Current Challenges Of Bhp Billiton Information Technology Essay

Current Challenges Of Bhp Billiton Information Technology Essay The Present day world is developing rapidly and there is dynamic nature in technology in the market. Due to this development and dynamic nature of the market, it is difficult and hard for organisation to face the competition and to have competitive edge. Organisations have been increased and the competition has also much increased irrespective of different industries. Information Technology has been playing an important role in driving the business for the past few decades .All the organisations are using Information Technology to developed fast in the market and to have online presence which makes them globalised. Every organisation in the world are making use of Information Technology(IT) to drive their business processes .In order to have competitive edge and growth in the market, the business process has to be aligned with Information technology. Organisation having better alignment of business strategy and IT strategy has attained an growth and competitive edge in the market. Go od Alignment between the IT and Business processes is an factor for driving their business growth and to have competitive advantage in the market. Organisations having no better alignment between business and IT have not only lose their competitive edge in the market but also business value. There are many reasons why alignment is not attained? Organisation structure is one of the important factors responsible for that. Organisation structure plays an important role in achieving business-IT alignment. Every organisation will have their own organisation structure and this structure varies from organisation to organisation .Organisation structure depends upon their business processes and how big the organisation is. Organisation structure is a coordination of all departments and it will tell us that how the business process flow. It is an hierarchy of different departments and how they are arranged and aligned ion the organisation. The other most important factor in having bad alignment is too much emphasises on IT rather than core business. This will have the wrong directionality and will leads to failure of the business. Too much spending on IT rather than core business will leads to have failure of alignment which in further leads to collapse of the organisation growth and business. Governance is one of the important factor need to be considered for having better business-IT alignment. Having proper governance, good communication channels, scope will drive the business to achieve their goals and objectives. IT function is most important factor in driving business and to have better alignment. Effective IT function will helps the organisation to have better alignment with their business that will drive towards organisation growth. IT function should be responsive that is IT should follow Business processes but not vice-versa and this will definitely will help the organisation to have better business-IT alignment .Communication should be effective in order to have good alignment of business and IT.IT function should be effective and this should be aligned with business goals and objectives but not vice-versa. That is IT should be in harmony or engaged or should be aligned with business for having competitive edge and good position in the market. IT strategy should be engaged with business strategy for achieving good alignment between business and IT.IT strategy tell the organisation how it is designed effectively for supporting the business needs for achieving business goals and objectives of the organisation. Abstract: BHP Billiton is a product based company consisting of 40,990 employees as June 2009 is one of the world largest diversified natural resource company operating in more than 25 countries. The aim of the company is to premier global company in providing its products and services to its clients.BHP Billiton products compromises of manganese, iron, aluminium, energy coal, copper, nickel, silver etc.BHP Billiton has an net revenue of US $50.2 billion in 2009 febrauary.BHP Billiton company is an merger of two companies called BHP and Billiton in 29 June 2009. BHP company headquarters based in London is an natural resources company has founded long period ago in 1860s has become one of the global leader in metal and mining sector and is strong in copper portfolio which helped the company growth much further. Its a main producer of aluminium and alumina, coal, nickel, silver etc. It has employees of 30,000 people all around the world and perform major operations in Asian Countries. Billiton founded in 29 September 1860s main business was tin and lead smelting and later in 1940 it extended its operations to bauxite mining. The company has an rapid growth in 1970;s through Royal Dutch group of companies. The company operates in different companies and having many portfolios which increased its growth and revenue in the market. Even though the two companies merge under the Dual listed Companies merger, they continue to acts as separate entities thus exploiting the market revenue. Headquarters of BHP Billiton Limited is located in Melbourne Australia.BHP Billiton limited has same group directors for running both the organisations as unity efficiently and effectively. In 2001, BHP Billiton is listed on AXS and LSE and in 2002 it invested in energy source using technology and in 2009,it emerges as the one of the global company in providing its best products in the world. From 2001 to 2009 it has many developments and deals that make company very competitive and powerful globally and this happens by through perfect business-IT alignment. BHP Billiton corporate objective is to create long term value through discovery , development and conversion of natural resources and also in providing innovation customer and market-based solutions.BHP Billiton Limited has developed rapidly by making use of information technology. The company is vast and diversified company and it has many complex projects to deal with and the manpower associated with it is very high. Information Technology has been deployed for their resources and they use it vey efficiently which generates them not only revenue but also competitive edge in the market. Organisational Structure: Organisational Structure is very important for driving the business in right directionality and to achieve organisation goals and objectives. Organisational Structure tells how the departments are arranged and how decisions are made and how to deal with any task to achieve an particular goal. Organisational Structure is explains how authority are distributed to make an effective business decisions. Organisation Structures not only differs from one company to another but also it differs in type of industry as well. Organisation Structure is developed based on type of industry, their goals and objectives. Basically, organisational structure is divided into three types. They are Functional, Divisional and Matrix organisational structure. Functional organisational structure is an hierarchical structure of all departments placing one and other. The communication is not much effective and decision made by only Chief executive of the company. This type of structure applicable to smaller com panies, where as divisional structure refers to each department has head and these head of the department will have their own decision without consulting all. The decision were made individually without consulting all departments, where as matrix or hybrid structure is an combination of both functional and divisional organisational structure where information flow is uniform across the organisation and decision made is collective ,this is including all the people from different functional background and this type of structure is mostly seen in larger multinational companies and there will be effective communication exits which makes them to have better decision-making. The organisational structure of BHP Billiton Company is very effective to drive their business and to get greater revenue from the market. As the company entered into an Dual Listing Company (DLC) ,both the BHP and Billiton companies has certain contractual agreements that put the shareholders of both companies in an position such that they represents as single company(they operate as one), even though they exits separately and is bound to all assets, liabilities ,profits as one.BHP Billiton Limited is an public traded company where it provides all its shareholders an Annual General Meeting(AGM) to attend. The Executive body of BHP Billiton Limited Company has Board of Directors which are selected by Annual General Meeting (AGM). The executive body comprises of 13 directors, 12 non-executive directors and one executive and if this non-executive directors will serve the company for more than 9 years then the same director must again stand for elections at the Annual General Meeting (A GM).It followed by Group Management Committee and senior management group .All these groups will collectively make an decision which helps to increase companies productivity in the market. Business-IT Alignment: Most of the organisation in the world is leveraging the Information Technology to drive their business and to achieve organisational goals and objectives. The competition has been very high in the market and almost all companies depend upon Information Technology to drive their business effectively and efficiently. But not every company has been be benefited from this information technology. Many companies has failed initially in making use of IT for driving their business. In order to drive the business and to achieve the goals and objectives of the organisation, IT has to be aligned properly to business strategy. Many companies spend much of the money on Information technology rather than their core business which leads to failure of the organisation. That is too much emphasis on the Information Technology rather than core capabilities of the organisation will leads to not only loosing competitive edge in the market but also failure of the entire business. Business-IT alignment sho uld consists of involving people from different functional backgrounds such as from IT, Management etc to participate in the decision making which will elevate the organisation to new dimensions which in turn will provide higher Rate on Investments (ROI).Almost all the companies in the world are using the IT as a function in driving their business effectively. Current Challenges of BHP Billiton: The Current Challenge of BHP Billiton are mainly petroleum projects and mineral projects. The petroleum projects Macedon Australia has commenced and progress is 3% complete and production capacity is 200 million cubic feet gas per day. The other petroleum project is Angostura gas Phase 2 is on schedule and budget and is 74% complete with an share of US $180 Millions. The other petroleum projects are brait strait kipper and brait strait Turrum k which is scheduled and budget under review and North west shelf CWLG life extension in Australia with 16.67% gas has completed 84% etc The other current mineral projects are Worsley Efficiency and Growth (Alumina as 86%) in Australia is on schedule and budget .The Construction for this project is 38% complete and overall project is 53% complete. The other mineral projects are Iron ore in Western Australia with iron ore as 85% has engineered 98%, construction is 77% complete and the overall