576585

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CUS0010.1177/1749975515576585Cultural SociologyCrossley

Article
Cultural Sociology
2015, Vol. 9(4) 471–492
Music Worlds and Body © The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1749975515576585
Embodiment of Musicking cus.sagepub.com

Nick Crossley
University of Manchester, UK

Abstract
Despite the large amount of sociological work on human embodiment very little has been done
on the embodiment of music or musicking. In this paper I seek to open this area up by way of
two key concepts: ‘body techniques’ and ‘music worlds’. Specifically I seek to explore the role
of body techniques within music worlds. The first part of the paper engages with the work
of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Culture Studies on subcultures, considering how
this might shed light upon the body techniques used by audiences in music worlds. The second
part turns to artists, support personnel and their body techniques. In this second part specific
attention is given to the interplay between body techniques and other key elements of music
worlds, namely networks, conventions, resources and places.

Keywords
music, body, bodies, sociology of the body, embodiment, body techniques, conventions, networks,
music worlds, art worlds, subcultures, Birmingham School, musicking, Howard S. Becker

As Driver and Bennett (2015) observe in a recent article, there is surprisingly little socio-
logical work on the link between music and human embodiment (important exceptions
include DeNora [2000, 2003] and Shilling [2005]). Their own paper offers a partial correc-
tive to this, focused largely upon the affective attachment of participants to a local hard-
core punk scene and the visceral nature of that participation. This paper is intended as a
further corrective.
Music and embodiment are each big topics, however, and it is necessary to focus more
narrowly. I do so here by anchoring my reflections to two concepts which I have dis-
cussed separately at length in previous work: music worlds and body techniques
(Crossley, 1995, 2004, 2005, 2007, 2015a, 2015b; see also Bottero and Crossley, 2011;
Crossley and Bottero, 2015; Crossley et al., 2014; Hield and Crossley, 2014).

Corresponding author:
Nick Crossley, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK.
Email: nick.crossley@manchester.ac.uk
472 Cultural Sociology 9(4)

I begin by briefly outlining these concepts. Having done this I turn to the implicit
focus on embodiment in the subcultural work of the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary
Culture Studies (CCCS). This work has been strongly criticised in recent years and I
agree with much of the criticism. The music world concept is intended, in some part, as
an alternative to the concept of ‘subculture’, which addresses the latter’s shortcomings.
In particular, where ‘subculture’, at least as the CCCS theorised it, is focused almost
exclusively upon audiences (indeed it is only focused upon music to the extent that music
is appropriated by working-class youths in their efforts to resist domination and aliena-
tion), ‘music world’ focuses upon artists and what Becker (1982) calls ‘support person-
nel’, as well as audiences. But what the CCCS scholars said about audiences touches
upon embodiment in ways which remain very significant and which resonate with the
idea of ‘body techniques’, and we need to incorporate and build upon these insights with
the concept of ‘music worlds’. That is the aim of the first half of this paper.
In the second half of the paper, I turn to look at support personnel and artists, consid-
ering how their roles also involve body techniques. I begin with a general reflection on
the embodiment of their roles, before considering how body techniques are dynamically
interwoven with four other key components of music worlds: conventions, resources,
social networks and places.
As noted above, DeNora (2000, 2003) offers an interesting analysis of embodiment
and music, which has been taken up and discussed further by Shilling (2005). This work
is important. Like the CCCS, however, DeNora focuses exclusively upon audiences and
consumers in this work (although see DeNora, 1995, where she engages directly with
music worlds, but not embodiment). Furthermore, her focus is different to my own in the
respect that she is focused upon the way in which music is woven into everyday life,
often in situations where it is not a primary focus: e.g. muzak in shops, and music in aero-
bics classes. In contrast to this, the ‘music world’ concept denotes a social space centred
upon a self-identified musical style; a space set aside from other concerns, at least to
some extent, where music is a primary focus and where participants share a set of musi-
cal preferences and knowledge. DeNora’s work may have some relevance in such con-
texts, and I identify where that is in what follows. In particular, her interest in the uses of
music is important. However, my focus requires an alternative approach centred, as
previously noted, on body techniques and music worlds.

Body Techniques
As defined by Marcel Mauss (1979), body techniques are ‘uses of the body’ which vary
across societies, sub-populations within societies, such as status groups, and historical peri-
ods. In some cases this is a matter of actors doing ‘the same’ thing in a different way. For
example, Mauss observes differences in walking styles between Americans and the French,
and differences in swimming styles between his childhood and late adulthood. In other
cases, it is a matter of one set of actors having no meaningful equivalent to techniques used
by another group. Mauss claims, whilst on ethnographic fieldwork, to have encountered a
society whose members did not spit to clear their throats, for example, and we might add
that many of the hunting techniques which were widespread and essential to survival in the
societies he studied have no equivalent in contemporary Western societies.
Crossley 473

