Bridging Spaces, Cultural Capital and Gender in Two Grassroots Music Scenes

• In Event: 545 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtable Session.
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 06. Cultural Capital I

Abstract

Sociologists have outlined two broad ways that cultural capital can be gendered: first, men or women can possess different average amounts of cultural capital; second, the skills, tastes, and dispositions that constitute cultural capital can be symbolically masculine or feminine. This paper outlines a third sense in which cultural capital can be gendered: the typical ways that individuals develop cultural capital can advantage men or women. In this paper I compare how musicians in two cultural fields, the contemporary folk music scene and heavy metal scene in Toronto, Canada, develop a field-specific form of cultural capital: the instrumental and interpersonal skills required to perform music. Through a multi-method qualitative study, I show that the folk field creates “bridging spaces,” or structured, low-stakes learning opportunities that encourage potential musicians to develop the cultural capital required to perform music, regardless of gender. The metal field lacks these bridging spaces and leaves aspiring musicians to rely on informal social networks, from which women are often excluded, to develop the cultural competencies required to perform music. These two fields’ differently gendered learning pathways encourage the presence of women folk performers and a lack of women metal performers, suggesting that the pathways through which performers develop cultural capital is a key mechanism underlying gender inequalities in these two fields

Author

• Diana Lee Miller, University of Toronto