project is 79% complete. The other projects are Douglas -Middleburg which is 100% energy coal and MAC20 project which is 100% energy coal. Future Challenges: There were many future challenges for BHP Billiton Limited company. Their main future challenges are to spread their products to each and every corner of the world through constantly researching their growth options. And their main primary objective is to provide larger amounts of their products to resources-hungry world. Through this they has an vision in sustaining the world economic development which helps them in bringing more revenue and growth to their organisation. For example the company has one of the challenges in 2011 to commence the production $625 million Daunia open cut cooking coal mine through BHP Billiton Mitsubishi Alliance (BMA coal) where the company has an alliance with Mistisbushi and is one of the Australias largest coal mine exporter and world largest supplier to seaborne coking coal. IT functions: IT function is the important factor for any organisation for driving the business to competitive advantage in the market. IT function if aligned properly to business strategy will drive the company through innovation and helps to get more Return on Investments (ROI).If IT services are properly leverage to business functions then the business of the organisation will grow rapidly thereby eliminating higher cost ,slow cycle etc .IT function should be properly designed such that the life cycle period has to be reduced by eliminating waste of time, money spend on that extra steps etc. IT function is the main factor which drives the business of the organisation to achieve its goals and objectives. Factors driving the IT function of BHP Billiton: The factors which were used for driving the IT function of BHP Billiton are cost efficiency ,business-IT relationship, speed responsive time. Cost efficiency: BHP Billiton is very large and global organisation providing natural resources to the world economy. There are many large and complex projects involved in the organisation which they took the help of Information Technology to reduce their cost. By making of IT, they can reduce the much labour cost, cost associated with resources, tracking etc. Business-IT relationship: BHP Billiton has taken the help of information technology to drive their business much faster and efficiently. Information Technology is used differently by different companies according to their business needs. IT can acts as internal service provides just to drive some business needs and also IT can be used to redesign processes and the information flow across the organisation.BHP Billiton has used Information in both ways for developing their business throughout the world. Responsive Times: BHP Billiton is very large and global organisation and it operates many complex and large projects. The company needs effective information technology where it can provide the best responsiveness thereby reducing the period of life cycle and providing better products to the world. Managing IT and IT Strategy in BHP Billiton: The company uses Escondido as an IT function for achieving the strategic business direction. The Escondido is an strategic information systems and information technology that underpins the business strategy of BHP Billiton. This is used for generating massive amount of data where they can process the data much quickly for effective decision making. This IT function will allow them for data mining and this will helps the organisation to have accurate, timely and secured data which can be effective used for better decision making.BHP Billiton will also make use of E-business strategy for transforming work into business. E-business works in three channels such as technology, transitions and transformation of data so that it can be used effectively for data processing which results in good decision making. The technologies that the company uses technology for reducing costs and to improve productivity are wireless networking, video conferencing, webcams, and voice over internet protocol etc for effective communication which in turn increases responsive time for better business. BHP Billiton IT has been formed in 1989 and has office in Melbourne and all around the Australia. The company provides integrated IT solutions which will deliver better business results.BHP Billiton in association with Computer Sciences Corporations (CSC) has gained better IT services.CSC is an provider of an IT solution in various sector and it has been to an agreement that it leverage the best IT solutions to BHP Billiton for increasing its productivity in the market.BHP Billiton has an employees of more than 1700 in IT sector and has the product and services. They Include: Portfolio framework solution ,using this they can provide product and business solutions Enterprise Resource Planning where they can provide good and practical solutions in consulting areas such as business processes innovation, strategic information system which can be used for better decision making, technology infrastructure planning where they can used as an IT strategy in order to have better business and IT alignment which drive the business towards the desired results and systems evaluation which can be used for evaluating the resources required for projects work etc Knowledge management is one part of the information technology where the organisation can effectively used the knowledge for innovation and better business driven results. The knowledge management consists of knowledge consulting , data ware housing and mining where they can store large amounts of data relating to different projects at one place and miming the enormous amounts of data for better decision making, data document management where they can have better document portfolio for sharing among the different functional backgrounds for better decision making and also web services like intranet, online enquiry etc They also provide the supply chain management solutions as they have large number of suppliers providing materials, transportation, resources required for various projects. The various functions and plug-in associated with Supply chain management is tracking systems where they can track their materials or resources and check whether they met the schedule time. And this how they use the IT for driving their business. They can the best transport systems where they rely on that for estimating resources allocation, scheduled time and money. This is very good and analytical tool for processor their time, value and money in driving their business towards the better outcome They provide integrated and sophisticated SAP and enterprise wide solutions for project management.BHP Billiton has very large and complex projects to be deal with and the amount spend fro that also will be high. If the processing time or if they are managed improperly , then it will leads to loss of millions of dollars which will have an bad impact on industry in the market and in the world.SAP provides the better integrated systems with project management where the projects goes on without any risks. Project management is very important when dealing with complex projects like Energy coal, petroleum products etc where management of resources like skilled people, scheduling, task management etc is of high priority. With SAP, they also provide system analysis where they can have an analysis of data in the systems for determining the project plan, design and implementation. It can also be used for data conversion and application support also. One of the most important parts of aligning IT to business is to have better infrastructure management both technically and personally for driving the business.BHP Billiton has enterprise infrastructure management solutions for operating internal business process which will enhances their business towards the goals and objectives of the organisation. Communication plays an important role for any organisation to prosper and grow in the market.BHP Billiton is very large company and if communication fails ,then the company will have an loss of millions of dollars. The company has enterprise communication and network solutions throughout the organisation that will facilitate their communication very high in order to process their business process high in turn bring them greater return on investments. BHP Billiton has sophisticated business solution which helps them to manage their projects effectively and efficiently and to have an competitive edge in the market. The business solutions they provide are inventory management which is used to record each inventory items they purchase from suppliers ,order systems to enter their point of sales and purchases, returns for example such as MYOB or quick books integrated with Enterprise Resource Planning Systems, active operation information like call centre to give the right information regards project status, resources information, availability and bulk materials management which can be used to store the information relating to that materials, their safety and procedure to ensure not to have explosion. Business Strategy and Alignment: BHP Billiton company has many products such as petroleum, copper, nickel etc and each category has an its own business strategy. Bill Billiton is very large natural resource organisation and has too many large and complex projects. Business strategy is one of the important factor that every organisation will work for achieving competitive edge in the market and also to achieve organisation goals and objectives. Business strategy is framed on core business components and this business strategy has to be aligned with information technology to drive the business towards the desired results. Business strategy is nothing about the direction of the organisation over the long term and it tell how the organisation should go in order to have an competitive advantage in the market. Business strategy tells the organisation what resources it should have such as skilled people, software, hardware, competencies, technical competencies, skills, assets etc . Strategy exists at all levels of the orga nisation and many strategies will be depending upon the level such as operational strategy, business unit strategy, corporate strategy etc. Based on business strategy the companies has to properly designed IT strategy in order to align to its business strategy for driving the business towards the competitive edge in the market. BHP Billiton Limited Company has very highly and sophisticated IT management described above to be aligned with its business strategy for having better alignment which leads to achieving goals and objectives of the organisation. The company has many strategies and the strategy differs from one resource to another, but the overall strategy is grow strategy.Our strategy is to own life-long, low cost, export-oriented, expandable assets.Since the company is very large company, it makes much emphasis on whether it should put on millions of money on project. For that, BHP Billiton makes an financial strategy how it should go and how to eradicate risks involved. The strategy is described below as follows: Generate Ideas Analyse and Structure ON Time And On Budjet LOW COST OWN IT WELL BHP Billiton company has research and development team where ideas are generated, researched their capabilities, explore the idea with samples and also test their efficiencies. After testing efficiencies, they look at financial opportunities and tax issue concerning