Working with Bourdieu's Cultural Analysis and Legacy: Alignments and Allegiances in Developing Career Creativities

In the field of music, there are opinions, norms, information, and knowledges both formal and informal – some explicit and some taken for granted – that musicians use in their decision making. The experiences of the norms and rules in these fields, gained on a collective level (which Bourdieu calls doxa), determine the way musicians position themselves and understand the field of music. The doxa of musicians’ creative practices and their diverse creativities play out differently within different social groups. Musicians vying for status and influence in, for example, the value judgments of different musical genres (such as classical or popular music), usually position themselves based on either: (i) the status of the creative individual autonomous artist who reacts against commercial forces; or (ii) the creative-cultural continuum which positions commerce as the catalyst for creativity; or (iii) a cultural and economic position where commerce and creativity are so bound together as to be indistinguishable in creative industry practice