Becoming a Classical Musician: Interpellation and Habitus Formation Among Graduate Music Students.

• In Event: Sociology of Culture Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): 16. Education, Habitus, & Cultural Capital

Abstract

Why do individuals of the same social position, inculcated with the same norms and interpellated by the same institutions, experience and interact with the world differently? This article investigates this question in the empirical case of the classical music conservatory, a site in which the futures of classical musicians are crystalized. This paper advances theories of subject-formation by putting in conversation Pierre Bourdieu's concept of habitus and interactionist focuses on “the situation” through interrogating dynamics of the music lesson at graduate-level music conservatories, a dyadic situation characterized by only two social actors. Drawing on 37 semi-structured interviews with professors and graduate students in the field of music, this paper demonstrates that interactions in feedback-providing sessions (lessons, conversations, and juries) are structured by the habitus of the student and the dynamics of the situation, understood through Bourdieu’s concept of hysteresis. Most broadly, highlights the classical music conservatory as a key yet understudied site for sociological analysis.

Author

• John Mirsky, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor