David Hesmondhalgh, “Why Music Matters” (Wiley Blackwell, 2014)

David Hesmondhalgh, “Why Music Matters” (Wiley Blackwell, 2014)

What is the value of music and why does it matter? These are the core questions in David Hesmondhalgh‘s new book Why Music Matters (Wiley Blackwell, 2014). The book attempts a critical defence of music in the face of both uncritical populist post-modernism and more economistic neo-liberal understandings of music’s worth. Hesmondhalgh develops this critical defence of music by exploring its importance to individuals, to places, to communities and to nations, eventually engaging with the global aspects of music’s role and position in society. The book seeks to argue against some common positions in music, reasserting the importance of embodied experiences, such as dancing, whilst taking issue with the idea of the rock star as hero. Moreover Hesmondhalgh shows the social position and social structures surrounding music, whilst remaining attentive to the aesthetic qualities of both genres and individual pieces of music. Most notably the book is ambivalent about much of the promises claimed by the advocates of music’s transformative potential, but is never bleak, retaining a refreshing realism about the capacity of music to matter to people, publics and nations across the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/critical-theory

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Nicholas Gamso, "Art After Liberalism" (Columbia UP, 2022)

Nicholas Gamso, "Art After Liberalism" (Columbia UP, 2022)

Art After Liberalism (Columbia UP, 2022) is an account of creative practice at a moment of converging political and social rifts – a moment that could be described as a crisis of liberalism. The appar...

29 Nov 20251h 23min

Jake Monaghan, "Just Policing" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Jake Monaghan, "Just Policing" (Oxford UP, 2023)

Policing is a source of perennial conflict and philosophical disagreement. Current political developments in the United States have only increased the urgency of this topic. Today we welcome philosoph...

28 Nov 20251h 1min

Joe Greenwood-Hau," Capital, Privilege and Political Participation" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

Joe Greenwood-Hau," Capital, Privilege and Political Participation" (Liverpool UP, 2025)

Who gets involved in politics? In Capital, Privilege and Political Participation (Liverpool UP, 2025) Joe Greenwood-Hau a Lecturer in the John Smith Centre at the University of Glasgow, examines the...

26 Nov 202545min

Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, "Barbarian Architecture: Thorstein Veblen’s Chicago" (MIT Press, 2024)

Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, "Barbarian Architecture: Thorstein Veblen’s Chicago" (MIT Press, 2024)

An important critic of modern culture, American economist Thorstein Veblen is best known for the concept of “conspicuous consumption,” the ostentatious display of goods in the service of social status...

26 Nov 202539min

Elizabeth Anne Davis, "The Time of the Cannibals: On Conspiracy Theory and Context" (Fordham UP, 2024)

Elizabeth Anne Davis, "The Time of the Cannibals: On Conspiracy Theory and Context" (Fordham UP, 2024)

In 2009, the body of a former president of the Republic of Cyprus, Tassos Papadopoulos, was stolen from his grave. The Time of the Cannibals reconsiders this history and the public discourse on it to ...

25 Nov 20251h 30min

Piotr Nowak, "After Jews: Essays on Political Theology, Shoah and the End of Man" (Anthem Press, 2025)

Piotr Nowak, "After Jews: Essays on Political Theology, Shoah and the End of Man" (Anthem Press, 2025)

After Jews: Essays on Political Theology, Shoah and the End of Man (Anthem Press, 2025) is an attempt to describe and critically interpret the condition of man living in the shadow of the Shoah, in th...

25 Nov 20251h 6min

Amy Hughes, "An Actor's Tale: Theater, Culture, and Everyday Life in the Nineteenth-Century United States" (U Michigan Press, 2025)

Amy Hughes, "An Actor's Tale: Theater, Culture, and Everyday Life in the Nineteenth-Century United States" (U Michigan Press, 2025)

Harry Watkins was no one special. During a career that spanned four decades, this nineteenth-century actor yearned for fame but merely skirted the edges of it. He performed alongside the brightest sta...

24 Nov 20251h 4min

Sebastian Truskolaski, "Adorno and the Ban on Images" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

Sebastian Truskolaski, "Adorno and the Ban on Images" (Bloomsbury, 2022)

Adorno and the Ban on Images (Bloomsbury, 2022) upends some of the myths that have come to surround the work of the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno – not least amongst them, his supposed fatalism. Sebas...

24 Nov 202558min

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