This variability indicates the social nature of body techniques for Mauss. ‘Use of the
body’ is shaped by both biology (e.g. anatomical constraints) and psychology (e.g. mood)
but patterns of similarity within, and differences across, populations of actors suggest a
social aspect. We learn how to use our bodies within networks of family, friends, col-
leagues, and also via the networks of the mass media.1 Body techniques are ‘social facts’
in Durkheim’s (1982) sense.
Body techniques are not merely patterns of movement, however. Anticipating the
work of Merleau-Ponty (1962) and Dewey (1988), Mauss claims that they are forms of
practical reason which embody meaning, know-how and understanding. To learn a body
technique is to acquire a new way of knowing, understanding and relating to the world
and perhaps also to oneself. Such understanding and knowledge are pre-reflective. The
actor often cannot explain how they do what they do. They ‘just do it’. But what they do
embodies knowledge, understanding and meaning. Body techniques facilitate mastery
over particular types of environment.
The relevance of body techniques to music can be drawn out by way of a brief reflec-
tion upon musicologist, Christopher Small’s (1998) concept of ‘musicking’, which in
turn echoes and deepens Howard S. Becker’s (1974, 1982) understanding of art as col-
lective action. ‘Music’ is not an object, a thing or noun, according to Small, but rather an
activity. It is a verb: to music. Music or musicking is something that we do, whether as
performers who make patterned sounds; audiences who engage perceptually with those
sounds, seeking out patterns, framing experiences in particular ways, attributing mean-
ing and bestowing the status of music and an aesthetic value upon what is heard; or one
of the many ‘support personnel’, to borrow a term from Becker (1982), who variously
facilitate (e.g. coordinate, engineer, produce, promote, advertise, etc.) such communica-
tive exchanges in both their live and recorded/mediated formats. Becker says much the
same thing when he claims that ‘art work’ should be treated as a verb rather than a noun,
referring to the work involved in producing and maintaining particular perceptual experi-
ences which are regarded by those involved as ‘art’.
Furthermore, both Small and Becker stress the collective nature of musicking, argu-
ing that all parties to such exchanges, from composer, through performer, via support
personnel, to audience, play an essential role, acknowledging that the same person or
persons may play several roles in some cases (see also Dewey, 2005, who argues that art
does not exist in the absence of an audience who perceive it as such). Becker’s (1974,
1982) concept of ‘art worlds’ seeks to capture such collectives. At its most basic, a
‘world’ is the population of participants involved in doing a particular type of art. My
concept of music worlds, discussed below, further develops this idea in relation to music
and the different collectives involved in its various forms.
‘Body techniques’ is an important concept in this context because it encourages us to dig
deeper into musicking. It requires us to focus concretely and precisely upon what the vari-
ous parties to musicking do. We have to capture, on the one side, the know-how and under-
standing (cultural competences) involved, and on the other, the acquired and
socially-distributed character of that competence, and doing so in a manner which captures
the irreducibly embodied nature of musicking. The embodiment of musicking is assumed
by both Small and Becker but remains tacit and unexplored in their writings. The concept
of ‘body techniques’ draws it into the analytic foreground (see also Crossley, 2007).
474 Cultural Sociology 9(4)

Music Worlds
As just noted, ‘music world’ is a concept I have adapted from Becker’s (1974, 1982)
work on ‘art worlds’ (Crossley 2015a, 2015b; see also Bottero and Crossley, 2011;
Crossley and Bottero, 2015; Crossley et al., 2014; Hield and Crossley, 2014). It seeks to
capture the collective nature of musicking; the multiple relays of interaction, on different
timescales and mediated in many cases by technologies, including recording technolo-
gies, within and between sets of artists, audience members and support personnel.
Becker’s work suggests four key analytic foci for the sociological investigation of
music worlds:

1. Networks. Participants in a music world necessarily interact with and depend

upon one another, forming ties of varying types, durations and intensities.
Moreover, this network is dynamically interlocked with the constitutive activities
of the world in a feedback loop. Participants draw upon the network in order to
organise and promote events, for example, and these events facilitate the revivi-
fication, growth and transformation of the network. Becker tends to think of net-
works both as a division of labour, with different individuals pooling their efforts
and resources and playing different roles, and also as a population of enthusiasts
drawn together by common tastes and forming multiplex2 ties with both coopera-
tive and competitive/antagonistic aspects.
2. Conventions. The cooperation that is necessary to the collective ‘doing’ of music
is eased to the extent that particular interaction patterns stabilise as conventions.
This can be seen in grosser forms of event organisation but equally within the
finer detail of musical work. Western music scales, for example, are conven-
tional, as are the standard tunings of instruments, the dominant system of musical
transcription and the defining characteristics of particular musical styles (see also
McClary, 2001; Meyer, 1989, 2000). All help musicians to work together, coor-
dinating their activities. Similarly, they inform the ear of the listener, facilitating
coordination between artist and audience (Meyer, 1956). Some conventions are
common across a number of worlds. Others are specific to particular worlds and
contribute to their distinct identity, defining the style (e.g. reggae, jazz or punk)
which distinguishes the world (Meyer, 1989). They provide the raw materials
upon which (contestable) boundary claims are made (on boundary claims in art
worlds, see Fine, 2004).
3. Resources and Resource Mobilisation. ‘Musicking’ involves the mobilisation,
use and exchange of a variety of resources: e.g. time, energy, money, equipment
and skill. Furthermore, the distribution of resources across participants in a music
world creates relations of inequality, interdependence and (thereby) power
between them.
4. Places. Art always ‘happens somewhere’, Becker (2004) observes, and where it
happens often impacts upon the way in which it happens. Music is shaped by the
places in which it is made (see also Byrne, 2012; Small, 1998). Furthermore, as
anybody with a passion for popular music knows, these places often acquire a
quasi-sacred status within a world: from Minton’s in Harlem, where the pioneers
Crossley 475

of bebop forged their style in the 1940s (Davis, 1990), to Eric’s in Liverpool,
where almost every punk and post-punk band of the late 1970s graced the stage
(Crossley, 2015a).

The distinction between these four elements is in some cases only analytic. Places are
also resources, for example, designated as ‘the place’ by convention within networks of
enthusiasts. Moreover, even when they are concretely separable, they interact. Focal
places encourage network formation (see Feld, 1981; 1982), for example, and networks
facilitate the movement of resources.

