The Politics of Authenticating: Revisiting New Orleans Jazz (Experiments/On the Political)

The Politics of Authenticating: Revisiting New Orleans Jazz sets forth an entirely new approach to the study of authenticity, based not upon a search for finding the ‘true’ meaning of the concept or ‘unmasking’ its claims. Rather, it details a grounded theory of ‘authenticating’ as a basic socio-political process, important in understanding the origins, development and consequences of competing knowledge claims in diverse areas of human experience and activity over time and place. The book is part jazz historiography, part autoethnography, and part memoir. It details Richard Ekins revisiting of the quest for authenticity in the social worlds of international New Orleans revivalist jazz from the early 1960s onwards, from his standpoint as a social constructionist social scientist and cultural theorist. The book grew out of a series of long, detailed conversations between Ekins and his interlocutor (Robert Porter) and captures the energy and dynamism of these exchanges in the writing of the text, providing what the authors call a ‘riff methodology’ that might be drawn on by other scholars concerned to write books that revisit aspects of their personal and professional lives.Read less Contents Figures Preamble Acknowledgments Part I: BEGINNINGS 1. Introducing the Authors and the Riff Methodology Riff I: Robert Porter 2. Cultural Studies and the Politics of Everyday Life 3. Why Sociology of Knowledge? 4. Why George Herbert Mead? 5. Why Symbolic Interactionism? Riff II: Robert Porter 6. Authenticity as Authenticating 7. The Move to Grounded Theory Part II: AUTHENTICATING NEW ORLEANS JAZZ Riff III: Robert Porter 8. Analytic Autoethnography 9. Becoming Authentic (1961–1976) 10. Revisiting Authenticity (2000–2009) 11. Enthusiasts, Competing Authenticities, and the Move to Academe 12. New Orleans Music, Authenticity, and the Case of Bob Wallis 13. Toward Authenticity as Authenticating: Mainstreaming Authenticity and the Case of Bunk Johnson 14. Authenticity as Authenticating 1: Constructing and Reconstructing Authenticity 15. Authenticity as Authenticating 2: Adopting and Adapting Authenticity 16. Progressing Authenticity Coda on a Riff Fragment from Robert Porter Appendix: Selected Discography Bibliography Index About the Authors