Distances in the field : mapping similarity and familiarity in the production, curation and consumption of Australian art music

Abstract

This thesis provides a timely intervention in the investigation of cultural fields by employing traditional and new data analytics to expand our understanding of fields as multi-dimensional sites of production, curation and consumption. Through a case study of contemporary Australian art music, the research explores the multiple ways in which the concept of 'distance' contributes to how we conceive of and engage with fields of artistic practice. While the concept of distance has often been an implicit or axiomatic concern for cultural sociology, this thesis foregrounds how it can be used to analyse fields from multiple perspectives, at multiple scales of enquiry and using diverse methodologies. In doing so, it distinguishes between notions of distance in the related concepts of similarity and familiarity. In the former, the relative proximities of cultural producers can be mapped to discern and contrast the organising principles which underlie different perspectives of a field. In the latter, the degree of an individual's familiarity with an item or genre can be included in theorisations of cultural preferences and their social dimensions. This is disrupted in a field such as Australian art music, however, as its emphasis on experimentation and innovation presents barriers to developing familiarity. Distance can be considered a defining characteristic of this field, and motivates its selection as a critical case study from which to investigate how audiences form attachments to distant musical sounds. The investigation of distance from multiple perspectives, using different scales of analysis and across a series of focal points in the lifecycle of artist practice, provides an analysis of Australian art music in terms of the tensions which emerge from these intersecting representations of the field. The singular spatial representation of 'objective relations' in a field, and a concern with power and domination "" as found in the approach of Bourdieu "" is replaced by a multiplicity of sets of relations and a concern with their organising principles and juxtapositions. The thesis argues that the actor constellations which distances produce are intimately linked to our capacity to engage with fields as discrete and knowable domains of cultural practice. Beyond our capacity to know a cultural field, it also argues for the importance of reconsidering how we form attachments to distant musical tastes. As an avant-garde genre which embraces foreign and confounding sounds, audiences require the capacity to draw on a range of consumption strategies and techniques to successfully engage with and value the unfamiliar.

Date of Award	2020
Original language	English