The dance of markets and movements: The emergence and development of dance genres in the US, UK, and the Netherlands, 1985–2005

Abstract

This paper investigates the interplay between fields, markets, and movements in the emergence and development of new cultural categories. While some scholars argue that the rise of new genres is driven by internal resource mobilization, others contend that external market and field environments can both constrain and enable their emergence and growth. Through a cross-national comparative study of electronic/dance music and its various genres from 1985 to 2005, we demonstrate that genre emergence and development are influenced by their embeddedness in different field environments: the environment of proximate genres, the mainstream music market and the transnational field level. The impact of these field environments on the emergence and development of dance genres, however, varies by country. Notably, markets and genre movements are more strongly coupled in the UK and the Netherlands compared to the US. In both European countries, the mainstream success of genres drives their development through a mechanism of differentiation, leading to the creation of new and distinct genres as a reaction against increased visibility in the mainstream music charts. These findings highlight multiple ways in which markets and genre movements can interact, enriching our understanding of how new cultural categories emerge.