Subculture and the Embodied Audience

‘Music world’ is one of several alternative concepts that have been suggested in recent
years, as a means of capturing the networks involved in musicking qua collective action,
in the wake of extensive critique of the once dominant concept of subculture posited by
the CCCS (Clarke et al., 1993; Hebdige, 1988; Willis, 1978; for critiques see e.g. Bennett,
1999; Bennett and Kahn-Harris, 2004; Huq, 2006). I agree with much of this critique.
However, the analyses of the CCCS were often focused upon embodiment, even if that
word was not explicitly used, and they remain a useful resource. Before turning to music
worlds, it will be useful briefly to review this contribution. Three observations are par-
ticularly significant.
First, ‘style’ is integral to the CCCS concept of subculture and it implies embodiment.
Different subcultures mark themselves out by the ways that their members dress, do their
hair, speak, dance and walk. Body techniques, are involved here. Speaking, walking and
dancing are all body techniques, and the wider cultivation of visual style through cloth-
ing, hair, make up, etc. involves what I have called ‘reflexive body techniques’- that is,
embodied ways of acting upon the body to modify it (Crossley, 2005). Looking like a
punk requires embodied know-how.
According to the CCCS, these stylistic uses of the body serve to build collective iden-
tities amongst members of particular subcultures, marking one subculture out from
another, and symbolically resisting a social order in which the working-class youths who
(the CCCS scholars maintain) become involved in subcultures are both alienated and
dominated. Identification with and loyalty to a social group, as Durkheim (1915) recog-
nised, are communicated by way of the body, and subcultural style simultaneously com-
municates non-identification with the dominant culture and identification with an
alternative culture. Furthermore, for Hebdige (1988), subcultural styles challenge the
dominant culture’s taken-for-grantedness and claims to naturalness, by signalling alter-
native choices, whilst their obvious artificiality exposes that of the dominant culture.
Many of the abovementioned criticisms of ‘subculture’ might apply here. Bennett
(1999), for example, argues that youth identification with style, both musical and visual,
is more fluid (i.e. contextual, volatile and only loosely bounded) than ‘subculture’ sug-
gests. Similarly, he questions the idea that youths’ musical and stylistic attachments neces-
sarily entail political resistance. These are important criticisms. However, we should not
overstate them. Participants in at least some music worlds (e.g. punk, heavy metal, folk,
indie and hip hop) do still express their identification by way of their appearance.
476 Cultural Sociology 9(4)

Furthermore, some music worlds, including punk, folk and hip hop, still function, in some
respects, as political public spheres, where oppositional ideas are aired and discussed, and
the visual style of their members can be read as expressions of this opposition. The mis-
take of the CCCS, I suggest, was to posit their concept of style as a categorical constant
rather than a variable; that is to say, the importance of embodied visual style varies across
both different worlds and different participants in the same world, and should be empiri-
cally analysed as such. Likewise, this point also applies to oppositional attitudes and
politicisation (on political variation in the folk world see Hield and Crossley, 2014). This
is how I propose to incorporate the idea of embodied style within music worlds.
Second, though some subcultures, including straightedge and, in the view of Fonarow
(2006), indie, manifest a puritan ethos, many celebrate and facilitate the body’s potential
for aesthetic, erotic and other pleasures, and in doing so transgress wider norms of cor-
poreal regulation, threatening to disturb the social worlds (e.g. of work and the house-
hold) that such norms protect. Again, however, this is a variable. Some music worlds and
some participants within them are more hedonistic than others. Furthermore, the suspen-
sion of certain norms and conventions within a music world is facilitated by the uphold-
ing of others, and the pleasures achieved often depend upon specific (reflexive) body
techniques. As Becker’s (1961) seminal paper, ‘Becoming a Marihuana User’ demon-
strates, even the chemical action of drugs must be channelled through embodied know-
how if the desired effect is to be achieved.
Recent work on ageing and music consumption adds an interesting twist to this. It
highlights the balance which many older participants try to strike between such hedonis-
tic pursuits and the relative frailty of the older body and the responsibilities they have
accumulated as adults (Bennett, 2013; Bennett and Hodkinson, 2012). Participants find
that recovery from a wild night is harder and takes longer. Combined with the fact that
ageing tends to bring social responsibility, such that nights out are increasingly and ever
more tightly sandwiched between duties felt to require care and attention, this encour-
ages moderation. Interestingly, for largely the same reasons, older participants also often
feel the need to tone down stylistic markers of subcultural identification. A mohican is
impossible for a balding man and may be felt to be inappropriate for an office manager.
This reference to age signals the latest in a sequence of challenges which have been
made to the demographic profile which the CCCS attach to subculture. They were criti-
cised for ignoring race and gender in early conceptions – an omission which was quickly
corrected (Gilroy, 1992; Hebdige, 1988; Jones, 1988; McRobbie, 1991) – and for assum-
ing that subcultures were a preserve of working-class youth, when many working-class
youths did not participate to any significant degree and a sizeable minority of middle-
class youths did (Bennett, 1999; Clarke, 1990). Now it appears that the assumption that
‘subcultures’ are a preserve of the young is questionable too. Again this should sensitise
us to variation. We cannot assume that music world participants are young. Indeed we
should not make any demographic assumptions. Rather, we should investigate empiri-
cally the demographic profile of both worlds and sub-sets of participants within them
(e.g. on sub-sets see Hield and Crossley, 2014). Some are demographically diverse, some
selective, and those which are selective select on different criteria. Note also that age,
gender and race potentially bring embodiment into our investigation of music worlds in
another way. Participation in a music world is affected both by an actor’s physical
Crossley 477

capacities and constitution (which vary by age, for example), and also by the meanings
attributed to particular bodily properties. Furthermore, music worlds are sometimes sites
where such meanings are either reproduced or contested.
Finally, Willis’ (1978) comparison of bike boys and hippies identifies the ways in
which different subcultures ‘use’ the body and the relation of such uses to wider bodily
ways of being. The bike boys, for example, were ‘physical’ and restless in orientation.
They were always on the move, getting bored quickly if stationary. They craved speed
(on their motorbikes) and put great value upon the physical prowess involved in being a
good fighter, dancer, motorcyclist and mechanic. This gelled with their musical prefer-
ences: they liked music they could dance to, preferred singles over LPs, which they felt
went on too long, and so on. The hippies, by contrast, celebrated their own physical
ineptitude, did not often dance to music (they listened), had no preference for music that
could be danced to, and preferred LPs to singles because they could sit, listen to and talk
about them over an extended period.

