1st Edition

Urban Music and Entrepreneurship Beats, Rhymes and Young People's Enterprise

By Joy White Copyright 2017
    172 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    172 Pages 4 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    Youth unemployment in the UK remains around the one million mark, with many young people from impoverished backgrounds becoming and remaining NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training). However, the NEET categorisation covertly disguises and obscures the significance of the diverse range of activities, achievements and accomplishments of those who operate in the informal creative economy.

    With grime music and its related enterprise a key component of the urban music economy, this book employs the inherent contradictions and questions that emerge from an exploration of the grime music scene to build a complex reading of the socio-economic significance of urban music. Incorporating insightful dialogue with the participants in this economy, White challenges the prevailing wisdom on marginalised young people, whilst also confronting the assumption that the inertia and localisation of the grime culture results from its close links to NEET "members" and the informal sector.

    Offering an ethnographic and timely critique of the NEET classification, this compelling book would be suitable for undergraduate and post-graduate students interested in urban studies, business, work and labour, education and employment, ethnography, music, and cultural studies.

    Part I: Foundations

     

    Setting the Scene

     

    Chapter 1. Introduction

     

    Chapter 2: Grime in the City: Kinship and Belonging

     

    Part II: Creative Enterprise as Social Practice

     

    Chapter 3. Artist / Entrepreneurs: Working for Love and Money

     

    Chapter 4. Business Studies from ‘The Ends’: Learning the Rules of the Game

     

    Part III: Crossing Borders

     

    Chapter 5. Enterprise Abroad: A Case Study from Ayia Napa

     

    Chapter 6. Crossing Borders, Moving On: The Urban Music Economy as a Transformative Realm

     

    Part IV: Conclusion 

     

    Chapter 7. The Wrap Up: Entrepreneurship in the Urban Music Economy 

     

    Appendix 1: The Research Sample 

     

    Appendix 2: Reflections on Method

    Biography

    Dr Joy White is a post-doctoral researcher whose interests include: enterprise, Grime music, social policy, mental health and wellbeing.