ESA 2011 - Abstract Submission
Immigration, Integration And Emotions
ESA11-4672
A CULTURAL SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON TURKISH MUSIC IN GERMANY
Ali Türünz 1,*
1Sociology, MASARYK UNIVERSITY, Brno, Czech Republic
Abstract: Music plays a significant role in the lives of the Turkish migrants in Germany. Most of the academic works on
the topic thus far have utilized perspectives from the sociology of culture. Moreover, their ideological overtones and a
seemingly unending fascination with the anti-hegemonic undertones within Turkish working-class music culture leave
almost no space for social actors’ actual meanings. The sociology of culture, whose arguments are dependent on the
economic base, cannot explain themes such as “symbolic ethnicity” in musical fields, “emotions” in music” or the “therapy
effect” of music. However, cultural sociology, which focuses on the processes of meaning-making, offers an important
alternative perspective that can bring such themes to light.