Bourdieu and the Sociology of Music Education

Pamela Burnard, Ylva Hofvander Trulsson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781472448293
• eBook ISBN: 9781317172895
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Teaching Languages

Pierre Bourdieu has been an extraordinarily influential figure in the sociology of music. For over four decades, his concepts have helped to generate both empirical and theoretical interventions in the field of musical study. His impact on the sociology of music taste, in particular, has been profound, his ideas directly informing our understandings of how musical preferences reflect and reproduce inequalities between social classes, ethnic groups, and men and women. Bourdieu and the Sociology of Music Education draws together a group of international researchers, academics and artist-practitioners who offer a critical introduction and exploration of Pierre Bourdieu's rich generative conceptual tools for advancing sociological views of music education. By employing perspectives from Bourdieu's work on distinction and judgement and his conceptualisation of fields, habitus and capitals in relation to music education, contributing authors explore the ways in which Bourdieu's work can be applied to music education as a means of linking school (institutional habitus) and learning, and curriculum and family (class habitus). The volume includes research perspectives and studies of how Bourdieu's tools have been applied in industry and educational contexts, including the primary, secondary and higher music education sectors. The volume begins with an introduction to Bourdieu's contribution to theory and methodology and then goes on to deal in detail with illustrative substantive studies. The concluding chapter is an extended essay that reflects on, and critiques, the application of Bourdieu's work and examines the ways in which the studies contained in the volume advance understanding. The book contributes new perspectives to our understanding of Bourdieu's tools across diverse settings and practices of music education.

Chapter 1
Contextualising Bourdieu in the Field of Music and Music Education

Johan Söderman, Pamela Burnard and Ylva Hofvander-Trulsson

Always the same thing! I am constantly amazed that one refuses to admit this truth: Everything is social! (Pierre Bourdieu, 1930–2002)

Pierre Bourdieu is known as one of the world’s most influential sociologists and he is frequently cited in contemporary social sciences. He started out as a social anthropologist while undertaking fieldwork in Algeria in the early 1960s. As an outsider in Algeria, studying the lives of Kabylian mountain farmers, he identified a kind of hidden economy in Algerian culture and everyday life, a sophisticated system of giving and receiving gifts, which was difficult to understand for those who were outsiders to that culture. The rightly adapted gift might be a physical object but it might also be a party in someone’s honour. Bourdieu came to the conclusion that the gift system was about creating social relationships, that phenomena in social life can be exchanged for something else of value. Wefts of these early findings became recurrent themes during his career, for example the use of economic terms in analysing social life and the world of the arts. A Bourdieusian approach to music education will thus have a strong focus on the role of music in social life and on the symbolic values of music. There may be hidden musical economies and music may work as, in Bourdieusian words, symbolic capital. This approach challenges ideas that music exists independently of the outside world and social life. In fact, music is pre-eminently part of what goes on in social life and this chapter aims to highlight, for music educators, relevant areas of Bourdieu’s groundbreaking academic work.

Many music educators have academic residency at music conservatories and academies. At such institutions and within such departments there are discourses, and sometimes myths, concerned with recognising music as ‘pure art’, disconnected from all social aspects. Consequently, their main educational focus is often on musical craftsmanship and music’s aesthetic dimensions. Accordingly, instrumentalists are often taught by applying a ‘master and apprentice’ pedagogic model where the student (apprentice) copies the teacher’s (master) way of playing an instrument. Music students thus spend hours and hours practising their instrument. This kind of student focus excludes music’s social functions. Pierre Bourdieu’s cultural sociology helps us to analyse music’s social functions, which are easily forgotten in an environment where everyone is engrossed in music. Furthermore, it may become difficult for students and staff in such environments to construct individual outsider identities with support from obscure and alternative musical genres. Music students risk not being trained in engaging and developing their ‘sociological eye’ for music – understanding and analysing the functions of music in social life – which is an important and useful tool in educational and artistic work.

This introductory chapter is structured around three subtitles, the thematic content of which is found throughout this book: musical taste and identity, musical fields and musical rules and logic, all of which are inspired by Bourdieu’s cultural sociology. The purpose of this chapter is thus to give an overall view of how Bourdieu’s cultural sociology can be used in music and music education, and which analytical and theoretical tools from recurrent Bourdieusian concepts that are used in a variety of ways in the research contained in the following chapters. Sometimes Bourdieu’s concepts are deployed to frame, rather than answer, persistent questions about forms of inequality and cultural practices, culture and class and social divisions. At other times Bourdieu’s concepts are put to work as tools for cultural analysis, or – a more contemporary trend – as a way of overlaying research analyses with Bourdieusian concepts. Either way, Bourdieu’s tools enhance our understanding of social theory in relation to sociological research on music and music education.

A Bourdieusian approach to research meshes well with studies from a variety of angles, as presented in the book, such as studies of young people, especially teenagers, and how they use music in the construction of identity. Furthermore, with music, people reveal who they are and who they want to be. In telling other people what music you do or do not like, you tell so much more about yourself than simply discussing music. In addition, young peoples’ relationships to music often parallel what music education researchers have entitled musical identities (see for example, MacDonald, Hargreaves and Miell, 2002). In addition, such social aspects of art forms are at the core of Bourdieu’s cultural sociology. According to Bourdieu (1984), taste distinctions derive from class, gender and ethnicity. For example, cultural sociology provides us with theoretical tools to frame, analyse, overlay and understand the formation of musical value hierarchies when we hear people express their personal tastes or distastes. Ruth Wright’s book, Sociology and Music Education (2010), highlights the role of sociology in relation to musical learning. Wright (p. 12) comments that Pierre Bourdieu and Basil Bernstein have been particularly important and useful when thinking about the complex relationships between culture, education, society and music: “central to Bourdieu’s sociology was an ongoing investigation of the relationship between power and culture”.

Reading Bourdieu may inspire music teachers to conduct classroom discussions on sociological aspects of music, which are important for young people. For example, it is crucial to ask questions such as: How does it happen that a song is played frequently on radio and television channels? Who decides what music is played? Why is opera not popular with the majority of people? Why did you start to listen to a certain music genre? What kinds of music do your friends listen to?

Music is part of people’s everyday life and the chapters in this book reflect this from topics ranging from hip-hop to choir music. We all have strong memories from our lives connected to music, for instance when we fell in love, got married or divorced. Simon Frith (1998) recalls a private conversation with his colleagues, Swedish professors John Fornäs and Hillevi Ganetz, at a party in Stockholm. The conversation ends up in a long lively discussion about musical taste. However, as Frith points out, music academicians rather seldom discuss their own musical likes and dislikes. Frith states that talking about music is a way to either flirt or fight; in discussing music we each present our own cultural personality, described as ‘habitus’ by Bourdieu. As musicians, music educators and researchers in music, the notion of ‘musical habitus’ (Rimmer, 2010) is an orientation towards action (practice) that reflects, and is oriented by and ‘through our social positions and through our lives’ (Hodkinson, Biesta and James, 2008, p. 38). Thus, our musical values and likes and dislikes may be different with regard to our different social backgrounds, or in some ways the same with regard to our similar backgrounds in higher music education. Our musical habitus manifests itself in different ways of performing, playing, practising, engaging with different musics, our listening preferences, as well as ways of talking, dressing, walking and exercising (Reay, 1995, p. 354). It is a ‘practical sense’ for how (or how not) to act in any particular social reality (Bourdieu, 1998, p. 25). This is, perhaps, why the lens of Bourdieu’s concepts is increasingly being used to reveal how habitus orients our lives as musicians, educators and researchers.

Bourdieu continues to have a great impact on educational and cultural sociological research fields. In moving the boundary between culture and society, his work has strong relevance to the music education field as it moves between art and culture, as is obvious in its two constituents: music and education.

Bourdieu was somewhat reticent about music in his work. In Bourdieu (1984/1991), he was asked why he appeared to be reluctant to talk about music. Bourdieu responded, “talking music is a way to produce yourself intellectually. Talking music, it is the foremost way of showing your cultural knowledge” (p. 171). Bourdieu has in mind classical music and how it produces cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1984). He is often criticised for only studying an elite French culture where high and low aspects of culture are present. Classical music is globally often regarded as part of high culture and genres from popular music may be categorised as low culture. From a late modern or postmodern perspective however, high and low culture may exist within popular music. Mike Featherstone (1994) writes about the new intellectuals who can listen to both Beethoven and Iron Maiden and still be regarded as an elite. Frith (1998) also shows how high and low culture can be found among listener-consumers of popular music. ‘Reversed economy’, a term from Bourdieu (2000), means that non-commercial music with artistic ambitions produces its high value and cultural capital despite, or thanks to, its lack of economic success. Musical genres that are regarded as popular music are not always ‘popular’. For example, young people may choose to listen to certain kinds of obscure music from the field of popular music because that music is regarded by the majority in the school class as non-popular. In Please Kill Me (McNeil and McCain, 2006), punks told similar stories about their positions as outsiders in a school class because of their liking for punk music.