Listening Techniques
Willis’ observations identify different embodied ways of approaching and listening to
music, linking this to taste. Bike boys like to dance and prefer music which affords this.
Hippies do not like dancing. They want to sit, listen and interpret, preferring music which
best facilitates and rewards this. These approaches to music consumption can be con-
ceived as ‘body techniques’. They are ‘uses of the body’. And they are also simultane-
ously different uses of music (on uses of music, see DeNora, 2000). The bike boys use
music as a stimulus for dancing and a means of achieving all that dancing can achieve:
e.g. wooing girls. The hippies use music as a stimulus for philosophical discussion. We
can extend this analysis by exploring the process of listening in more detail.
The auditory engagement and ‘mutual tuning in’, as Schutz (1976a, 1976b) calls it,
involved in musical appreciation entail body techniques. What Merleau-Ponty says of
sight may equally well be said of listening:

The gaze gets more or less from things according to the way in which it questions them, ranges
over or dwells on them. To learn to see colours is to acquire a certain style of seeing, a new use
of one’s own body: it is to enrich and recast the body image. Whether a system of motor or
perceptual powers, our body is not an object for an ‘I think’, it is a grouping of lived through
meanings which moves towards its equilibrium. (1962: 153, emphasis added)

Ways of seeing and hearing are acquired uses of the body: that is, body techniques. We
are all familiar with the experience of hearing something new in a familiar song; some-
thing we have never heard before but always hear thereafter. Our ear has ‘questioned’ the
auditory stimulus in a different way and found something new which it is now sensitised
to. Similarly, we are familiar with the process whereby exposure to a particular genre
whose songs ‘all sound the same’ at first makes us more discriminating. Habitual famili-
arity with constitutive stylistic conventions pushes them below the level of our explicit
attention, bringing finer variations and innovation to the perceptual foreground (on
habituation as desensitisation see Ravaisson, 2008). Furthermore, though this may have
478 Cultural Sociology 9(4)

individual aspects, it also has the strong collective element which Mauss identifies with
body techniques. We learn about new (to us) styles and follow up listening recommenda-
tions from friends, magazines, television and websites, learning to listen for what others
hear and to interpret and respond to it as they do.
Merleau-Ponty’s reference to ‘equilibrium’ in the above passage means ‘pattern’. As
a practical animal, the human organism strives to render its environment intelligible and
predictable (i.e. patterned) because this renders it manipulable. John Dewey (2005), who
has a similar view, adds that identifying a pattern triggers (aesthetic) pleasure – an asso-
ciation which he explains in evolutionary terms.3 Ideally, he suggests, pattern recogni-
tion should require some effort. Patterns which are easy to find are boring and bring no
pleasure. Where patterns cannot be found, however, the result is frustration.
Developing this further and drawing both upon Dewey (1894, 1895, 2005) and GH
Mead (1967), the pragmatist musicologist Leonard Meyer (1956), argues that pattern
recognition is often aided by the mutual orientation (mutual tuning in) of composer, per-
former and audience to shared conventions. It is for this reason, he claims, that listening
to the music of other cultures can be both hard work and unrewarding. We cannot find
the pattern because we do not know, in the embodied way that we know the music of our
own culture, what to listen for. However, he adds that music is most pleasurable when it
plays with and teases our expectations. Drawing upon Dewey’s (1894, 1895) theory of
affect, he argues that teasing generates visceral tension which is then released to pleasur-
able effect if/when expectations are eventually fulfilled and/or a pattern identified (see
also Ball, 2011; Huron, 2007). Knowing this, he continues, composers and performers
deliberatively play with conventional expectations – a process which, in turn, causes
conventions to evolve over time. Becker (1982) draws upon this idea in his discussion of
convention in Art Worlds and it is thus integral to the ‘worlds’ concept.
Pulling these ideas together, I suggest that body techniques of musical appreciation
are linked to the visceral, aesthetic pleasure of pattern recognition. To acquire or refine
one’s listening technique(s) is to learn a new way of deriving pleasure from a particular
type of music. I would also note the similarity between Meyer’s ideas of ‘play’, and the
tension–release it involves, and both Elias and Dunning’s (1993) account of the role of
cathartic pleasure in The Quest for Excitement, and Simmel’s (1949) similar reflection
upon the role of ‘play’ in sociability. Although the economic elements of much musick-
ing conflict with Simmel’s conception, all three explore the intrinsic, embodied pleasures
associated with structured social interaction and tension–release mechanisms in play.
Meyer is the most important for present purposes, because the form of interaction he
explores is musicking. However, the overlap with Simmel allows us to deepen our under-
standing of musicking as social activity. The relation of artist to audience is a social rela-
tion: a form of (sonic) sociability. Similarly, the overlap with Elias and Dunning allows
us to situate musicking amongst other quests for excitement and visceral pleasure in
contemporary societies. Note that this connects back to my earlier discussion of the ways
in which music worlds provide temporary relief from wider norms of bodily regulation
(albeit in their own, normatively regulated way). Music is a source of physical excitation
and pleasure, and that is one of the reasons that we value it.
Returning to Merleau-Ponty, this is not only a matter of the ear alone or of purely
sonic patterns. Each of the senses informs the other, such that the sight of a musician
Crossley 479

struggling to reach a high note may add to the intensity we hear in the note. Furthermore,
this is overlaid, as Lucy Green (1997, 2008) has noted, with what she calls ‘discourse’.
Knowing that a piece of music is being performed by a woman, to use her example, may
change how we hear the music at the most basic, visceral level.

Beyond Subculture
The discussion of listening (body) techniques has taken us beyond the CCCS concept of
subculture. Now I want to take a further step and to engage more fully with ‘music
worlds’. A key problem with the subculture concept is that it focuses more or less exclu-
sively upon the consumption of music, affording no proper consideration of production
(Crossley, 2015a; Laing, 1985). Properly conceived consumption is part of the produc-
tion process. Music is an act of communication involving both artist(s) and listener(s),
even if, in the limit case, the same person plays both roles. As both Dewey (2005) and
Becker (1982) stress, there is no music without an audience who define it as such, listen-
ing, hearing, seeking out patterns and thereby finding meaning in it. Willis’ (1990) reflec-
tions on the active nature of music consumption overlap with these conceptions. However,
consumption is only one element in production, and the subculture concept does not
engage with the others. ‘Music world’, by contrast, does. It encourages us to look at both
artists and support personnel as well as audiences. We find further body techniques in
both cases.
The ability to play a musical instrument or sing, for example, can be conceptualised
as a body technique, or perhaps rather as a set of interlocking body techniques (see
below) which are more or less important in different music worlds. Learning to play a
musical instrument is an embodied process. It may involve reading books and theoretical
knowledge, but this is optional. Physical engagement with the instrument and ‘body
modification’ are not. Muscles must be strengthened (e.g. the embouchure of the saxo-
phonist or the finger strength of the guitarist), dexterity and coordination sharpened, and
detailed nuances of movement mastered. The process is not ‘merely physical’, however.
What is acquired is a form of embodied practical reason. Learning to play an instrument
is not learning to play particular songs by rote but rather mastering a set of transferable
skills and principles. The classically trained can play a previously unknown piece by
sight, for example; rock musicians can often do the same by ear. Both may be able to
transpose the piece into a different key without preparation. Jazz musicians will impro-
vise on a basic theme. Being able to play entails a variable (see below) degree of mastery
over an instrument which, like mastery of a language, allows the player to form expres-
sions which are both individual and creative, and yet structured in an intersubjectively
familiar and intelligible way.
Moreover, these techniques, and variations across them, are distributed in a way
which betrays their social basis. Different societies, across both space and time, have
invented different musical instruments and techniques for playing them. They recognise
and use different tonal intervals. And where contemporary Western music focuses upon
harmony and melody, other traditions focus upon rhythm, deploying rhythmic patterns
which are alien to the Western ear. Indeed, historians and ethnomusicologists struggle to
find any meaningful constants in music.
480 Cultural Sociology 9(4)