the development and funding of ideas. The most important thing they look at is safety. Safety is the most important concern as it is an natural resource company and it look at acquisitions and environmental factors whether they are any side effects that could affect the society and the company as well. After generating the ideas they analyse and structure the ideas. In this phase, they analyse how much capital should it worth is analysed through Capital Project Committee review and they analyse cost savings by looking at shared resources or the project should go for restructuring administration. They integrate the business strategy and plan with IT resources and analyse the risks associated with that project. The project is weekly assessed by senior financial management committee and forecasting will do according to it. They come with the risk assessments of the project. Next phase is on time and on budget where it look all all project management activities and quantifies not only cost and time but also financial impact on project. In this phase, the project is constantly reviewed by Capitals project review committee also assess any risks associate with that. Next phase is low lost where the committee forecast price associated with project. In this process it set out benchmarking of other natural resources companies and checks it with outcome of the project assessment. And it also assesses the general costs and administration costs. The final stage is own it well where it research market value of business units and assets and also assess cash flows and check whether it is compatible with the project or not. And at last it is checked by the Portfolio management team and has meetings with the bank inv estors for funding. IT Governance: Governance is a combination of polices, management practices, procedures, customs, processes, laws, etc that an organisation should be managed and controlled. It is very important part of the organisation as it describes all important relationships among shareholders, directors etc about right and power. IT Governance is very part in driving the business towards the competitive edge in the market. IT governance should enable the Information technology to be perfectly aligned with the business strategy to drive the results in the desired results. IT governance is all about information technology systems, risk management and their performance. The main goal of IT governance is to ensure the business value without any failure. IT governance has much more to do with organisation structure. Effective IT governance will helps to eliminate the risk associate in the project and in turn returns greater return on investments and good productivity. BHP Billiton has highest level of governance and it helpful for the organisation to have great culture that facilitate good values ,rewards, ethical standards etc.BHP Billiton believed high governance can be attained only when there is strong link between governance and shareholders value. The company has very good and high governance that will help their shareholders to have freedom and updated on the projects, company returns on investments, profits and dividends. Governance will set the requirements that the company should have in pursuing very high and reliable governance that can drive the business toward the desired results. The constitution of BHP Billiton Limited has variation of rights, transfer of securities, rules and regulations for all levels of management that will enable the company to great height to drive the business. SCOPE OF IT: Information technology or Information systems is used to store information, process information, transfer or exchange information for better decision making. It is also useful for the organisation to drive their business function based on results provided by the information technology. Without IT , no organisation in the world can survive their business bearing highly competition in the market.BHP Billiton has its own IT department for leveraging their business in the right direction.BHP Billiton is very large natural resources company and is spread across many different countries. Without information technology and its importance in the company, the industry cannot survive due to its large business processes in different sectors of the company. Security is one important thing that need to be taken care when it comes to large companies.BHP Billiton due to its versatile business segments and its diversity, there is large amount of enormous data will be present. All this data has to be protected by making use of the information technology or information systems. Knowledge is very important for any company to progress in the market. Without effective knowledge management, no company can survive in the market and cannot achieve competitive edge as well. Data has to be processes and then converted into information and then again has to be validated so that it can be used as knowledge and this knowledge is very important factor for decision making which in turn drive the business goals and objectives. Without Information technology or information systems this cannot be possible.BHP Billiton has strong information systems for storing huge amount of data in data warehouse which can be use effectively for processing for decision making. Document a management system which helps to maintain documents in reliable format and can be shared by all the departments for decision making. Enterprise Resource planning systems such as SAP and SAAS can be used for processing these hu ge amounts of data so that they can extract the target amount of data which can be used for decision making. Security is one important factor and for this the information technology can provide the security access to its employees only at a certain level and it depends upon their level. They make use of IT for supply chain management where they can effectively develop the relationships between supplier and their clients and costumers etc.BHP Billiton company has huge complex projects and in order to maintain and coordinate the resources , people, technology etc, information technology and information systems is very necessary. It is impossible for them to operate without information technology or information systems. For estimating the resources required and for calculating return on investments, for scheduling etc information technology is very important. For production roll out and for implementation and to check the progress of project and in every life cycle of the project ,info rmation technology and information systems is very necessary .Having effective alignment between Information technology and business function will helps the organisation to achieve its goals and objectives. Information technology enabled the business of BHP Billiton and there is much increase in its revenue and ROI(return on investments) as well. The scope of Information Technology in BHP Billiton is very high which drive their business effectively and efficiently. Business Value: Business value is one of the important factors that the company has to be assessing its value on various terms and conditions. Business value describes how the organisation can sustain over the long term on various factors. It just tells how healthy is the organisation running at the moment and its growth in the long-term.BHP Billiton Limited has high business value because of its good planning for sustainability. Business value not include tangible assets but also intangible assets and its effect on the company.BHP Billiton is ensured to have sustainability development where health, safety ,environmental and communities responsibilities are integral part of the business. The business will continue to enhance in the future due to its safety precautions procedures and standards at all levels of the organisation. Sustainability is one important factor that determines the healthy run of the organisation in the future.BHP Billiton is an natural resources company and the r isks associated with this is also very high. Environmental risks need to be eradicated like pollution and it should not affect the people health. Employees working in the organisation need to be taken and their security is most important concern and this will facilitate long run for the employees in the organisation. Developing the people and providing the resources to meet our standards will helps the company to progress in the future.BHP Billiton protects the rights of the people,employees working in the company thus providing them security and freedom so that they get motivation and encouragement thereby minimising the turnoff of employees.BHP Billiton has sustainable framework for successfully running their business and to have well-being in the future. The company has sustainable systems to implement sustainable development policies in accordance with the governance processes. The policy applies to each and every me

steroids :: essays research papers

Twenty years ago, when I was a competing professional athlete, I spoke publicly of the frustration of feeling pressured to use anabolic steroids. I felt pressured to compete in an environment where I and many others believed there was an unbridled problem. I mentioned the prevalence of use in adolescents and commented on the training advantage using these drugs gave competitors. At that time, NFL management denied the extent of the problem and little was done. The NFL, to its credit, in 1987 started its non-punitive testing program and proclaimed it was considering random testing. In 1988, in a Sports Illustrated commentary, I predicted the failure of random testing, citing obvious loopholes, and questioned the overall concern of the fans. I solicited the ire of some in the sports media when I suggested medical supervision as an alternative to faulty drug testing. However, you can't monitor a drug problem medically that society wants to pretend doesn't exist. Another issue I wanted to bring forward was urging people to keep the health effects of these drugs in perspective, as well as the sports world's tendency to define this as primarily a public relations issue. I still wonder why some of the reporting of my situation either ignored or minimized some of my known lifestyle heart risk factors (alcohol abuse, for example) in preference to highlighting steroids. Happily, the severity of my health issues and my former addictions are a thing of the past. In the wake of the BALCO scandal and the revelations in Major League Baseball, do any of these issues ring familiar? None of the BALCO athletes (clients of the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative) have ever flunked a drug test. Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig is citing drops in numbers of positive tests in "announced" testing as reasons for optimism. After 20 years of researching this issue, I have earned my pessimism. Has he earned his optimism? For those paying attention at all, the BALCO investigation has reinforced the reality that athletes are using undetectable drugs. Perhaps the optimism in testing is because there is no plan B and Selig is tired of the drug allegations. In 1989, the NFL initiated random testing. This was a smart move for two reasons. First, it showed media and the public that they implemented the strongest policy that technology and the law would allow. Second, it was prior to impending legislation (the 1990 Steroid Anti-Trafficking Act) that re-classified anabolic steroids under Schedule III of the Controlled Substance Act.

