Contributions of Ethnography to Gendered Sociology: the French Jazz World

Marie Buscatto

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.3.3.04

Authors

Marie Buscatto Université de Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, France

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.3.3.04

Keywords:

Ethnography, Gender, Art, Jazz, Music, Work, Epistemology

Abstract

In the last few years a number of studies have explored the epistemological uses of the ethnographer’s gender in sociological research and the effects of gender on research results. These studies aim either to analyze how ethnographers can use their “gender” to open up observational possibilities, or to analyze observations made while maintaining as much control as possible over the conditions of their sociological interpretation. But relatively few papers discuss using ethnography to study gendered social relations. This article applies that approach to the observations made in our field study of the “world” of French jazz. We present here three of the main ways that the epistemological enrichment offered by ethnography may in turn enrich analysis of gender relations: access to “invisible” practices, analysis in terms of “the arrangement between the sexes", the possibility of generalization.

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Author Biography

Marie Buscatto, Université de Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, France

Marie Buscatto is maîtresse de conferences – H.D.R. at l'Université de Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne and a researcher at Georges Friedmann Research Center (Paris 1 – CNRS). She has led several intensive ethnographic surveys in modern organizations - call centers, automobile industry, insurance companies and distribution sector – and in the French Jazz world. Her current main research topics are women’s difficulties to get access and full recognition in artistic worlds and main gender segregations at work. She also develops epistemological reflections related to the uses and advantages of ethnography to study organized work. Her publications include Femmes du jazz. Musicalités, féminités, marginalisations (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2007); “Chanteuse de jazz n’est point métier d’homme. L’accord imparfait entre voix et instrument en France.” (Revue française de sociologie, 44 (1): 33-60, 2003); “De la vocation artistique au travail musical: tensions, compromis et ambivalences chez les musiciens de jazz” (Sociologie de l’art, Opus 5: 35-56, 2004); « Des managers à la marge : la stigmatisation d’une hiérarchie intermédiaire » (Revue française de sociologie, 43 (1): 73-98, 2002).

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