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The Pop Culture Self
Robert Wonser
SOC 86
Fall 2013
Lesson Overview
• The link between music, identity, self, and the
life course
• The concept of self
• The concept of identity
• Music as a symbolic resource for biographical
work
Music as a tool for reciprocal
socialization
• Socialization is not one-way, but instead
reciprocal
• Family members socialize one another into
multiple roles. This is a form of role-making.
• A role is a part an individual plays within a
social setting.
• Music is a powerful tool for role-making and
an important component of youth culture.
Music as a tool for reciprocal
socialization - continued
• Children experience popular music also as a
way of learning about their parents’ culture.
• Similarly, adolescents experience music to
extend childhood.
• Adults often experience rock ‘n’ roll to relive
childhood.
• Music aids in parenting, especially in bonding
with children.
• Music also serves a leisure space and as a
tool for religious, moral, and historical
socialization.
Music is a Socializing Force
• Music is not a direct cause of social problems,
but a socialization agent.
• In what ways has music served, and is music
playing a factor in your socialization?
• Has music ever served as a tool for bonding in
your family?
• In what social contexts do you see popular
music as a potential source of social
problems?
Conspicuous consumption: the case
of Hot Topic
• Music-related merchandise has
grown massively in volume and
choice.
• The chain store Hot Topic has a vast
catalogue: a system of commodities
available for the presentation of the
musical self.
• In purchasing these commodities
many customers are arguably more
interested in impression management
than authenticity.
Displaying or Presenting the
Self
• Presentation of self in everyday life.
• Impression management - a goal-directed conscious or
unconscious process in which people attempt to
influence the perceptions of other people about a
person, object or event; they do so by regulating and
controlling information in social interaction (Piwinger &
Ebert 2001, pp. 1–2).
• It is usually used synonymously with self-presentation, in
which a person tries to influence the perception of their
image.
• How does something like popular culture help us to
accomplish our self presentations?
Music as a commercial
technology
• Music is used in a variety of contexts, for a great
variety of functions.
• When we understand music as a means to an
end we can conceptualize it as a form of
technology.
• In this sense, music is often used for the
commercialization of human feelings.
• Emotion work Hochschild’s term for the work
required to manage one’s emotions as part of
their job
• How is music related to emotions?
Music as a commercial technology:
the case of holiday music
• Music serves well the purpose of creating a
holiday ambiance.
• This contributes at least in part to the
maintenance of public order and the growth
of the world’s economy.
• Yet Christmas music is not the only type of
commercial “functional” music.
• Consider wedding music, workout music,
store muzaak, etc.
Community
• Music is a form of communication: a creation of community.
• The formation of polity—another word for political
community—is grounded in discourse.
• Discourse is a term referring to the whole of communicative
exchanges taking place amongst people.
• Discourse is not only made of talk and words, but also
musical sounds.
• Music is effective in producing both a sense of self and
identity as well as a sense of communal inclusion—though
participation—to community.
• What does wearing your favorite bands t-shirt allow for?
Community: Dora and children
• Dora’s audience is composed primarily of
infants, toddlers, and other pre-schoolaged children and young elementary
school-aged children; girls and boys.
• The key ingredient of Dora’s recipe for
success is repetition: the core of ritual.
• By partaking in Dora’s rituals children
participate to the creation of a mediated
form of fellowship.
• Singing with Dora is a “sacred ceremony
that draws [children] together in fellowship
and commonality” (Carey 1992:18).
Reflection
• Community is made by people in interaction.
• As John Dewey (1916:5) explained “society exists
not only by transmission, by communication, but it
may fairly be said to exist in transmission, in
communication.”
• What role do ideologies of technological
reproduction and performance play in different
musical genres?
• In what other ways is American Idol truly
American?
• What other musical rituals are at the center of
community-formation?
Music and the Self
• Genetic factors play only a minimal role in the
psychosocial development of a person
• Our socialization takes place instead through
various interactions throughout the life
course
• Music plays an important factor throughout
the life course for self and identity
development, as well as an anchor for telling
the story of one’s self
The self
• The self is an important factor in cultural
sociology because it highlights human agency
• Agency can be understood as human will and the
meaningfulness of being
• The self comes into being through reflection
• The self is a process of being a subject and an
object of human action
• The subject, or knower, is referred to as the
“I”
• The object, or known, is referred to as the
“me”
Identity
• The self is a process, and identities are shapes
the process takes throughout the life course.
• Identities are therefore typifications of the self
• A social identity is assigned to an individual by
other people
• A personal identity is constructed by an
individual in relation to how he/she views
him/herself in relation to others
• A situational identity is a momentary identity
which changes from social setting to setting
The life course
• A life course is a temporal trajectory of individual
experiences.
• It is rather difficult to identify fixed life stages.
• Interactionists examine how individuals assign meanings
to their progression through life:
• Holstein and Gubrium (2003: 836) write that: “(1) age
and life stages, like any temporal categories, can carry
multiple meanings; (2) those meanings emerge from
social interaction; and (3) the meanings of age and the
course of life are refined and reinterpreted in light of the
prevailing social definitions of situations that bear on
experience through time.”
• The life course is therefore about the becoming of self.
The becoming of self
• Music provides a set or symbolic resources for the
definition and reinterpretation of identities.
• In other words through music we continuously self
ourselves into being.
• For existential sociologists the self can be seen “as
a unique experience of being within the context of
contemporary social conditions, an
experience…marked by an incessant sense of
becoming and an active participation in social
change” (Kotarba 1984, p. 223).
• Middle-aged North Americans work with a self
built to some degree on the meanings provided by
rock’n’roll
Experiences of self
• Experience of self, in relation to music,
common in the lives of baby boomers show
that;
• Musical resources for self-construction are
increasingly available through electronic media
• Music serves to shape and convey feelings of
love and intimacy
• Music facilitates parenting
• Music serves as tool for the moral
development and political involvement of self
Discussion / Exercise
• Music serves an important function in
biographic work and the development of self
and identity
• How important is music in the lives of adult
figures you know?
• How do musical tastes change throughout
the life course?
• Write down your favorite 5 artists/songs and
why you like them.