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  • Stereo: Comparative Perspectives on the Sociological Study of Popular Music in France and Britain
  • Rachel Haworth
Stereo: Comparative Perspectives on the Sociological Study of Popular Music in France and Britain. Edited by Hugh Dauncey and Philippe Le Guern. (Ashgate Popular and Folk Music Series). Aldershot: Ashgate, 2011. xvi + 282 pp.

This edited volume brings together native British and French scholars of popular music in order to explore, compare, and contrast some of the ways in which the study of the genre has developed in both countries over the past two decades. In the introductory chapter, Hugh Dauncey and Philippe Le Guern explain the usefulness of work that teases out ‘the actual realities of music and popular culture’ (p. 1) and challenges commonly held preconceptions regarding the political, economic, and/or sociological environments of both Britain and France. The book, structured in pairs of chapters that survey scholarly work published in each country, deals broadly with the following areas: popular music history, policy, economics, mediation, genres, audiences, and scenes. From this dialogue, two stories of the study of popular music emerge. In Britain, a vibrant and increasing body of research is evident, in which a variety of approaches and research methodologies drawn from sociology, history, musicology, and cultural policy, among other fields, has been adopted, and in which the very notion of what it means to study popular music has been challenged and developed. In France, the story is seemingly that of a relatively new field of scholarly enquiry, one that is said to have been constrained by the traditional attitudes towards the study of popular culture prevalent in French academia, but which, paradoxically, has also experienced significant growth during the last twenty years, as the many footnotes and the substantial bibliography in this volume attest. The importance of French cultural policy, the desire for cultural democratization, and the continuing ‘cultural legitimacy versus diversity’ debate all dominate the story of popular music studies in France as presented by these authors. It should be noted that this Ashgate volume is the English version of Stéréo: sociologie comparée des musiques populaires France/G.-B., published in 2008 (Paris: IRMA), with the chapters originally written in French now translated, sometimes rather laboriously (those unaccustomed to French academic prose may well question the translation strategy adopted). Some readers may be surprised to discover that UK-based scholars of French popular music and culture — names such as David Looseley, Barbara Lebrun, or Chris Tinker — are not among the volume’s contributors, but the editors explain that their aim was to present British and French scholars outlining their own country’s perspective on the subject. In these terms, the volume presents a well-referenced survey of approaches to the discipline and constitutes a valuable resource for scholars and postgraduate and undergraduate students of (comparative) cultural studies, popular music studies, and sociology in Britain and France.

Rachel Haworth
University of Hull
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