They Call Us Metalheads

I've previously mentioned my thesis about fans of metal music, which I completed in January this year, graded "pass with distinction", and finally I've managed to make it available for the public - i. e. you!

Its abstract (sort of scientifical rundown) is right here for you to behold. Please find a link to the whole thing in PDF-format further below.

Social groups primarily coherent of deviant taste in music and deviant lifestyles, thus riddled with mythopoeia, are a colourful and common contribution to (post)modern society and have long been subject for research in the Culture Sociology field. Although, some are more investigated than others. Studies on metalheads, i. e. fans of heavy metal music, are moderately few and the greater part focusing on an American audience, taking off in the moralpanic-stricken media debate during the 80’s.

In its English translation, “They Call Us Metalheads: a Culture Sociology Mapping of the Swedish Metal Public”, is most likely the first one on the Swedish metal audience. The study thoroughly makes concern of the values, ideals and lifestyles rooted among fans of heavy metal music, relating their cultural spot and aesthetics to the society in whole.

Through an extensive Internet-based questionnaire survey in the fall of 2006 – ranging from issues concerning social background and aesthetic taste to politics, religion as well as everyday practices and alcohol and drug consumption – the study’s quantitative foundation is built. This aiming to map out the group’s socio-structural composition, cultural preferences and practices, and to fulfill its main purpose: to make research into the up-to-here underexamined Swedish heavy metal public.

The collected data are overhauled empirical as well as theoretical analysis. The latter one using theories of Pierre Bourdieu, Göran Bolin and Sarah Thornton, amongst others, to outline the group’s internal and external relations in terms of identity, cultural ideals and social power structures.

Like similar subcultural elements in the society of today, the Swedish metalheads consist of white, moderately young and blue-collar males. Imbued with deviant and underground-ish aesthetic ideals the group rejects culture that is considered as commercial and legitimate, the prime reason being their need to rise against mainstream hegemony from a low position in the social hierarchy. In terms of aesthetics the group may therefore be referred to as anti-culture.

Through consumption of underground music and related culture products and practices the fans create their own aesthetic avantgarde, helping to maintain and legitimate their deviant ideals and developing both an individual and a collective identity. This may offer the group’s members intimacy as well as solid ideals and beliefs and ways to deal with weariness, resignation and spleen from confusion upon the complex postmodernity. Social hierachies within the group and its subgroups are based on the individuals’ degree of commitment to lifestyles reversed to the overall mainstream society, given the group’s anti-cultural status.

The thesis in its entirety is to be found here (only in Swedish, sorry!):

http://home.vxu.se/ajpfr02/dom_kallar_oss_hardrockare.pdf

Enjoy!