Listening to Rap: Cultures of Crime, Cultures of Resistance

Listening to Rap: Cultures of Crime, Cultures of Resistance Julian Tanner, University of Toronto Mark Asbridge, Dalhousie University Scot Wortley, University of Toronto This research compares representations of rap music with the self-reported criminal behavior and resistant artirudes of the music's core audience. Our database is a large sample of Toronro high school studenrs (n = 3,393) from which we identify a group of listeners, whose combination of musical likes and dislikes distinguish them as rap univores. We then examine the relationship between their cultural preference for rap music and involvement in a culture of crime and their perceptions of social injustice and inequity. We find thar the rap univores, also known as urban music enthusiasts, report significantly more delinquent behavior and stronger feelings of inequity and injustice than listeners with other musical tastes. However, we also find thar the nature and strengths of those relationships vary according to rhe racial identity of different groups within urban music enthusiasts. Black and white subgroups align themselves with resistance representations while Asians do not; whites and Asians report significant involvement in crime and delinquency, while blacks do not. Finally, we discuss our findings in light of research on media effects and audience reception, youth subcultures and post-subcultural analysis, and the sociology of cultural consumption. Thinking About Rap The emergence and spectacular growth of rap is probably the most important development in popular music since the rise of rock ‘n' roll in the late 1940s. Radio airplay, music video programming and sales figures are obvious testimonies to its popularity and commercial success. This was made particularly evident in October 2003 when, according to the recording industry bible Billboard mzgnzme, all top 10 acts in the United States were rap or hip-hop artists;' and again in 2006, when the Academy award for Best Song went to It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp, a rap song by the group Husde & Flow. Such developments may also signal rap's increasing social acceptance and cultural legitimization (Baumann 2007). However, its reputation and status in the musical field has, hitherto, been a controversial one. Like new music before it (jazz, rock ‘n' roll), rap has been critically reviewed as a corrosive influence on young and impressionable listeners (Best 1990; Tatum 1999; Tanner 2001; Sacco and Kennedy 2002; Alexander 2003). Whether rap has been reviled as much as jazz and rock ‘n' roll once were is a moot point; rather more certain is its pre-eminent role as a problematic contemporary musical genre. Direct correspondence to Julian Tanner, Department of Social Science University of Toronto at Scarborough, 1265Military Trail, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, MIC 1A4. Telephone: (416) 287-7293. E-mail: Julian. [email  protected] ca. † rh8 Uniiersily of North Carolina Press Social Forces 88121 693-722, December 2009 694 †¢ Social Forces 88(2) In an important study of representations of popular music. Binder (1993) examined how print journalists wrote about rap and heavy metal in the 1980s and 1990s. While both are devalued genres (Roe 1995), she nevertheless contends that they are framed differently: the presumed harmful effects of heavy metal are limited to the listeners themselves, whereas rap is seen as more socially damaging (for a similar distinction, see Rose 1994). The lyrical content of the two genres is established as one source of this differential framing: rap lyrics are found to be more explicit and provocative (greater usage of â€Å"hard† swear words, for example) than heavy metal lyrics. The second factor involves assumptions made (by journalists) about the racial composition of audiences for heavy metal and rap-the former believed to be white suburban youth, the latter urban black youth. According to Binder, rap invites more public concern and censorious complaint than heavy metal because of what was assumed to be its largely black fan base. At the same time, she identifies an important counter frame, one component of which elevates rap (but not heavy metal) to the status of an art form with serious political content. In both the mainstream press (i. e.. The New York Times) and publications targeting a predominately black readership (i. e.. Ebony and/^i), she finds rap lauded for the salutary lessons that it imparts to black youth regarding the realities of urban living; likewise, rap artists are applauded for their importance as role models and mentors to inner-city black youth. Thus, while rap has been framed negatively, as a contributor to an array of social problems, crime and delinquency in particular, it has also been celebrated and championed as an authentic expression of cultural resistance by underdogs against racial exploitation and disadvantage. How these differing representations of rap might resonate with audience members was not part of Binder's research mandate. ^ Furthermore, while she does acknowledge that ournalistic perceptions of the racial composition of the rap audience are not necessarily accurate-that more white suburban youth, even in the 1980s and 1990s, might have been consuming the music than black inner-city youth-this acknowledgment does not alter her enterprise or her argument. At this point in time, when the listening audience for rap music has both expanded and become increasingly diverse, our research concerns how young black, white and Asian rap fans in Toronto, Canada relate to a musical form still viewed primarily in terms of its criminal and resistant meanings. Researching Rap Much of the early work on audiences preoccupied itself with investigating the harmful effects of media exposure, especially the effects of depictions of violence in movies and TV on real life criminal events. Results have generally been inconclusive, with considerable disagreement in the social science research community regarding the influence of the media on those watching the large ot small screen (Curran 1990; Abercrombie and Longhurst 1998; Freedman 2002; Sacco and Kennedy 2002; Alexander 2003; Newman 2004; Savage 2004; Longhurst 2007). Listening to Rap †¢ 695 Listening to popular music has, on occasion, been said to produce similarly negative effects, although these too have proven difficult to verify. For example, in one high profile case in the 1980s, the heavy metal band Judas Priest was accused of producing recorded material (songs) that contained subliminal messaging diat led to the suicides of two fans. This claim was not, however, legally validated because the judge hearing the case remained unconvinced about a causal linkage between the music and the self-destructive behavior of two individuals (Walser 1993). Strong arguments for the ill effects of media consumption rest on the assumption that audiences are easily and direcdy influenced by the media, with frequent analogies made to hypodermic syringes that inject messages into gullible and homogenous audiences (Abercrombie and Longhurst 1998; Alexander 2003; Longhurst 2007). In contesting this view of audience passivity, critics also propose that texts are open to more than one interpretation. Again, TV udiences have been studied more frequently than audiences for popular music, although research on the latter has illustrated how song lyrics are not necessarily construed the same way by adolescents and adults. Research conducted by Prinsky and Rosenbaum (1987) indicates that songs identified by adults as containing deviant content (references to sex, violence, alcohol and drug use, Satanism) were not similarly categorized by adolescents. Evidence that there are diflferent ways of watching television or listening to recorded music has led to an alternative conception of audiences-one more concerned with what audiences do with the media than what the media does to audiences. The development within communications research of the uses and gratifications model (McQuail 1984) is one result, with TV once more the media form most commonly investigated. Nonetheless, a few studies have documented how young people listen to popular music in order to satisfy needs for entertainment and relaxation (among other priorities), and utilize it as an accompaniment to other everyday activities, such as homework and household chores (Roe 1985; Prinsky and Rosenbaum 1987). More recent research has added identity construction as a need that popular music might fill for young listeners (Roe 1999; Gracyk 2001; Laughey 2006). One particular usage emphasized by British cultural Marxists associated with the now defunct Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies has focused attention on how active media audiences counter dominant cultural messages in their consumption of popular culture. In what has, by now, become a familiar story, a series of music-based, post-war youth cultures (Teddy Boys, Mods, Rockers, Skinheads, Punks) in the United Kingdom have been represented as symbolically resisting the dominant normative order (Hall and Jefferson 1976; Hebdige 1979). This argument has, however, relied on a reading of cultural texts and artifacts for its evidentiary base, rather than observations of, or information from, subcultural participants themselves (Cohen 1980; Frith 1985; Tanner 2001; Bennett 2002; Alexander 2003). 