Overview
- Provides a new framework for studying how global forces inform the emergence of new cultural institutions, tastes and practices of distinction
- Presents findings in an under-research area: how globalization has transformed cultural taste and its relation to class, gender, race, ethnicity and inequality
- Departs from existing studies to consider the role of critics in popular culture and their struggle over notions of expertise and cultural value
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Table of contents (9 chapters)
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Situating the Study
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Pop Music Criticism in Italy (1969–1977)
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Evaluating Music and Music Criticism
Keywords
About this book
This book is the first comprehensive account of how Anglo-American popular music transformed Italian cultural life. Drawing on neglected archival materials, the author explores the rise of new musical tastes and social divisions in late twentieth century Italy.
The book reconstructs the emergence of pop music magazines in Italy and offers the first in-depth investigation of the role of critics in global music cultures. It explores how class, gender, race and geographical location shaped the production and consumption of music magazines, as well as critics’ struggle over notions of expertise, cultural value and cosmopolitanism.
Globalization, Music and Cultures of Distinction provides an innovative framework for studying how globalization transforms cultural institutions and aesthetic hierarchies, thus breaking new ground for sociological and historical research. It will be essential reading for scholars and students interested in cultural sociology, popular music, globalization, media and cultural studies, social theory and contemporary Italy.
Reviews
“Varriale provides a compelling analysis of the field of Italian pop music criticism … . By outlining the particular struggles that occupied Italian pop music critics, the book offers general insights into the transnational dimensions of artistic legitimation and aesthetic hierarchy in a way that will be both accessible to newcomers and intriguing to experts.” (Vaughn Schmutz, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA)
“With this nuanced, detailed and clever study of Italian pop-rock criticism, Varriale enriches cultural sociology with a sophisticated and highly original contribution. … This brilliant study … is a very welcome addition to the growing literature on world pop-rock, a genuine contribution to cultural sociology at large, and to the study of current cultural cosmopolitanism.” (Motti Regev, The Open University of Israel)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Simone Varriale is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick, UK.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Globalization, Music and Cultures of Distinction
Book Subtitle: The Rise of Pop Music Criticism in Italy
Authors: Simone Varriale
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-56450-4
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan London
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2016
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-137-56449-8Published: 25 August 2016
eBook ISBN: 978-1-137-56450-4Published: 16 August 2016
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 234
Topics: Globalization, Music, Social Structure, Social Inequality