Furthermore, within the West there is marked variation across music worlds (see
Finnegan, 2007). And as with other body techniques, ability to play particular instru-
ments is unevenly socially distributed. Work on a range of music worlds suggests a
strong gendered aspect, for example, with a number of instruments being deemed either
masculine or feminine and being disproportionately selected accordingly (Bayton, 1997;
Clawson, 1999; Green, 1997, 2008). Similarly, the cost of instruments and lessons, com-
bined with the effect of social networks, puts them beyond the reach of the less affluent
(Bates, 2012). Finally, expertise in certain music styles is often concentrated within par-
ticular ethnic communities. Indeed, insofar as music styles emerge out of and are shaped
by wider everyday practices, the ease with which individuals can engage with them may
be affected by ethnic group belonging. Kofsky (1998), for example, suggests that jazz
rhythms are reproduced in the childhood games of African-Americans, and that this
makes these rhythms much more accessible to this group:

There is a relationship – difficult to specify with complete precision but real nonetheless –
between socialisation games like the Hambone on the one hand and motor skills necessary for
participating in black dance or the playing of black music on the other … Socialisation activities
… make it clear why virtually all of the major innovations in jazz have been the product of
black creativity. Instead of having to learn the basic rhythmic and melodic vocabulary as does
a white performer, a black artist is free to concentrate talent and energy on refining, enriching,
and perfecting that vocabulary … (1998: 140)

Beyond musicians, many of the support personnel who work with them in music worlds,
making a crucial contribution, draw upon a range of important body techniques.
Assembling the vast configurations of equipment typically involved in both live perfor-
mance and recording, for example, requires considerable practical knowledge. This is
increasingly recognised in contemporary music, where engineering and production
credits enjoy a much greater prominence in both recording and live performance than
they did previously.

Body Technical Complexities

If we are to understand musicking in terms of body techniques it is important that we
recognise certain complexities. Mauss frames body techniques in a binary fashion: one
either has them or not. In practice, however, as Blue (2013) observes with respect to
social practice more generally, playing ability falls along a continuum and learning is a
lifelong experience. The absolute beginner can often play something from within a few
minutes of their first attempt, whilst even the most skilled virtuosos continue to learn and
improve. Both ‘have’ the technique but to varying degrees and both continue to learn.
In addition, there are many facets to playing an instrument. A guitarist must usually
be able to form a number of different chord shapes, for example, and move swiftly and
smoothly between them. They need to be able to keep time – a skill often honed by play-
ing with a metronome. They might need to be able to use a variety of picking and strum-
ming styles. They might, in some cases, need to be able to read music or alternatively to
pick out and emulate songs which they hear. They might need to be able to improvise
Crossley 481

around a basic song structure or transpose a melody from one key to another. ‘Playing
guitar’ actually combines multiple acquired techniques, and which of these techniques
are important varies across both music worlds and playing contexts. Whilst a folk guitar-
ist will typically need a range of fingerpicking techniques, for example, a punk guitarist
may not. ‘Playing guitar’ entails different elements in different worlds.
These qualifications potentially problematise the notion of body techniques. Where a
technique begins and ends, and who qualifies as having it, are slippery issues (although
see below). However, it is a fascinating sensitising concept which can open up new facets
of musicking to sociological investigation. It is in this pragmatic spirit that I push ahead
with it here.

Body Techniques and Music Worlds

The arguments of the paper so far suggest that audiences, artists and support personnel in
music worlds use their bodies in distinctive ways, drawing upon particular body tech-
niques. The link between body techniques and music worlds runs deeper than this, how-
ever. In order fully to understand the role of body techniques within music worlds we must
consider the interplay between these techniques and the other elements of music worlds
listed above: networks, conventions, resources and places. I begin with conventions.

Body Techniques, Conventions and Understanding

By some definitions, body techniques are conventions. Becker’s use of ‘convention’ entails
something more specific, however: the resolution of what Lewis (1969) calls ‘coordination
problems’. This deepens and extends our sense of what it is for a technique to be social.
Body techniques are social for Mauss because they have a social distribution; one group
has a particular technique, another does not. He portrays the exercise of such techniques as
an individual matter, however. I have criticised him elsewhere for this, drawing a compari-
son with Goffman (Crossley, 1995), who is also interested in the embodied techniques of
everyday life but who focuses upon their exercise within interaction and the adaptations
and additional skills this requires (Goffman, 1971). Techniques are social for Goffman not
only in the respect that they manifest group specific styles, but also because they are used
in, and must be adapted to, interaction. Becker’s idea of ‘convention’ pushes this point
further. There are often different ways of coordinating our activities, he observes, none of
which are intrinsically superior. For any to work, however, all participants must ‘agree’
upon it, if not explicitly then at least tacitly. We could drive on either the left or right side
of the road, for example. However, whichever we choose will only work, facilitating traffic
flow and minimising crashes, if everybody does the same. Convention entails such agree-
ment. A convention is an agreement, often tacit, between embodied actors, which allows
them to coordinate their activities (see also Crossley, 2014).
This discussion suggests a need for combining ‘convention’ and ‘body techniques’ in
the study of music worlds. ‘Convention’ invites us to consider whether and to what
extent particular body techniques facilitate coordination between participants. Learning
to play guitar, for example, is not only an individual accomplishment, nor merely a
482 Cultural Sociology 9(4)

