Using the Trainwreck: Narrative Coordination and Failure in an Occupational Community of Musicians

• In Event: Production of Culture Perspectives

Abstract

How do independent workers coordinate complex collective labor in the absence of organizational oversight, professional jurisdictions, or formal authority? Drawing on an ethnographic study of performing musicians in Nashville’s Lower Broadway honky-tonk district, this paper examines how freelance workers align their labor processes in real time, often without rehearsal or prior collaboration. Based on participant observation, interviews, and digital ethnography, I introduce the concept of narrative coordination: an extra-organizational mode of project alignment grounded in the ongoing formation of group culture of an occupational community. Musicians collectively constructed a localized culture of “honky-tonk professionalism” that provided interpretive frames, practical coordination tools, and moral expectations that facilitated on-the-fly collaboration in performances. I further show that coordination is inherently imperfect and that failed performances—“trainwrecks”—function as diagnostic events through which the occupational community vetted aspirants, disciplined incumbents, and policed community boundaries. The paper extends theories of coordination beyond organizational settings and highlights the cultural and relational foundations of collective work in precarious, project-based labor markets.

Author

• Adam Kaelin Schoenbachler, Cornell University