Resistance Creativity: Countering Legal Censoring in Popular Music

• In Event: State Interventions and Cultural Production/Resistance

Abstract

How does state intervention reshape the processes of cultural production? This study employs a counter-power framework to explore the ways in which state power and the politics of genre shape creative collaboration networks. Although previous literature has highlighted the genre-based clustered nature of cultural patterns, it has often overlooked the political characteristics of these collaborations, particularly the effects of licensing procedures in the Global South. This research aims to address this gap by focusing on the highly politicized cultural field of the postrevolutionary Iranian music industry. Drawing on an original dataset, this study reveals that the state’s licensing procedures alter the dynamics of musicians’ collaboration. Specifically, we introduce a new concept, resistance creativity, to demonstrate that although collaborations are unlikely to cross the boundaries set by censors, artists facing severe censorship do not cease their creative endeavors. On the contrary, they form denser ties among themselves and become more resilient as censorship intensifies. This study examines the often-overlooked role of the state’s regulatory apparatus in shaping creative collaborations. In particular, we highlight the unintended relational consequences of state intervention and propose a new analytical framework to understand the prismatic effect of censorship on the production processes of cultural artifacts.

Authors

• Mohammad Khalilian, University of Kentucky

• Robert W. Krause, Gatton College of Business and Economics, University of Kentucky