| Beschreibung: | Abstract: The Do-It-Yourself Careers of Techno- and Drum‘n’Bass-DJs in Vienna
My empirical research on electronic dance music scenes in Vienna, Austria, explores an area of youth cultural production that unites the ideology of creativity with the aspirations of social networks and individual entrepreneurship. The model for a DJ’s career is a hybrid of inspired
musician, compelling performer, marketing genius and business strategist. An economically successful career depends not only on performing in clubs. DJs are also involved in music production, making records, marketing themselves through the media, organizing club nights and running labels. Social and cultural capital is invested in creative freedom, do-it-yourself, and collective enjoyment, yet these DJs tend to promote the neo-liberal economic ideal of
individualized aspiration and unregulated labour along with gendered constructions of artistic identity. Taking Bourdieu’s work on the field of cultural production as a theoretical framework and the Grounded Theory as methodology, my analysis of DJs’ modes of self-(re)presentation suggests
how the opposition Bourdieu made between art and commerce tends to blur. |