practice typical of teenage boys. It enables an actor to fit their music-making activities
with those of others and to engage the culturally-rooted expectations of an audience.
Conversely, the concept of ‘body techniques’ invites us to consider both the way in
which conventions take root within the corporeal schemata of participants and to examine
the (acquired) skill that orientation to convention often entails. Musicians could never
adhere to the many conventions involved in musicking, achieving the desired coordina-
tion with others, if they had to think reflectively about doing so. Coordination always
involves a degree of negotiation of the kind described by Goffman, but this is only pos-
sible against a backdrop of conventions which do not need to be negotiated or thought
about. Body techniques, qua habituated understanding of certain conventions, generate
this backdrop.

A Wittgensteinian Interlude
We can develop our understanding of the interplay between body techniques and conven-
tions by way of a brief reflection on Wittgenstein’s (1953) discussion of ‘understanding’
and his critique of the Cartesian version of that concept. The Cartesian treats understand-
ing as a conscious experience. It is a sense of ‘getting it’, whatever ‘it’ is. This accords
with the Cartesian argument that the mind is transparent to itself and that individuals
enjoy privileged access to their own mental states. I know what I understand because I
have the experience of understanding, and as only I have that experience, then only I
truly know what I understand. The problem with this argument, Wittgenstein observes, is
that we sometimes say and feel that we have understood something shortly before acting
in a way which demonstrates that we have not and which forces us to revise our judge-
ment, concluding that we do not understand after all. ‘Understanding’ and having a feel-
ing that we understand are not the same thing and do not necessarily coincide. In some
cases, an individual may insist that they understand something, genuinely believing and
feeling this to be so, when it is plainly obvious to all around them that they do not. From
the other side, teachers and lecturers are familiar with situations where students under-
stand something but are unsure whether they do and have to ask, ‘have I understood?’
Wittgenstein concludes from this that ‘understanding’ is a public, intersubjective phe-
nomenon rather than a private, intra-subjective experience. To understand is to be able to
‘go on’; that is, to do something in a potentially public context where others could wit-
ness it. To understand ‘calculus’, for example, is to be able to solve a certain sort of
mathematical problem in a particular way. One may do that in a room on one’s own but
there is nothing necessarily private about it. It could be televised. And in the case of a
student, the opinion of another might be required to confirm that the individual actually
has understood.
Note that this argument overlaps with and supports Mauss’ discussion of body tech-
niques as forms of understanding. Understanding is practical and public, which is to say
embodied, for Wittgenstein. To understand is to be able to ‘go on’, acting appropriately
in a given situation.
Gesturing towards conventions too, Wittgenstein further develops this argument by
asking how we can ever know that we have understood something. How does the maths
student know that they have grasped the principles of calculus if understanding is not a
Crossley 483

conscious feeling? And how can we, as academic onlookers, ascertain whether or not
they have understood anything? How do we discriminate between understanding and not
understanding, whether as participants or academic observers? Wittgenstein’s answer
centres upon agreement and community. To understand calculus is to perform calcula-
tions in a way which members of the mathematical community accept as legitimate and
to produce an answer which they find acceptable. This is often not agreement of opinion,
as such, but rather what Wittgenstein calls ‘agreement in forms of life’. It entails shared
ways of acting - that is, conventions.
Such agreements are often habitual in Wittgenstein’s view. We do not reflect upon
them or actively negotiate them. Furthermore, they are often supported through sanc-
tions, both positive and negative. However, they are not static. They evolve by way of
unintended deviation and may be successfully challenged by innovators.
The significance of this argument for our purposes is that it suggests that the under-
standing embodied in particular body techniques depends for its status qua understanding
upon tacit agreement - that is to say, convention. To put it bluntly, being able to play a musi-
cal instrument means being able to play it to the satisfaction of other participants in a par-
ticular musical world. The existence of the technique, at least qua form of understanding,
is dependent upon the conventions which, in some part, constitute a music world. Note that
this argument also helps us to address the slipperiness of the concept of body techniques,
as discussed above, because it suggests that body techniques are defined and their acquisi-
tion judged by participants in particular worlds. It is not for us, as academics, to decide
what playing guitar involves or who can and cannot play. Rather we should explore the
ways in which such decisions are made within the music worlds that are of interest to us,
looking at the conventions which are mobilised in particular contexts.

Body Techniques as Resources

Body techniques are not only embodied conventions in the context of music worlds, how-
ever. They are resources, and therefore forms of what Gary Becker (1993) calls ‘human
capital’. As such, they are significant at both the collective and the individual levels.
At the collective level, the formation of a music world is dependent upon the existence,
mobilisation and combination of certain resources, including body techniques. Most obvi-
ously, the formation of a music world requires a critical mass of both skilled musicians,
covering a range of instruments, and support personnel. Such skill reserves are not static.
Would-be participants, enthused by an emerging world, may become motivated to learn to
play as a consequence. Punk is an obvious example of this. It stimulated many young
people to take up instruments and form bands, the added incentive being that high levels
of skill were not always necessary. Joy Division bassist Peter Hook was so inspired by the
Sex Pistols’ first Manchester gig, for example, that he bought a bass and began practicing
the next day. This spike in learning was however stimulated by a pool of musicians who
had begun to learn their craft before punk existed, and who collectively invented it.
Embodied resources pre-existed and contributed to the emergence of punk, even if punk
subsequently stimulated the generation and flow of further such resources. In addition, we
should acknowledge that at least some of these innovators were relatively accomplished
rock musicians, whatever the claims of both critics and apologists. As their biographies
484 Cultural Sociology 9(4)

