On Classification Systems
On Classification Systems
This chapter discusses classification systems that exist within music and its peer culture-producing fields. It emphasizes the role of power in setting boundaries around categories and defining these categories as legitimate. It considers the application of this model of classification to the sociological study of science and collective memory. Finally, it addresses the future of music, and closes with a consideration of the link between music categories and taste. It argues that our tastes are instruments of power and that there are three important components to this instrument. First, tastes encode the power of your origins. When it comes to taste, the socialization process—specifically, the process of acquiring a “habitus”—plays a central role in shaping our desires, aspirations, and choices. Second, this socialization process teaches us not only what tastes are appropriate to our life circumstances, but also how to make meaning from the consumption process. Third, taste is used to exert and reveal power in subtle ways.
Keywords: musical genres, classification systems, personal taste, musical taste, peer culture, power, socialization
Princeton Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.
