Urban Music Studies

For the 2017 DGS Sociology of Arts meeting in Berlin, we invite papers researching the ways that cities shape art at different levels. The goal of this event is to share research and invoke dialogues about the ways that the urban is important for understanding the production, evaluation and distribution of art.

Our aim is to develop an arts sociology that takes seriously place, space and cities.
There are numerous collectively shared ideas about the importance of cities in art. Social scientists, historians and journalists alike envision particular cities in particular historical moments as key sites where the arts are flourishing, since at least the 20th century cities have been part of the collective imaginary of where art is produced, evaluated and distributed. Examples are legion: from the emergence of new forms and avant-garde art, such as literature or visual arts in pre-war Paris, to popular music in 1980-90s Manchester, or the visual arts in New York City and Berlin and film in Los Angeles and Mumbai today.