Mediating cultural politics: a dialogue with Georgina Born

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Georgina Born is Professor of Sociology, Anthropology and Music at Cambridge University, and was Official Fellow and Director of Studies in Social and Political Sciences at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. She trained as a classical cellist, and then played in a number of jazz and avant-garde rock bands, including Henry Cow, following which she studied for her first degree and PhD in Anthropology at University College London. Born works on the sociology of culture, and in particular on cultural production and the politics of culture in relation to music, information technologies and broadcasting. She is known for her ethnographic studies of major cultural institutions, and has published two major books based on them. Rationalizing Culture (1995) is drawn from Born’s ethnographic study of Pierre Boulez’s Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris. The study combines ethnography and history to give a critical socio-cultural analysis of computer music and of the institutionalisation of the musical avant-garde. Her 2005 book Uncertain Vision, based on her ethnographic study of the BBC, provides a comprehensive and critical account of the transformation of the public service broadcaster through neo-liberal policies and the ‘new public management’ in the last decade. It links historical and institutional analysis to textual analysis and criticism. She has also edited Western Music and Its Others: Difference, Representation and Appropriation in Music (2000).

Jean Burgess (2007) ‘Mediating Cultural Politics: A Dialogue with Georgina Born’, M/C Dialogues.