Music Sociology After Mass Modernity

Abstract

Alfred Smudits starts with a discussion of the terms ‘modernity’ and ‘modernization’, identifying several dimensions of modernization, such as rationalisation, individualisation, differentiation, domestication as well as several temporal stages of modernity. Smudits believes that one of the main issues of music sociology was the understanding of the modernization of the musical field. Max Weber argued that rationalisation was, in the beginning of early modernism, the main characteristic of the specific development of occidental music. The rise of mass media and in particular of electronic media in the beginning of the 20th century—that is, the beginning of mass modernity—forced sociological theories of music to integrate mass media into their concepts. This means a homology, that is to say, the modernization of society goes along with a modernization in the field of music. Thus, with the emergence of digitization—the digital mediamorphosis—a new step of modernization takes place. The sociology of music has to face the challenges that arise out of this newest step of modernization, which means above all to keep in touch with cultural sociology and general sociological theories and to develop adequate sociological concepts.