and band histories testify, they had put the hours in, learning their craft. Moreover, at least
some of the later arrivals to the punk world, who swelled its ranks, were converts from
earlier music worlds, including glam and pub rock. In other words, even punk, as a new
style and one which rejected the virtuoso claims of its contemporaries, drew upon and
needed reserves of body techniques for its formation.
At the individual level, participation is dependent upon the possession of certain body
techniques and one’s ‘career’ is shaped by the techniques one has mastered. In some part,
this is a matter of proficiency. A very skilled guitarist may enjoy celebrity status within a
world as a consequence of this, for example. They may find it easier to secure gigs and
recording contracts. And they may enjoy greater opportunity for movement between
bands. It may also be a matter of the ‘market’ in body techniques, however. If drumming
skills and equipment are in short supply, for example, then those who have them may
find themselves in high demand.
I noted earlier that the various components of a music world are, in some respects,
only analytically distinguishable. The dual status of body techniques as embodiments of
both convention and resources illustrates this. Furthermore, as such they also illustrate
how, in this case, resources are constituted, in part, through convention. What counts as
a resource depends upon the constitutive conventions of the particular world. In the folk
world, for example, where synthesisers play, at most, a very minor role, skills on this
instrument have little value. They are not resources. In the world of electronica, by con-
trast, such skills are important, valued resources.

Body Techniques and Social Networks

Body techniques relate to the social networks which structure music worlds. There are
three aspects to this. Firstly, and perhaps most obviously, body techniques are often
acquired and developed through contacts within networks. They diffuse through networks.
This might be a matter of straightforward instruction. Some research on networks of clas-
sical musicians, for example, has focused upon mentoring relationships. Many of the best
known classical composers were mentored by equally prestigious alters (McAndrew and
Everett, 2015). Similarly, in my own recent work on the birth of the UK punk world, there
are many examples of musicians passing on their skills to others (Crossley, 2015a). Slits
guitarist Viv Albertine, for example, was helped to learn guitar by her old friend, Keith
Levine (who played in both an early line up of the Clash and also later on in Public Image
Limited) and also by her then boyfriend, Mick Jones of The Clash.
In addition, as Sara Cohen (1997) has noted, musicians’ networks constitute an impor-
tant source of tips and other resources which allow them to develop technically. Cohen’s
main observation is that women are often excluded from these networks because of the
masculine conventions which structure their constitutive ties. This is an important point
and helps to explain the abovementioned gender skew in the distribution of music-related
body techniques. It also raises a more general point, however, about the role of networks
in diffusing and refining body techniques.
Secondly, dense networks are conducive to the generation of conventions and thus,
following the Wittgensteinian interlude above, to the framework necessary for body
techniques to be said to embody understanding. In dense networks where, by definition,
each node enjoys a tie to most of the others, ‘agreement’, whether in opinions or ‘forms
Crossley 485

of life’, is more easily arrived at (through mutual influence) (Coleman, 1988, 1990).
Consequently, so too are agreed standards against which performance of musical tech-
niques can be judged wrong or right, good or bad.
Finally, looking at things from the other side, however, body techniques, via conven-
tions, shape networks. It is conventional, for example, for rock bands to have one drum-
mer, one bassist, one singer and either one or two guitarists. As a consequence, two
bassists within a rock world, even where they move between bands, are very unlikely to
ever play together. Likewise drummers and singers. They may cooperate on other
grounds but we would expect to find considerable levels of ‘instrument heterophily’ in
such music worlds: that is, players work less often with others who play the same instru-
ment as themselves.
For illustrative purposes I decided to test this idea on one of the networks I explored
in an earlier work on early UK punk in London (Crossley, 2015a). The basic network,
involving 75 actors, which is represented in Figure 1, involves a large number of sup-
port personnel and high profile ‘faces’ as well as musicians. To simplify matters, I
decided to remove them, leaving musicians only. I also removed Dave Greenfield of the
Stranglers, because he was the only keyboard player in the network and there were
therefore too few keyboard players to base an analysis upon. The reduced network is
visualised in Figure 2.
Next, I put each of the remaining participants into one of four categories, reflecting
their instrument (this is captured in Figure 2 by using differently shaped nodes to reflect
different instruments). Few musicians had changed instrument across their career, but
where they had, they are categorised according to their current instrument, and with the
exception of singers who also played guitar (recorded as singers) there were no
multi-instrumentalists.
Having prepared the data in this way, I conducted an E-I analysis. This test compares
the number of ties in a network between nodes who share a categorical attribute (internal
ties [I]) with that between nodes who differ for this attribute (external ties [E]). It sum-
marises this ratio in a score (the E-I index), calculates the score that would be expected
if the categories had no effect (either positive or negative) on tie formation (the expected
E-I index), and calculates the statistical likelihood that any deviation between the actual
and expected E-I scores could have occurred at random.
Table 1 summarises the most salient figures for this test. Note firstly the comparison,
for each instrument, between internal and external ties (under the ‘Aggregate Figures’
heading). In each case, the number of internal ties is much lower than the number of
external ties. The difference is slightly reduced for guitarists. This reflects the fact that
bands sometimes have more than one guitarist. Even in the case of guitarists, however,
there is a clear heterophilic tendency. The final column of aggregate figures, ‘E-I Index’,
expresses this bias in a single figure. If members of any category only ever forged ties
with members of another category their E-I score would be 1 (and if they only ever
formed ties with members of their own category, it would be −1). The scores indicate that
for drums, bass and vocals, they come very close to this.
The density matrix on the right hand side of Table 1 captures the number of ties
between members of each category, expressing it as a proportion of the total number that
are possible, given the number of participants in each category. The 0.127 in the top left
 486

Figure 1. The London punk world.

Cultural Sociology 9(4)
 Crossley

Figure 2. The London punk world (musicians only).

487
488 Cultural Sociology 9(4)

Table 1. Instrument heterophily in music world networks.

