Spatialising genre: how music genres shape socio-spatial inequalities in nightclub production in Amsterdam

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the geographical study of cultural production a thorough understanding of how music genres shape and remake socio-spatial inequalities. I do so through a critical case study of cultural production in night clubs in Amsterdam, based on 36 interviews with promoters, short-term ethnographies at club nights and public conferences and a document-based analysis of newspaper articles, policy documents and archival material. I use music genres as a lens to understand social structures in the music industries, since genres organise people, music and cultural production within a system of symbolic classification. I combine this conceptualisation with a theoretical approach called the cultural industries framework to couple an analysis of production to an analysis of genre, aesthetics and representation. I make three theoretical contributions. First, I argue geographies of cultural production should be more sensitive to the formative functions of music genre and accompanying classification systems in music economies. I show how club’s classification systems and production practices differ between the niche-edm genre (including house, techno) and the eclectic genre (including R&B, dancehall) and lead to distinguishable forms of gendered and racialised inequalities. Second, I posit the cultural industries framework could benefit from a more geographical lens. The thesis shows how nightclubs’ cultural production is shaped by spaces of consumption, urban regulation and transnational cultural flows. Third, I contend that existing research on nightclubs has missed mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion engrained in cultural production, most prominently because the emphasis has been on clubber’s experiences and governmental regulation. Next to door policies and council-led regulation, the economic organisation of nightclubs – organised differently per genre – explains cultural hierarchies in urban nightlife.

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ORCID for Suzanne Reimer: orcid.org/0000-0001-7325-4368

ORCID for Brian Hracs: orcid.org/0000-0003-1001-6877

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