It seems as though the economic gap between rich and poor is widening in Western Europe according the OECD report of 2014. With an increasingly segregated society there are challenges, which, during the last few years, have led to riots in England, France and Sweden. In Sweden there has recently been a public debate about how failure of the school system produces increased inequality. Bourdieu’s thoughts and theories thus have strong relevance for general and music education and help us understand underlying aspects of inequality in education. Sociological knowledge becomes important in music education as it helps music teachers navigate the social environments in which they are going to teach.

Bourdieu helps us to deepen our understandings of musical upbringing and socialisation through habitus, identity formation and musical likes and dislikes. Accordingly, when Bourdieu’s tools are being used in music education research, they provide music teachers with useful sociological tools. Bourdieu helps us to understand music’s social features and how music distinguishes us from one another, and he also helps us understand how music is, sometimes, an ‘entry ticket’ to a new social group. Furthermore, the challenges of inequality in Europe’s post-welfare states make Bourdieu strongly relevant for both general and music education in our time. In addition, Bourdieu’s cultural sociology may even enrich the music education research field with its useful tools/perspectives for understanding music’s role in social life.

Bourdieu, paradoxically, may contribute to strengthening the theoretical foundation of music education. In spite of his work’s reputation as a grand theory, he placed the empirical in front of the theoretical. He advocated that social science studies must be grounded in empirical data. Theory should be seen as a scaffold that should be removed when the ‘scientific construction’ is completed. Most of the studies presented in this book are qualitative studies with a small number of informants. However, the basis for Bourdieu’s empirical studies was based on large quantitative statistical data collections – although it is possible to argue that he made qualitative analysis out of his empirical work with ‘open’ qualitative research questions. Instead of asking, as is common in traditional quantitative studies, how many people visited a specific museum he would emphasise why people in general visit museums. This book’s research questions, analysis and theoretical toolbox are inspired by Bourdieu even though the data collection differs from classic Bourdieusian empirical work. Knowing and accepting that, our purpose in this book is to inspire others to use cultural sociology in music education and encourage teachers and researchers in music education to develop a Bourdieusian lens or eye, which is very useful in understanding music and social life. As Ruth Wright writes (2010, p. 1): “Not only does sociological thinking present us with a new lens or set of lenses through which to examine such issues but it may also help us to begin to see our way towards answers to questions, answers which have proven particular elusive in the past”.

What follows are three sections based on thematic subtitles from Bourdieu’s cultural sociology which are increasingly presented and used in research studies to connect music and music education.

Musical Taste and Identity

Music teachers come face to face with musical likes and dislikes of their students in their everyday practice. The Swedish youth and Bourdieu-inspired researcher Mats Trondman (1999) has coined the phrase “show me your record collection and I’ll tell you who you are”. Since this was written, the sales of CDs have been replaced by streaming music services online. Today, you might rather say “show me your playlist (for example, Spotify or iTunes) and I’ll tell you who you are”. On the other hand, there have been increased sales of vinyl records during the last years. It seems that some hipster youth regard vinyl record buying as more authentic; you are a more serious music listener if you listen to vinyl records. (This can be analysed as a counter-culture against the majority of youth using digital media.) Bourdieu insisted that everything is social. If we follow the path from Bourdieu’s ideas, it is possible to claim that people ‘dress’ with music and even the choice of musical media. Music taste is connected to identity formation. Consequently, in understanding identity, it is just as much a matter of knowing dislikes in music. If you understand what upsets you, you can understand yourself better.

According to Bourdieu, music is a social phenomenon. As much as we want to, we cannot let music just be music. Bourdieu (1984) points out different kinds of distinctions that are made within art forms. Through taste distinctions we distinguish ourselves. Music teachers in classrooms also represent their own musical (and taste) values, which are reflected in their personal pedagogies. For young people, particularly teenagers, music becomes an important part of their identity formation. Music teachers are confronted on a daily basis with musical standpoints, which harmonise or disharmonise with their own values. Therefore, it becomes important for music teachers to reflect on their own musical values (Söderman, 2012).