696 †¢ Social Forces 8S(2) More recently, the utility of the term subculture for understanding young people's collective involvements in music has been questioned. The focus of this criticism is, once again, the Birmingham school and its conceptualization of subculture. Its critics argue that, nder conditions of post modernity, music audiences have fragmented, and young people are no longer participants in distinctive subcultural groups (Bennett 1999b; Muggleton 2000). Instead of subcultures, they are now involved v^^ith neo tribes and scenes (i. e. , Bennett 1999b; Bennett and Kahn-Harris 2004; Hesmondhalgh 2005; Longhurst 2007; Hodkinson 2008). Post subcultural research has been much less inclined than the Birmingham era researchers to decode and decipher texts, and much more likely to engage in ethnographic studies of music and youth groups (Bennett 2002). However, while there has been occasional work on modes of (female) resistance in the â€Å"tween scene† (Lowe 2004) and â€Å"riot girrrl scene† (Schily 2004), there has been no equivalent research on rap scenes and resistance. Examinations of audience receptions of rap are not numerous and have been of two main kinds: a few studies have explored how young people perceive and evaluate the music, while others have studied the harmful effects of rap by trying to link consumption of the music with various negative consequences. An early study by Kuwahara (1992) finds rap to be more popular with black than white college students, and more popular among males than females. However, reasons for liking the music varied little by race, with both black and white audience members prioritizing the beat over the message. A more recent study by Sullivan (2003) reports few racial differences in liking the music, although black teenagers were more committed to the genre and more likely to view rap as life affirming (Berry 1994) than those from other racial backgrounds. In a small but important study conducted in California, Mahiri and Connor (2003) investigated 41 black middle school students' perceptions of violence and thoughts about rap music. In focus group sessions and personal interviews, informants revealed a strong liking for rap music, valuing the fact that it spoke to their everyday concerns about growing up in a poorly resourced community. They did not, however, like the way that rap music on occasion (mis)represented the experiences of black people in the United States. They challenged the misogyny evident in some rap videos and rejected what they saw as the glamorization of violence. Overall, their critical and nuanced engagement with rap music fitted poorly with depictions of media audiences as easily swayed by popular culture (Sacco 2005). The search for the harmful effects of rap music has yielded no more definitive results than earlier quests for media effects. While some studies report evidence of increased violence, delinquency, substance use, and unsafe sexual activity resulting from young people's exposure to rap music (Wingood et al. 2003; Chen et al. 2006), other researchers have failed to find such a link or have exercised extreme caution when interpreting apparent links. One review of the literature, conducted in the 1990s, could find a total of only nine investigations-all of them Listening to Rap †¢ 697 mall-scale, none involving the general adolescent population-and concluded that there was an even split hetween those that found some sort of an association between exposure to the music and various deviant or undesirable outcomes, and those that could find no connection at all Moreover, in those studies where the music and the wrongdoing were linked, investigators were very circumspect about whether or not they were observing a causal relationship, and if so, which came first, the music or the violent dispositions (Tatum 1999 ). A mote recent investigation conducted in Montreal is illustrative of such interpretative problems. While a preference for rap was found to predict deviant behavior among 348 Frenchspeaking adolescents, causal ordering could not be established, nor an additional possibility ruled out: that other factors might be responsible for both the musical taste and the deviant behavior (Miranda and Claes 2004). The notion that rap is or can be represented as cultural resistance-the counter frame identified by Binder-has become increasingly prominent in the rap literature over the past 20 years (Rose 1994; Krims 2000; Keyes 2002; Quinn 2005). In his influential book. Why White Kids Love Hip Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the new Reality ofRace in America, Kitwana (2005) expounds at length on his emancipatory view of rap's history and development. Kitwana sees hip-hop as a form of protest music, offering its listeners a message ofresistance. He also makes the additional claim that the resistive appeal of hip-hop is not restricted to black youth. Indeed, as the tide of his book suggests, he is patticularly interested in the patronage of rap music by white youth, those young people who might be seen as the contemporary equivalents of Mailer's â€Å"White Negro† or Keys' â€Å"Negro Wannabes. (Keyes 2002:250) In his view, the global diffusion of rap rests on the music's capacity for resonating with the experiences ofthe downtrodden and marginalized in a variety of cultural contexts. Quinn (2005) similarly explains the crossover appeal of gangsta rap in the United States in terms ofthe â€Å"common sensibilities and insecurities shated by post Fordist youth. † She continues: â€Å"many young whites, facing bleak labor market prospects, were also eager for stories about fast money and authentic belonging to ward off a creeping sense of placelessness and dispossession. (Quinn 2005:85-86) Thus, rap's appeal is as much about class as it is about race. Nor is the resistive view of rap restricted to the North American continent. At least one French study-conducted in advance ofthe riots in the fall of 2005 -has noted how French Rap has become the music of choice for young people of visible minority descent who have grown up in the suburban ghettos (Les Cities) of major cities. They have been routinely exposed to police harassment on the streets, subjected to prejudice and discrimination at school, and struggled to find decent housing and appropriate jobs (Bouchier 1999, cited in Miranda and Claes 2004). The idea that popular music might serve as an important reference point for rebellious or resistive adolescents is not a new one. As we have already noted, this is how a British school of subcultural analysis once interpreted the cultural activity of wotking-class youth in the United Kingdom (Hall and Jefferson 1976; Hebdige 698 †¢ Social Forces 88(2) 1979). Some attempt has been made to understand rap fandom in similar terms. Bennett's (1999a) ethnographic study, set in Newcastle, reveals how one group of white rappers translate the racial politics of blacks into the language of class divisions in the United Kingdom. However, for the most part there has been limited application of this kind of analysis to young people's involvement with rap music. Rap scholars who construe the music as an authentic expression of cultural resistance directed against exploitation and disadvantages at school, on the streets, or in the labor market, do so primarily without much input from the young people who make up its listening audience. Because they have not often been canvassed for their views about the music, we do not know to what degree they share in or identify with the message of resistance readily ound in content analysis of the rap idiom (Martinez 1997; Negus 1997; Krims 2000; Stephens