CfP: Rock Music, Belonging and Citizenship in the English-speaking world (1950s-2020s) InMedia. The French Journal of Media Studies, Deadline: 01.04.2025

Call for Papers - Rock Music, Belonging and Citizenship in the English-speaking world (1950s-2020s)

In the first chapter of the Resistance through Rituals volume (1975), Stuart Hall, Tony Jefferson, John Clarke and Brian Roberts essentially approach rock music and its associated “subcultures” in neo-Marxist terms as a mode of cultural resistance of the working class against capitalist hegemony. They view the various rock “subcultures” of their time – the Teddy Boys, the Mods, the Rastas- as vanguards of a renewed class consciousness, heralding emerging forms of political mobilisation that could ultimately pave the way to revolution. While this perspective was of course proved wrong, and in fact was heavily criticized from the start, including by members of Hall et als.’s own Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies group (CCCS), it has remained influential, if only because it construed the academic study of rock music through a socio-political lens, attributing as it did a central place to the question of belonging and citizenship in XXth century liberal democracies.

Subsequent approaches were often elaborated more or less directly in opposition to the CCCS’s approach while engaging directly with this question. This is for example the case of post-modern approaches to popular music, which highlight individualism in musical tastes and choices and refutes the idea of fixed modes of identification in particular in terms of social class. Other markers of collective belonging, such as race, ethnicity, locality and place, globalization and transnationalism also emerged as major themes in the study of rock music. Reconstructed understandings of collective identification in popular culture include the notion of “neo-tribes” (Maffesoli, 1996). In a different perspective, the notion of “scene” has become central in conceptualizing the diversity of populations revolving around locally defined sites of musical production and consumption (live concert industry professionals, record labels, musicians, audiences) (Straw, 2022 ; Guibert and Bellavance, 2013). Likewise, scholars have debated the mixed, fragmented, recomposed nature of rock music in the context of the international circulation of musical tastes and cross-influences in the transatlantic world (Poirrier et Le Texier, 2021). Even the question of social class has garnered renewed attention (Garbaye and Guibert, 2024). Mark Fischer’s ruminations on the instant nostalgia inherent to much of 1980s British pop music, expressing a longing for utopian futures that might have come to be had Thatcherism and “globalization” not occurred (see Ambrose, 2018), provide powerful insights into the politics of rock music. 

In the 2020s, new questions arise on the ambiguous relation of rock music to citizenship and political power in the context of the rise of populism, with for example the figure of the rock concert stage “hero” relating ambiguously to audiences both as a performer of resistance and of authoritative leadership (Brachet, 2025). The return of armed conflict and war threats in the Western world also urgently raises the everlasting question of the musicians’ involvement in (global) politics beyond the method of the “protest song”, the relevance of which has largely been overestimated in the rock community, we must wonder what models of citizenships rock artists are promoting, both at local and global levels. This can go from resorting to a diplomacy of celebrity, to actively trying to involve listeners in everyday questions of democracy (Peddie, 2005; Pedelty and Weglarz, 2013).

With rock’n’roll nearing its 70 years of existence, it is also of importance that the question of age group identification to music has evolved in scholarship on rock music to include questions about “Music, Style and Aging : Growing Old Disgracefully ? “ to quote the title of a 2013 book by Andy Bennett. The genre’s longevity is also an opportunity to measure how it affected social dynamics, or on the contrary, to identify vain wishes that have marked rock music’s history (Horgby and Nilsson, 2010).

This call for paper for a special issue of the InMedia journal calls for article proposals on the theme of rock music, belonging and citizenship in the English-speaking world, both in a historical perspective, starting from the 1950s, and in a contemporary one. The following themes are of particular interest, but the editors will also happily consider other themes or perspectives:

-Rock music, collective identification and citizenship in terms of social class
-Rock music and collective identification and citizenship in terms of gender
-Rock music and collective identification and citizenship in terms of race or ethnicity -Rock music and collective identification and citizenship in terms of age
-Rock music, identity and citizenship in liberal democracies
-Rock music and neoliberalism
-Rock music and illiberal politics
-Belonging and citizenship in rock music in relation to globalization
-Belonging in various rock communities: identity and citizenship in neighboring genres (punk, metal) and sub-genres of rock music
-Rock concerts and physicality: individual and collective bodies

Submission guidelines

Proposals for articles are expected to be approximately 500 word-long, to include a full title and a short bio of the author. They are to be sent on April 1st 2025 at the very latest, simultaneously to the two guest editors at the following email addresses : marion[dot]brache[dot]univ[at]gmail[dot]com and romain[dot]garbaye[at]sorbonne-nouvelle[dot]fr.

Abstract submission date: 1st April, 2025

Notification of acceptance:  11tt April, 2025

Article submission date: 1st October, 2025

Publication: October, 2026

The Journal follows The Chicago Manual of Style, fifteenth edition, “notes and bibliography” system: http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html

Bibliographie

Ambrose, Darren, ed., K-Punk, The Collected Essays and Unpublished Writings of Mark Fischer (2004-2016), London, Repeater books, 2018. 

Bennett, Andy, Music, Style and Aging, Growing Old Disgracefully?, Philadelphia,Temple University Press, 2013. 

Bennett, Tony, Frith, Simon, Grossberg, Lawrence, Sheperd, John, and Turner Graeme, eds., Rock and Popular Music, Politics, Policies, Institutions, London, Routledge, 1993. 

Brachet, Marion, « Enjeux de réception des créations transmédiatiques : l’esthétisation du pouvoir dans le rock », in Futurs Pop, M. Letourneux, S. Bréan, A. Huz and A. Jacquelin (eds.), Nanterre, Presses Universitaires de Nanterre, collection Transverses, 2025 (to be published). 

Frith, Simon, Sounds Effects, Youth, Leisure, and the Politics of Rock’n Roll, New York, Pantheon Books, 1981. 

Garbaye, Romain, and Gérôme Guibert, eds., Musical Scenes and Social Class. Debating Punk and Metal, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.

Guibert, Gérôme, and Guy Bellavance, eds., La notion de « scène », entre sociologie de la culture et sociologie urbaine : genèse, actualités et perspectives, special issue of Cahiers de Recherche Sociologique, 57, 2014. 

Hall, Stuart, and Tony Jefferson, eds., Resistance through Rituals, Youth Subcultures in Post-War Britain, London, The Open University Press, 1975. 

Horgby, Björn and Fredrik Nilsson, eds. Rockin’ the Border: Rock Music and Social, Cultural and Political Change, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010. 

Kramer, Michael J. The Republic of Rock: Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013. 

Maffesoli, Michel, The Time of the Tribes: The Decline of Individualism in Mass Society, London, Sage, 1996. 

Peddie, Ian, ed. The Resisting Muse: Popular Music and Social Protest, Farnham/Burlington, Ashgate, 2005. 

Pedelty, Mark and Kristine Weglarz, eds. Political Rock, Farnham / Burlington : Ashgate, 2013.

Poirrier, Philippe, and Lucas Le Texier, eds., Circulations musicales transatlantiques au XXème siècle. Des Beatles au Hardcore Punk, Dijon, Éditions universitaires de Dijon, 2021. 

Straw, Will, “Systèmes d’articulation, logiques de changements : communautés et scènes de musiques populaires », in Guibert, Gérôme, and Guillaume Heuguet, eds., Penser les Musiques Populaires, Paris, Cité de la Musique-Philarmonie de Paris, 2022. 

Worley, Matthew, No Future, Punk, Politics and British Youth Culture, 1976-1984, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017.