Söderman describes a six-year-old boy who had several CDs of the group Metallica on his bookshelf. Paradoxically, he had never listened to them. His motive for buying them was related to the fact that all his friends liked them and he wanted them to see that he had them on his bookshelf when they were playing together in his home. The same strategy can be seen when a successful salesman suddenly starts consuming classical music and visiting opera performances. Just like the boy, he wants respect from people who listen to that kind of music. Music opens up a new social context, and classical music creates cultural capital; knowledge of opera and classical music increases symbolic assets, thus conferring a higher status and position in the societal hierarchy.

Trondman (1999) introduces a concept, inspired by Bourdieu, which he calls the principle of misrecognition. To exemplify the principle of misrecognition he uses the example of an alternative pop group and how they, in public, expressed a wish that a more commercial mainstream group should get killed on the road while they were touring. The alternative pop group use their position of acting as ‘hip’ and ‘trendy’ to claim their dislike over the more commercial group. With regards to Sarah Thornton’s (1995) concept subcultural capital, a concept, which she developed from Bourdieusian capital theory, some popular music may produce subcultural capital. When an alternative and well-respected (among music critics) pop group misrecognises another group, which is what they are doing when they, in public, express the wish that a car accident would kill them, they are saying that their music and art are more valuable and important than that of commercial and speculative pop groups.

In conclusion, knowledge relating to musical tastes and distastes provides the music and music education research fields with a useful framework for knowing the functions of music in the social world. In addition, it gives us a deeper understanding of the different values of music; this may provide awareness of the importance of music education for children and young people when it comes to the role of the music teacher in spreading cultural capital and creating musical tolerance in the classroom.

Musical Fields

According to Bourdieu (2000), music exists within a major field of cultural production, which in turn consist of several different subfields. One subfield may be the musicians who teach classical Western music in musical academies. Nerland’s studies of instrumental teachers at a Norwegian academy demonstrates how these music teachers reach out to each other in higher music education (Nerland, 2003). She shows how higher music education can be analysed as a Bourdieusian field. In a recent study (2014), Nylander maps the contemporary Swedish jazz world, investigating two jazz elite schools with a traditional Bourdieusian toolbox. Doing that, he shows how these two schools, in fact, control the entire Swedish professional jazz world.

What characterises a field? Bourdieu (1991) defines a field as a place for games, a place for objective relations between individuals and institutions in competition for the same object. According to Bourdieu, social interaction can only be understood in its own context and field. In a cultural field there are rules; something to agree on and something to disagree on. It exists in what Bourdieu (2000) calls the “pure and non-pure arts” in the fields of cultural production in what can be understood with Bourdieusian words as “the eternal conflict between the arts and money”. A field represents a structure where there are two poles. Gustafsson (2000) writes that the field is...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• List of Figures and Tables
• Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Chapter 1 Contextualising Bourdieu in the Field of Music and Music Education
• Chapter 2 Hip-Hop Academicus: Examples of Bourdieusian Field Effects within Two Hip-Hop Spaces
• Chapter 3 Striving for ‘Class Remobility’: Using Bourdieu to Investigate Music as a Commodity of Exchange within Minority Groups
• Chapter 4 Singing Gender and Class: Understanding Choirboys’ Musical Habitus
• Chapter 5 Masculine Domination in Private-Sector Popular Music Performance Education in England
• Chapter 6 ‘Now We’re the Musicians’: Using Bourdieu’s Concepts of Habitus, Capital and Field to Analyse Informal Learning in Canadian Music Education
• Chapter 7 Bourdieu Applied in the Analysis of Conservatoire Learning Cultures
• Chapter 8 Producing a Classical Habitus: Reconsidering Instrumental Music Teaching Methods
• Chapter 9 DJ and MC Habitus and ‘Skillz’ in Peer-led Learning Cultures
• Chapter 10 Pierre Bourdieu and the Autonomy of Art: The Idea of Art as Critique
• Chapter 11 Analysing Educational Choices by Class-Diversifying, Feminising and Moralising Bourdieu’s Theoretical Framework
• Chapter 12 The Geography of Music Education: Establishing Fields of Action
• Chapter 13 Working with Bourdieu’s Cultural Analysis and Legacy: Alignments and Allegiances in Developing Career Creativities
• Chapter 14 Bourdieu and Musical Learning in a Globalised World
• Coda Reflecting on the Use of Bourdieu’s Tools from Outside the Fields of Music and Music Education
• Glossory
• Index