The revenge of the beer fiddlers?
The regulation of amateurs in musical life
Cultural sociology has frequently described the growing professionalization of culture as an inevitable manifestation of socio-economic rationalization. Yet the persistence of the amateur in contemporary culture contradicts this picture, writes Rasmus Fleischer. The three hundred year-old struggle between professional and amateur musicians in Sweden shows that cultural professionalism is not a simple expression of an all-embracing economic logic, but generated and sustained by specific institutions.
