NEGEM – Studies in Gender and Music

NEGEM inaugurated the systematic scientific work in this field in Portugal, and is made up of a team of researchers and students who have dedicated themselves to studying various aspects of the relationship between gender and music (primarily anchored in the fields of the sociology of music, musicology, cultural studies, gender studies, queer studies, social history and women’s studies), addressing a variety of topics, issues, processes and discourses, and using interdisciplinary multimethods theoretical frameworks.

By seeing gender as a sociocultural and political factor underlying the construction and economy of sociabilities and therefore as an instrument of power and sociocultural management, we see it as an indispensable contribution to the problematisation of any musical phenomenon, practice, expressive process, representation or culture. One of the main axes of our mission is therefore to integrate gender categories into the field of music research in an investigative and interdisciplinary way, employing and reviewing methods, working tools, discourses and points of view from the social sciences.

We study experiences, everyday practices, lifestyles, sociabilities and their spaces, power and domination structures and their hierarchies, the construction of differences, the processes of naturalisation of behaviours and ideas, the rationalisation of knowledge and the processes of governance, canonisation and invisibilisation of discourses, figures or ideas.

Among the lines of work that have been explored by the members of this team are:

• identifying and problematising the construction, use and reproduction of norms, behaviours and discourses that legitimise models of gender, queerness and sexuality, and their presence and relationship with specific musical practices and discourses, particularly, but not only, in Portugal;
• analysing the ways in which social constructions and models of representation leading to or associated with the genderisation of social roles are associated with or present in musical practice, as well as in discourses and points of view on music;
• the approach to processes of stabilisation and canonisation of musical and music-dramaturgical communication systems, and how they define, transgress and/or reproduce, in specific contexts, models of gender performance, establishing themselves as ideological instruments of moral education, stratification and social self-regulation;
• the study of gender stratification and hierarchisation patterns and their association with certain cultural contexts, groups and social behaviours, targeting musical, music-theatrical, audiovisual and multimedia practices;
• the study of gender performance in the affective and symbolic economy of the current communicational paradigm of music on Web 2.0, including, among others, musical manifestations in online music industries and platforms, in interactive practices, audiovisual products, television, video games and social media.
• the study of behaviour, gender and sexual politics in the construction of musical taste and sociability (considering aspects of production, mediation and reception);
• music, gender and sexualities in digital pornography and other audiovisual products;
• investigating the processes of inclusion and exclusion of processes, ideas, figures, musical events in historical narratives, aspects of the political management of collective memory.

As a platform for critical discussion and the production of knowledge, NEGEM aims to contribute to the conception and dissemination of scientific work in the fields in question, as well as to motivate the emergence of new ideas and projects, encouraging contact and debate between students and researchers from different backgrounds and institutions at international level. It is with this in mind that we promote actions to disseminate knowledge and provide training for a variety of audiences. We also plan to produce a series of monographic and periodical publications, translations of core works, among other research, educational and scientific and social dissemination initiatives.