Brooklyn Country: Class, Culture and the Politics of "Alternativity"
type: CreativeWork
description: This text is based on more than two years of ethnographic research among country music fans in New York City. It specifically addresses what I, and many of my interlocutors call the "Brooklyn country music scene" (or sometimes, the "Brooklyn Country music scene"), a particular nexus of country music activity that was in existence during the time of my research, between the spring of 2005 and the winter of 2007/8. I explore the ideas, themes, practices and social structures that characterized this scene during the time of my participation. And I look into the lives and histories of individual participants, as well as the larger social context(s) in which they, and the scene, operated. Indeed, although this scene of musical practice is at the center of my research and this text, I view it in the widest terms as an entry point into thinking about the unique set of subjects involved, their lives and positionings, their broader ideas, experiences and practices, and where all of this fits in to a larger picture of contemporary American life. Throughout, I am centrally interested in the ways in which this scene represents not only a set of creative contemporary social and cultural practices, but also a complex engagement with an already symbolically laden social and cultural form: "country music." A review of the scholarly literature on the genre reveals that country has had a complex and often embattled existence in the United States. With a long history of mixed social and symbolic ties to some version of the rural, white, working class(es) (often, but not always, Southern), country has long been a source, and agent, of both longing and dread, from a wide range of subject positions and historical emplacements. Variously configured as an emblem of (or conduit for) "authenticity," "tradition," and "the folk," or, on the other hand, "commercialization," "backwardness," and "trash," country music has been engaged in range of complex, often highly ambivalent negotiations that…
abstract: This text is based on more than two years of ethnographic research among country music fans in New York City. It specifically addresses what I, and many of my interlocutors call the "Brooklyn country music scene" (or sometimes, the "Brooklyn Country music scene"), a particular nexus of country music activity that was in existence during the time of my research, between the spring of 2005 and the winter of 2007/8. I explore the ideas, themes, practices and social structures that characterized this scene during the time of my participation. And I look into the lives and histories of individual participants, as well as the larger social context(s) in which they, and the scene, operated. Indeed, although this scene of musical practice is at the center of my research and this text, I view it in the widest terms as an entry point into thinking about the unique set of subjects involved, their lives and positionings, their broader ideas, experiences and practices, and where all of this fits in to a larger picture of contemporary American life. Throughout, I am centrally interested in the ways in which this scene represents not only a set of creative contemporary social and cultural practices, but also a complex engagement with an already symbolically laden social and cultural form: "country music." A review of the scholarly literature on the genre reveals that country has had a complex and often embattled existence in the United States. With a long history of mixed social and symbolic ties to some version of the rural, white, working class(es) (often, but not always, Southern), country has long been a source, and agent, of both longing and dread, from a wide range of subject positions and historical emplacements. Variously configured as an emblem of (or conduit for) "authenticity," "tradition," and "the folk," or, on the other hand, "commercialization," "backwardness," and "trash," country music has been engaged in range of complex, often highly ambivalent negotiations that…
author: Hohman, Anne Kathryn
language: English
keywords: Ethnology, Country music, Nationalism, Capitalism, Commercialism, Postmodernism, Social classes, Social conflict
date published: 2012
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:44:18Z
provider: Columbia University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Columbia University

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.7916/D8N87HRD