Aggregate Figures Density

Number Internal External E-I Guitar Drums Bass Vocal

of Actors Ties Ties Index
Guitar 11 14 55 .594 .127 .172 .2 .145
Drums 9 4 47 .843 .056 .178 .156
Bass 10 6 53 .797 .067 .15
Vocal 10 4 45 .837 .044
E-I=0.754
Expected E-I=0.536
p=0.000

of that part of the table, for example, indicates that of all of the ties that there could pos-
sibly be between guitarists in the network, 12.7% of them actually exist. The 0.172 next
to that figure indicates that for guitarist–drummer relations, the figure is 17.2%. The
figures in this density matrix tell the same story as the aggregate figures. More impor-
tantly, the E-I figures and p value below them suggest that they depart significantly from
what would be expected by chance.
These findings reflect two underlying processes. Firstly, musicians with existing
skills (body techniques) are more likely to form cooperative ties with others who have
different skills. This may seem obvious but it is important because it shows how body
techniques, as resources and by way of conventions, shape the networks constitutive of
a music world.
Secondly, however, a converse process may also be in play, with networks shaping the
body techniques which particular participants acquire. Where individuals learn instru-
ments in an effort to join a band and a music world with which they are familiar, the
process of choosing their instrument may reflect the choices and skills of others with
whom they expect to form a band. If one’s friends are forming a band and they need a
bassist, for example, one is more likely to learn bass. Changes of instrument are also
sometimes explained in this way. It is not uncommon, for example, for guitarists to shift
to bass where they wish to join a band which already has a guitarist but no bassist. Sid
Vicious, for example, played saxophone and sang in the Flowers of Romance, moving to
drums (because that seat was vacant) when playing briefly in Siouxsie and the Banshees,
and then to bass when joining his friend, Johnny Rotten, in the Sex Pistols (after the
original Pistols’ bassist, Glen Matlock, left).

Body Techniques and Music World Places

The relationship of body techniques to a music world’s places is threefold. Firstly, a
world’s places are often the main sites where its constitutive body techniques are per-
formed and valued. Dance styles are often tied to particular places, for example, because
they are the only spaces where appropriate music is played publicly and because the
clientele in such places share a common stock of both dance techniques and perceptual
techniques/conventions for their recognition and judgement. In addition, structural
Crossley 489

features such as a properly sprung floor may be an advantage. Northern Soul lovers
flocked to the Wigan Casino and related venues in the early 1970s, for example, because
that was a place where their dancing styles were supported both by means of the ‘best’
music and by a crowd who all aspired to make the same shapes. Furthermore, the clien-
tele were quick to voice their opinions when overcrowding threatened the dance space
or, indeed, when music was deemed unsuitable:

There were clubs more progressive … for purists, for innovators, for collectors, but if what you
really wanted was a club for dancers, then Wigan Casino was the place to go.

[…]

Wigan’s dancers were demanding and the music had to be just right or they would walk. There
could be few experiences worse for a DJ than standing behind the turntables of the Casino’s
main ballroom when the mighty, heaving, Wigan dancefloor cleared in a show of spontaneous
musical disapproval, revealing the vast expanse of sprung wooden flooring … (Hunt, 2002)

Similarly, metal clubs support headbanging through the music they play and the shared
positive valuation of this dance by their patrons. This may also apply to appearance and
the reflexive body techniques which cultivate it. Unusual visual styles very often fall foul
of door policies and attract hostility in the wrong places, but are cultivated and attract
kudos in the right places: i.e. the places of a specific music world.
Second, and conversely, body techniques serve to define certain locales as key places for
a music world. Places become recognisable as places belonging to a particular world in
virtue of their patrons’ appearance and dancing styles, and of course also the body tech-
niques of musicians, DJs and support personnel. The stress on territory and territorial claims
in some of the work of the CCCS (e.g. Willis, 1978, on the bike boys café) is instructive
here, because it underlines and explores the various ways in which places are marked out as
‘ours’ by both visual and auditory means, that is, by body techniques. In the case of music
worlds which are more masculine in orientation, this may entail body techniques which lend
places a threatening atmosphere (e.g. aggressive dancing and gesturing), discouraging both
outsiders and some would-be women insiders from entering (Krenske and McKay, 2000).
Finally, music worlds’ places are sites where some of their constitutive body tech-
niques can be learned. By visiting a world’s places, neophytes learn how they should look,
dance and more generally comport themselves, and receive positive reinforcement for
their appropriation of these body techniques. Rehearsal will typically take place else-
where, in private spaces, but what is rehearsed is learned from the public space of the
world, and ‘passing’ in that space, perhaps after receiving advice and criticism from other
denizens at an earlier time, is a sign of authentic acquisition valued by participants.

Conclusion
I began this paper with the observation that the embodiment of music has received less
attention than might be expected. My discussion of the CCCS suggests that embodiment
may enjoy more of a tacit presence in their work than this initial observation suggested.
However, even if this is so, more work is necessary if this tacit presence is to be made
more explicit.
490 Cultural Sociology 9(4)

My suggestion for achieving this, building upon earlier work, has been by use of the
concept of body techniques. ‘Body techniques’ is a sensitising concept which encourages
us to focus upon different uses of the body as they manifest within and across a variety of
different social worlds. It encourages a very concrete focus upon what various parties to a
particular activity actually do, and the prior learning this presupposes.
Part of the attraction of the body techniques concept is that it points simultaneously in
two directions: to the knowledge and understanding embedded in these techniques, as
also identified by such writers as Merleau-Ponty (1962) and Dewey (1988), but also
towards the social distribution of these collective forms of knowledge and understand-
ing. In this paper I have added to this by drawing out the way in which body techniques
both function as resources (human capital) and interlock in a mutually affecting way with
the other key constitutive elements of music worlds, namely conventions, social net-
works and places. Body techniques are key constitutive elements of music worlds and
also interact in important ways with the other key constitutive elements.

Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or
not-for-profit sectors.

Notes
1. For example, Mauss observes that French youth have begun to pick up American ways of
walking that they have observed in Hollywood films.
2. Multiplex ties are ties with many strands: e.g. two individuals might be friends, colleagues
and neighbours.
3. He argues that pattern recognition has been crucial to survival in human evolution (e.g. for
spotting both predators and prey), and that aesthetic pleasure as pleasure in pattern recogni-
tion has helped in this process by encouraging individuals to practice and further develop
their pattern recognition skills.

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Author biography
Nick Crossley is a Professor of Sociology at the University Manchester. His most recent book is
Networks of Sound, Style and Subversion: The Punk and Post-Punk Worlds of Manchester,
London, Liverpool and Sheffield, 1975–1980 (Manchester University Press, 2015).