Reflections on Metal Studies 1

Abstract

Metal studies presents the fundamental question to sociology: how is metal studies possible, how is metal studies constituted? In part, that question is answered by another one: what is included in metal studies? Is everything written about metal to be included in metal studies? Andy R. Brown ( 2011 ), in his exhaustive critical analysis of the scholarly work on metal and its surrounding social relations, ‘Heavy Genealogy’, took on this inclusive approach. He called attention to a rupture in this literature on metal between a therapeutic model and a fan-based model (p. 214). This dichotomy is akin to one that sociologists in the US some decades ago used to describe the split between behavioralism (which had an establishmentarian bent and was embraced by psychologists) and symbolic interactionism (which had a more democratic bent). Brown correctly saw my book, Heavy Metal: A Cultural Sociology (1991), as excluding the establishmentarian behavioralist psychological work, or at least, excluding it from being taken seriously, as I did not write about it. Not that I believe that I must remain true to material I wrote more than a quarter century ago, but I’ll continue to exclude that work from metal studies. I seem not be alone in that decision—I’ve not seen those behavioralists at metal studies conferences or much cited in books and articles written since metal studies got underway.

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