TY - JOUR
T1 - Cultural memory and the heritagisation of a music consumption community
AU - O'Reilly, Daragh
AU - Doherty, Kathy
AU - Carnegie, Elizabeth
AU - Larsen, Gretchen
N1 - Emerald Literati award for excellence: Best paper Award 2018
PY - 2017/4/25
Y1 - 2017/4/25
N2 - Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how music consumption communities remember their
past. Specifically, the paper reports on the role of heritage in constructing the cultural memory of a
consumption community and on the implications for its identity and membership.
Design/methodology/approach – Drawing upon insights from theories of cultural memory, heritage, and
collective consumption, this interpretive inquiry makes use of interview, documentary, and artefactual
analysis, as well as visual and observational data, to analyse an exhibition of the community’s popular music
heritage entitled One Family – One Tribe: The Art & Artefacts of New Model Army.
Findings – The analysis shows how the community creates a sense of its own past and reflects this in
memories, imagination, and the creative work of the band.
Research limitations/implications – This is a single case study, but one whose exploratory character
provides fruitful insights into the relationship between cultural memory, imagination, heritage, and
consumption communities.
Practical implications – The paper shows how consumption communities can do the work of social
remembering and re-imagining of their own past, thus strengthening their identity through time.
Social implications – The study shows clearly how a consumption community can engage, through
memory and imagination, with its own past, and indeed the past in general, and can draw upon material and
other resources to heritagise its own particular sense of community and help to strengthen its identity
and membership.
Originality/value – The paper offers a theoretical framework for the process by which music
consumption communities construct their own past, and shows how theories of cultural memory and
heritage can help to understand this important process. It also illustrates the importance of imagination, as
well as memory, in this process.
AB - Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how music consumption communities remember their
past. Specifically, the paper reports on the role of heritage in constructing the cultural memory of a
consumption community and on the implications for its identity and membership.
Design/methodology/approach – Drawing upon insights from theories of cultural memory, heritage, and
collective consumption, this interpretive inquiry makes use of interview, documentary, and artefactual
analysis, as well as visual and observational data, to analyse an exhibition of the community’s popular music
heritage entitled One Family – One Tribe: The Art & Artefacts of New Model Army.
Findings – The analysis shows how the community creates a sense of its own past and reflects this in
memories, imagination, and the creative work of the band.
Research limitations/implications – This is a single case study, but one whose exploratory character
provides fruitful insights into the relationship between cultural memory, imagination, heritage, and
consumption communities.
Practical implications – The paper shows how consumption communities can do the work of social
remembering and re-imagining of their own past, thus strengthening their identity through time.
Social implications – The study shows clearly how a consumption community can engage, through
memory and imagination, with its own past, and indeed the past in general, and can draw upon material and
other resources to heritagise its own particular sense of community and help to strengthen its identity
and membership.
Originality/value – The paper offers a theoretical framework for the process by which music
consumption communities construct their own past, and shows how theories of cultural memory and
heritage can help to understand this important process. It also illustrates the importance of imagination, as
well as memory, in this process.
KW - Heritage, Memory, Consumption community, Popular music
U2 - 10.1108/AAM-08-2016-0014
DO - 10.1108/AAM-08-2016-0014
M3 - Article
VL - 7
SP - 174
EP - 190
JO - Arts and the Market
JF - Arts and the Market
SN - 2056-4945
IS - 2
M1 - 7.2
ER -