and Wright 2000; Bennett 2001; Sullivan 2003; Kubrin 2005; Quinn 2005; Lena 2006). Thus contemporary rap scholarship follows British subcultural theory in gleaning evidence of resistance from the texts, not the audience. Resistance is sought, and found, in the words and music rather than in the activities and ideologies of subcultures or audience members. We can suggest, echoing Alexander's (2003) earlier critique of British cultural studies, that the audience for rap music has been theorized rather more thoroughly than it has been investigated. The Present Study The present study is concerned with three key questions: First, is there a relationship between audiences for rap and representations of the music? Second, as compared to other listening audiences, are serious rap fans participants in cultures of crime and resistance? Third, if such a link is found, what are the sources of variation in their participation in these cultures of crime and resistance? The need to address these questions, as we see it, emerges from several limitations in the existing research on rap. These limitations are as follows: First, there is a significant disjuncture between dominant representations of the music as a source of social harms and evidence unambiguously supportive of this proposition. Second, the case for a resistant view of rap music is usually advanced, as we have already intimated, by examination of the designs and intentions of musical creators, both artists and producers, as well as music critics. We do not know whether or not resistant messages register and resonate with those who listen to the music. Third, we do not have an accurate gauging of the sociodemographic composition, particularly racial and ethnic, of the audience for rap music. Rap's dominance of the youth market is widely understood as a crossover effect-the original black audience now joined by legions of white fans (Spiegler 1996; Yousman 2003). However, purchasing habits-the usual arbiter for claims about rap's increasing popularity with white consumers-may not be an entirely reliable measure of either rap's popularity or racial and ethnic variations therein (Krims 2000; Quinn 2005). The system devised by the recording industry to gauge record Listening to Rap †¢ 699 sales-Nielson Soundscape-does not gather data on the race, or indeed any other personal characteristic, of purchasers. What it does do is categorize sales in terms of whether they were made in retail stores in high-income locations or in lowincome locations. Record companies, journalists or academics then choose to equate those high-income sales with white suburban youth, and low-income sales with inner-city black youth, but are doing so without any direct measures of the racial background or identity of buyers (Kitwana 2005). Moreover, it has been argued that sales figures â€Å"under represent the taste preferences of the poor. † (Quinn 2005:83) As Rose (1994) explains it, in the black community, particularly in impoverished neighborhoods, many more rap CDs are listened to than bought-a single purchase being passed on from one fan to another. Similarly, homemade tapes and bootleg CDs are often produced and shared within local fan networks. The implications of this point are clear enough: the appropriation of rap music by suburban white teens might not be as extensive as is commonly supposed. Finally, we do not know whether or how the rap audience relates to the dominant frame of the music as a catalyst for crime and delinquency or to the counter frame of the music as an articulator of social inequity. The mainstreaming of rap may have cost the genre its underground or counter-culture status as protest music, or made it less attractive to delinquent rebels. Rap also may play no part in crime or resistance subcultures because, under post modern conditions, young people have become increasingly eclectic and individualized in their musical tastes; the close relationship between musical tastes and lifestyles, implied by subcultural theory, no longer applies. On this formulation, therefore, we would not expect to find strong connections between a preference for rap music and subcultures of crime and subcultures of resistance. On the other hand, reasons for believing that rap music may be a basis for subcultural lifestyles, at least among black youth, are more compelling. At the time that we were conducting our research there was considerable debate, in the local media and among local politicians, about issues involving race and crime-racial profiling and the desirability of collecting race-based crime statistics, for example. Contributing to this debate were findings from another study, confirming what black youths in Canada have always suspected, namely that they are much more likely to be arbitrarily stopped and searched by police officers than are members of other racial and ethnic groups-even when their own self-repotted deviant activity is statistically controlled for (Wordey and Tanner 2005). In addition, contemporaneous research on the media coverage of race and crime in Toronto newspapers carried out by Wortley (2002), found black people disproportionately portrayed in a narrow range of roles and activities (principally those involving crime, sports and entertainment) than members of other racial and ethnic groups; and when featured in crime stories, depicted primarily as offenders. Capricious policing and media misrepresentation may therefore contribute to a sense of injustice among black youth, a sense of injustice that has them gravitating to rap as an emblem of cultural resistance. 00 †¢ Social Forces SS{2) Commercial success and artistic valorization has not diminished rap music's capacity to provoke moral panic. The music is still seen as threatening, dangerous and socially damaging by many political figures and established authority. ‘ Previous research suggests that negative media coverage ofthe cultural preferences and practices of adolescents often intensifies subcultural identifications (Cohen 1973; Fine and Kleinman 1979; Thornton 1995). Rap based moral panics may therefore tighten connections between the music and delinquent lifestyles and/or resistive attitudes and behaviors. The lack of attention paid to rap's consumers renders these questions relatively open ones, the meaning of rap music still to be discovered. Methods Whereas most contemporary research on rap focuses on those who create the music-artists and producers, and those who write about it, music critics-we pose questions about rap's audience. Further, while audience studies usually employ qualitative data-gathering techniques (for example, Morley 1980; Radway 1984; Shively 1992), we use the methods of survey research. We are more concerned with how audience members interact with the music than with the issue of cause and effect. We are interested in how music might be used as a resource in their everyday lives (Willis 1990; DeNora 2000), how it might contribute to identity formation (Roe 1999) and, especially, how audiences might align themselves with (or distance themselves from) cultures of crime and resistance. Nonetheless, in our analyses, we treat rap fandom as a dependent variable. While there is considerable academic and public debate about whether music produces or is a product of cultural activities, legal or otherwise, existing research has failed to provide a compelling or consistent rationale for any particular causal logic. As we have seen, the idea that exposure to rap music causes crime is not unequivocally supported in the research literature. Research on resistant youth cultures, by contrast, is much more likely to reverse the relationship and see musical style as a result of subcultural activity (Willis 1978; Hebdige 1979). Hebdige, for example, infers that punk rock in the United Kingdom was a cultural response to the subordination of existing working-class youth groups. Laing (1985) has countered that punk the musical genre existed before punk the subculture. In the absence of agreement about the direction of the relationship between musical taste and cultural practices, our decision to operationalize rap appreciation as a dependent variable is made more for pragmatic, heuristic reasons than unassailable theoretical ones. Our strategy is to focus on listening preferences rather than purchasing habits. By asking students to report on and evaluate the music that they like, dislike and in what combinations, we gain a clearer and more detailed picture of where rap is situated in the consumption patterns of groups