This book traces the trajectories of modern globalization since the late
nineteenth century, and considers hegemonic cultural beliefs and
practices during the various phases of the history of capitalism. It
offers a way to study world popular music from the perspective of
critical social theory.
Moving chronologically, the book adopts the three phases in the history
of capitalist hegemony since the nineteenth century--liberal, organized,
and neoliberal capitalism--to consider world popular music in each of
these cultural contexts. While capitalism is now everywhere, its history
has been one borne out of racism and masculine hegemony. Early
Europeanization and globalization have had a major impact upon western
race/gender/sexuality/capitalist hegemony, while nascent technologies of
capital have led to a renewed reification and exploitation of
racialized, sexualized, and classed populations. This book offers a
critique of the relationship between emergent capitalist formations and
culture over the past hundred years. It explores the way that world
popular music mediates economic, cultural, and ideological conditions,
through which capitalism has been created in multiple and heterogeneous
ways, understanding world popular music as the production of meaning
through language and representation. The various dimensions considered
in the book are the work of critical social science--a critique of
capitalism's impact upon popular music in historical and world
perspective.
This book provides a powerful contemporary framework for contemporary
popular music studies with a distinctive global and interdisciplinary
awareness, covering empirical research from across the world in addition
to well-established and newer theory from the music disciplines, social
sciences, and humanities. It offers fresh conceptualizations about world
popular music seen within the context of globalization, capitalism, and
identity.
