DeNora, Music in Everyday Life (CUP).pdf

This page intentionally left blank

Music in Everyday Life

The power of music to in ﬂ uence mood and create scenes, routines and

occasions is widely recognized and this is re ﬂ ected in a strand of social

theory from Plato to Adorno that portrays music as an in ﬂ uence on

character, social structure and action. There have, however, been few

attempts to specify this power empirically and to provide theoretically

grounded accounts of music’s structuring properties in everyday experi-

ence. Music in Everyday Life uses a series of ethnographic studies – an

aerobics class, karaoke evenings, music therapy sessions and the use of

background music in the retail sector – as well as in-depth interviews to

show how music is a constitutive feature of human agency. Drawing

together concepts from psychology, sociology and socio-linguistics, it

develops a theory of music’s active role in the construction of personal

and social life and highlights the aesthetic dimension of social order and

organization in late modern societies.

T DN is senior lecturer at the University of Exeter. She rec-

eived the International Sociological Association’s ‘Young Sociologist’

award in 1994 and is the author of Beethoven and the Construction of

Genius (1995) as well as numerous journal articles.

Music in Everyday Life

Tia DeNora