„When reviewing the research of scenes and subcultures it becomes apparent, that economic aspects remain largely unresearched or exploratory (E.G. Hesmondhalgh, 1998; Lange & Bürkner, 2010). So far the economy of those formations has been mostly understood as being part of the cultural industries (or now referred to as creative industries ), or not even economic at all (Gebesmair, 2008; Handke, 2009). Based on research in the Berlin music scene around ‚underground‘ techno and house music, I have come to different conclusions: I found micro-globalized and small-entrepreneurial infrastructures of clubs, marketing and booking agencies, shops, media and distributors run by club owners, promoters, DJs, booker and agency/club staff. They have an own value creation chain rooted in a common subcultural aesthetic and integral music culture – a scene economy (Kühn, 2011). By exerting various selective subcultural orientations (non-commerciality, familiarity, sell-out) these both cult ural and economic actors perform a post-modern form of aesthetic resistance (Kühn, 2013). Although the distinctions remain blurred, they thereby produce a subcultural/internal hierarchy (Bourdieu, 1996; Thornton, 1995) and draw boundaries around their mode of cultural production (Strachan, 2007; Moore, 2007). By combining Bourdieu’s theory of the cultural field with scene and subcultural theory (Hall & Jefferson, 2006; Hitzler, Honer, & Pfadenhauer, 2008; Muggleton & Weinzierl, 2003), the presented approach links both subcultural identities and cultural-economic structures together and heads towards overcoming the current dichotomy of subcultural and post-subcultural theory.“ (Abstract)
Keywords: techno Music, scenes, subculture, Economy, scene economy, neo-subcultural theory
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Script of a presentation held on the 2014 conference in Porto, published in: GUERRA, Paula; MOREIRA, Tânia (eds.) (2015) – Keep it Simple, Make it Fast! An approach to underground music scenes. Porto: Universidade do Porto – Faculdade de Letras. ISBN 978-989-8648-49-5. Available in: http://ler.letras.up.pt/uploads/ficheiros/13184.pdf.
This post first appeared on Berlin Mitte Institut Für House, Techno Und Elekt, please read the originial post: here
