Harmonizing Forms of Legitimacy in the Consecration of Popular Music

Recent sociological research has focused attention on formal instances of retrospective cultural consecration in the United States. In the fields of film, sport, and popular music, this has largely involved comparing the effects of various forms of cultural legitimacy on the odds of retrospective consecration. Such studies have used the three "competing" principles of cultural legitimacy identified by Bourdieu (1983)-specific, bourgeois, and popular-as predictors of consecration. Although Bourdieu (1983) refers to these as "competing" forms of cultural legitimacy, elsewhere he describes consecration as the collective product of "all the agents involved in the field of production." Based on 3,234 popular music albums released from 2000 through 2007, we analyze factors associated with immediate, intermediate, and retrospective forms of consecration to explore the extent to which such forms of legitimacy compete and converge over time. Our findings suggest that rites of consecration can serve to reveal conflicts as well as build consensus regarding the reputations of artists and their works. The increasing consensus surrounding consecrated albums is particularly striking.