relation to space and place, and offers insights into the formation of aesthetic
communities in modern urban life, but

the concept is imprecise and confused and in fact has little necessary relationship with youth

There is no possibility of return to subculture in any adequate sociology of popular

music, even if Hodkinson shows it may have some residual utility in the sociology of
youth

Genre offers a better way for understanding the links between cultural practice and
social process in popular music studies, when wedded to other theoretical concepts,
most notably articulation

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