Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music by Nadine Hubbs (review)

Abstract

Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music. By Nadine Hubbs. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014. [xiv, 225 p. ISBN 9780520280656 (hardcover), $60; ISBN 9780520280663 (paperback), $34.95; ISBN 9780520958340 (e-book), $34.95.] Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. The uncouth words in title of Nadine Hubbs's fascinating new monograph. Rednecks, Queers, and Country Music, are provocative because they do not seem to belong together. If you feel puzzled about how to connect and in a logical way, then Hubbs has already made her first point without us even opening book: much of what we think we know about rednecks and queers and how they relate is false. This is a clever trick, but in grabbing our attention, Hubbs has also obscured what I would say is principal topic of book, which is a shame because it is so neglected, so important, and so challenging. While it does refer to rednecks, queers, and country music throughout, book uses these as seductive hooks to talk about class--more specifically, to show myriad ways in which dominant middle class misunderstands and misrepresents culture, and to rectify this by explaining actual contours of life, including its values, its aesthetics, its politics, its identity, and its social functioning. To do this, Hubbs draws a wide range of supporting material from history, sociology, cultural studies, and yes, country music. Country music, as it turns out, is a surprisingly effective entryway into discussions of class, since it not only has its roots in white community, but is also seen as a symbol of redneck by dominant middle class. Hubbs opens first chapter by asking why it is that when someone from middle class is asked about their music tastes they will so often respond with phrase anything but country, exhibiting a curious openness to musical diversity that stops abruptly short of country music. She argues convincingly that this conspicuous dismissal of country is a rejection of identity that acts as a means through which people can affirm their good middle-class status while rejecting various bad social attributes associated with redneck culture. As she puts it, the moral suspicion attaching to country' music is moral suspicion attaching to white working class as (purported) ground zero for America's most virulent social ills: racism, sexism, and (p. 42). Furthermore, as she goes to point out, in early decades of twentieth century, views we today call racism, sexism, and homophobia were considered acceptable by dominant middle class; while members of working class were judged for having lenient views race, gender, and sexuality that were considered backwards and morally lax. The pattern that emerges is that culturally-dominant bourgeoisie constructs less-powerful working class as a negative foil for themselves, in a handily constructed binary similar to Occident vs. Orient, and man vs. woman, in which construction of other has much more to do with perceptions of self than facts on ground. With this basic lens of suspicion in regard to middle-class prejudice established, Hubbs moves in second chapter, Sounding Working-Class Subject, to explore contours of life through an exploration of country music. In this discussion she rejects common impulse to construct rednecks as a negative foil for bourgeoisie, insisting that working-class culture is a culture in its own right (p. 51). This chapter, which comprises a full third of book and draws heavily sociological studies of culture, offers a convincing critique of trend in both popular culture and scholarship to universalize middle-class values, norms, and modes of expression. She explains, for example, how impulse in country music to highlight its class difference in lyrics, emphasizing artists' humble origins and celebrating being country, (e. …