of students differentiated by, among other factors, their racial identity. Our goals are to: (1. distinguish students with a serious, exclusive taste for rap from more casual fans; (2. to calculate the Listening to Rap †¢ 701 size and racial makeup of rap music's prime audience; and (3. to map relationships between that core audience and resistant and delinquent repertoires. Few surveys of general populations of young people have established any kind of connection between rap and deviancy, net of other factors. We contend that rap's reputation as a corrosive force is validated by that linkage, and that without it that representation becomes more ontestable. A similar logic applies to the relationship between rap and social protest. The claim that the music carries a serious message-that it is an expression of resistant values and perceptions-is substantiated with evidence of a link between the music and a collective sense of inequity, and weakened by its absence. Data The data for this research are drawn from the Toronto Youth Crime and Victimization S tudy, a stratified cross-sectional survey of Toronto adolescents carried out from 1998 through 2000 (Tanner and Wordey 2002). Self-administered questionnaires were completed by 3,393 Toronto students ages 13-18, from 30 Metropolitan Toronto high schools in both die Cadiolic (10 schools) and larger Public School (20 schools) systems. Within each school, one class from each grade, 9 (ages 13 and 14) through 13 (ages 18 and 19), was randomly selected. The overall response rate was 83 percent (83. 4% for Catholic vs. 83. 1% for public schools), and is a conservative estimate as it was based on the number of students enrolled in each class rather than those present the day of the study. Informed consent was given for participation in the study. Surveys were completed during class under the supervision of a member of the research team (and without a teacher present) and took approximately 45 minutes to complete. The survey asked young people about a broad range of topics, including family life, educational experiences, leisure activities, delinquent involvement, victimization experiences and so forth. The survey instrument was designed by members of the research team and evolved out of a series of 11 focus groups with adolescents in Toronto schools. The completed survey was reviewed by a series of institutional ethics boards, including those at the University of Toronto, the Toronto Public School Board and the Catholic School Board. As the survey does not include high school dropouts, institutionalized youth and street youth, it is a school sample and thus any generalizations speak only to the experiences of school-based adolescents. Our sample is ethnically and racially diverse and is representative of the Metropolitan Toronto high school population. Measures Musical Preferences Guided by Bourdieu's work (1984) and Peterson's recasting of musical taste in terms of omnivorous and univorous patterns (1992), we focus our attention on 702 †¢ Social Forces 88(2] how musical choices are combined: if young people liked (or disliked) one style or genre, what other styles or genres did they like or dislike (what Van Eijck 2001 has referred to as â€Å"combinatorial logic†). Indicators of musical taste were derived from the question: â€Å"How much do you like each of the following types of music? Respondents were then asked to evaluate each of 11 contempotary musical genres: Soul, Rhythm and Blues, Jazz, Hip/Hop and Rap, Reggae and Dance Hall, Classical and Opera, Country and New Country, Pop, Alternative (including Punk, Grunge), Heavy Metal (Hard Rock), Ethnic Music (traditional/ cultural), and Techno (Dance). Musical tastes were assessed on a five-point Likert scale that addresses whether respondents liked the musical genre very mu ch, quite a lot, a little bit, not very much or not at all. Unlike previous research that dichotomized musical tastes, focusing exclusively on the musical genres most liked (Peterson and Kern 1996) or disliked (Bryson 1996), we target the level of appreciation (or lack of appreciation) each respondent has for a particular musical genre. For space considerations a detailed overview of the clustering procedure has been omitted but is available upon request. We employed a two-stage cluster analysis (hierarchical agglomerative and ^-means) procedure to derive groupings of adolescent musical tastes. Cluster analysis assembles respondents based on their common responses to questions/ measures, and is useful for identifying relatively homogenous groups, groups that are highly intetnally homogenous (members are similar to one another) and highly externally heterogeneous (members are not like members of other clusters) (Aldenderfer and Blashfield 1984). Employing cluster analysis techniques, we uncovered seven musical taste clustets. Table 1 outlines the results of our cluster analysis. The largest group (n = 616) was the Club Kids, composed of those who report an above average enjoyment of techno and dance, mainstream pop, and hip-hop and rap. Next were the Urban Music Enthusiasts (n = 605). Members of this group combined a strong appreciation of Rap and Hip Hop with considerable disinterest in most other musical styles. These adolescents are the primary focus ofthe current study. Then there was a fairly large (n = 482) group of youth, the New Traditionalists, who have an above average liking of classical music and opera, jazz, soul, R&B, country music and mainstream pop. The fourth largest (n = 425) group, the Hard Rockers, comprised a sizeable number of heavy metal and hard rock, alternative, punk and grunge fans. Then there was a surprisingly large (n = 384) group of adolescents, the Musical Abstainers, who are only marginally interested in any kind of music. The group we call the Ethnic Culturalists (n = 380) were so described because of a dominant preference for a quite wide range of ethnic music, as well as a greater than average liking for soul and R&B, jazz, classical music and opera, country music techno and dance, and mainstream pop. The smallest group (n = 338), the Musical Omnivores, was composed of those who have an above average appreciation for all 11 musical genres. These clusters vary considerably, not only in the musical Listening to Rap †¢ 703 Q-CM O O U O O U O O U O O -COIOCOCOCNJCJ>COIO † †¢ ^ – T— c3^ h ^ h†¦ c o 3†² UJ CD o .Si i -T— COCOCDCO s m eu rocMincDco -T— CMC3 co co i Q. CL tu . S o .2 U) o tu tpcooin CNJcOCOCOcdcOCMCOM-‘^COCNI co T—CMOCI5 ? CO en (U ro â€Å"o 0} Q. CL ro â€Å"o en CM CM co â€Å"cD t n tu . 2 2 Oi tn -D C to to CZJ eu co CNI co o tD tu. —. _ 2 CD â€Å"O en ! c: o c: 03 sa | ^ sV ndical . 0011 V CL ro o tu . S P o | idd tn tu V p. 704 †¢ Social Forces 8H2) likes and dislikes, but also with respect to sociodemographic, socioeconomic class indicators, and measures of school experience, cultural capital, leisure patterns and subcultural delinquency (Tanner, Asbridge and Wortley 2008). Social Injustice, Property Crime and Violent Crime The sense of injustice that rap is said to speak to often involves the dealings that young people have with the police and courts. Six items in our questionnaire invited respondents to evaluate their perceptions of the equity of the criminal justice system, fairness in the educational system, and more general perceptions of the equality of opportunity in Canada. Some of the questions addressed racebased inequality, while others invoked age, class- and gender-based discrimination. These six items were condensed into a scale and standardized (alpha = . 65) with higher values indicating greater feelings of social injustice. Respondents were also invited to report their participation in illegal activities. Our measures of crime and delinquency covered a spectrum of activities, varied by type and seriousness. Two scales items are constructed based on the following question: â€Å"How many times in the past year have you done any of the following things? Would you say never, once or twice, several times, or many times? † The first scale captures involvement in property crime, including self-reported property damage, theft under $50, breaking into a car, stealing a car, stealing a bike, breaking and entering a home, drug dealing and theft over $50 (alpha = . 6). The second scale measures violent offending and includes carrying a hidden weapon such as a gun or knife in public, using physical force on another person to get money or other things, attacking someone with the idea of seriously hurting him or her, hitting or threatening to hit a parent or teacher, getting into a physical fight with someone, and taking part in a fight where a group of friends were up against another group (alpha = . 81). SES, School Measures and Cultural Capital The impact of students' sociodemographic backgrounds is initially examined in terms of demographic variables-age, gender, Canadian identity (â€Å"Do you think of yourself as Canadian? â€Å"-a measure of perceived inclusion in Canadian society), and race. Socioeconomic status is captured through indicators of parents and family situation, and includes measures of parental educational attainment (whether or not they had attended postsecondary education), family intactness (whether or not respondents grew up in a two-parent household), a measure of subjective social class based on perceptions of family income. Next we include a set of measures related to educational attainment, experiences and expectations: self-reported grades (proportion receiving mostly As), skipping school, suspension from school, educational stream (general or academic stream) and a more evaluative question about the degree of importance that young people attached to education. Listening to Rap †¢ 705 Finally, we include a measure of respondents' own cultural capital activities. While mainly used as an explanation of educational and occupational attainment (DiMaggio 1982; DiMaggio and Mohr 1995; Aschaffenburg and Maas 1997), measures of cultural capital have also been deployed to uncover dispositions, or orientations, towards the arts (Bourdieu 1984; Swartz 1997). We use it here as a further measure ofthe characteristics and lifestyles ofthe audience for rap-its possession bestowing status upon individuals and the music that they listen to, its absence denoting the opposite. Our seven-item cultural capital index comprises both traditional highbrow pursuits-going to the symphony, visiting museums-and the sorts of respectable leisure activities (playing a musical instrument, attending cultural events, going to the library, reading a book for pleasure and hobbies) that contribute to the cultural resources available to young people. The sum of these seven items is standardized and has an alpha of . 65. Descriptive statistics and other details on all measures can be found in Appendix A. Analytic Procedure Multivariate logistic regression is employed in four separate analyses. First, a strong preference for Rap and Hip/Hop-being an Urban Music Enthusiast-is regressed on sociodemographic, socioeconomic status and school measures. Next, we regress being an Urban Music Enthusiast on sociodemographic, socioeconomic status and school measures for three racial groups-white, black and Asian/South Asian youth. For each racial group we run four separate models that include baseline measures only, followed by models that add social injustice, property crime and violent crime. All analyses were conducted with the Stata 8. computer program (StataCorp 2001) using the survey commands that account for intra-cluster correlation due to the complex sampling strategy. Results We can quickly confirm the enormous popularity of rap with our respondents. It has the highest average approval rating of any musical genre, with some 33 percent of students saying that they liked it â€Å"very much,† and 21 percent saying that they liked it â€Å"quite a lot. † Rap clearl y appeals to a broad range of young listeners and is, therefore very much part of a common music culture among high school students. But our cluster analysis (Table 1) also isolates a group of students who enjoy rap music and little else. Examining the approval radng for each music genre relative to the cluster means, where scores approaching 1 indicate a strong approval ofthe genre, and scores approaching 5 indicate a strong dislike, demonstrates that Urban Music Enthusiasts have a strong preference for rap and hip-hop, reggae and dance hall; a more moderate liking for soul and R&B, and a below average liking for all other musical genres. We think that our Urban Music Enthusiasts fit the profile of music univores-individuals who appreciate a few musical styles while disliking everything 706 †¢ Social Forces mi) else-as described in the research of Peterson (1992) and Bryson (1997). Bryson links univorous taste among American adults to low status, particular racial and ethnic groups, and regional differences. She also notes that univorous taste, when compared to omnivorous taste, is more likely to be related to what she calls â€Å"subcultural spheres. † (Bryson 1997:147) Our Urban Music Enthusiasts appear to be rap univores who may also be adhering to â€Å"sub-cultural spheres. Of the 605 Urban Music Enthusiasts in our sample, 275 {A6%) are black, 117 (19%) are white, 115 (19%) are Asian or South Asian, and 98 (16%) are from other racial groups. These figures tell us that young black people still comprise the central component of the rap audience; moreover, roughly 57 percent of black youth is Urban Musi c Enthusiasts). At the same time, we observe evidence of a significant racial crossover. White Urban Music Enthusiasts constitute 8. 6 percent of the white students in our sample, while Asian Urban Music Enthusiasts make up 9. 5 percent of all Asian students. The racial composition of the Urban Music Enthusiast taste culture prompts two further questions: Eirst, of the black students surveyed, what factors in addition to race predict their univorous interest in rap? Second, of white and Asian students, what factors encourage their involvement in an essentially black music culture, an involvement that clearly sets them apart from other white and Asian students? Table 2 provides results for Urban Music Enthusiasts membership regressed on sociodemographic, socioeconomic status and school measures, with separate analyses for white, black and Asian/South Asian young people. Paying particular attention to the findings for each racial group, what is common to all three groups of Urban Music Enthusiasts is that, compared to other students in our sample, they are poorly endowed with cultural capital and are not especially good students. Few other background factors have any significant or consistent impact upon a disposition towards Urban Music. For white students, parental SES, family structure and subjective social class, have no bearing upon their musical preferences, whereas school suspension and poor grades are strong predictors. For black students. Urban Music enthusiasm is more common among younger students and those less likely to identify as Canadian. Being a black youth identified as an Urban Music Enthusiast is also strongly related to growing up in a single-parent family and skipping school. For their part, Asian/South Asian youth are something of an anomaly-among them. Urban Music Enthusiasm is positively associated with social class and having well-educated mothers-but like other Urban Music Enthusiasts it is also strongly related to school suspension and skipping school. We are less interested, however, in the sociodemographic and socioeconomic factors that may lead to being an Urban Music Enthusiast than in the relationship between being a Urban Music Enthusiast and representations of rap-either as part of a culture of resistance and/or as a basis for subcultural delinquency. Tables 3 through 5 describe the distribution of being an Urban Music Enthusiast across three racial groups (white, black, Asian/South Asian) as shaped by perceptions Listening to Rap †¢ 707 I i I u (O re (/> CO o (U 1. 76 4. 37 ,01a ‘V— re . r; o — U; c n t – – CO CO cr; – ^ †¢ ^ CD – ^ CO CO CD CM CNl T – CD CN? -â€Å"i^ CO CNJ – . 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E Q. / fV le 0 S ^^ 0  « †¢rat †¢g CO t-~ - «aO5 CIS co co CM r~. – ^ CM r – i r j co cz> †¢ ^ co co OO m LO co r-.. co †¢ ^ T — en lO CM LO † CO o †¢ †¢ – r— cz; CM r— UO OO T l – I— CD ^ 1 – LO CD T— O ‘ CSI CO CO T T- T-^ OO ^ CO oq – ^ †¢ LO O I— ^† 05 †¢ h – co LO C3 CSl i T-^ c s i T-^ ‘ c s i re re 3 s o: 0 CM LO †¢;* O; CD CD CJ C 3 CO T— CO – ^ co Ti† i^.. OO co T – 1 ^ CM CD O ) OO CD co eu r O r co CD ci> u 3 S ice a Bas iViod _o d) ro .? † 5 ‘S V 3 iO r- co CM CM LO CD CD CM LO †¢ < – CD LO co o LO T^ T-^ T^ cri i~~- c o h – †¢>— c o CM – †¢ – o ^ – CD CM OO h-; oq CO csi T-: csi T-^ ‘†¢ CD †¢s c 0 ?ai ir 1 ? ir _3 s oc 0 CSJ T— I— CD CD c o CN – ^ co OO co i csi CSI C3 co CD T t co O; CD o 3 o u 0 coiSS ? 3 (O re à ‚ «^ CL O) O a; ro .^ re 0) Logi! .†¢^ O fe 5 5 ID ? -O ^Et » {‘iyMA-d3. †¢ 1997. â€Å"What About the Univores? Musical Dislikes and Group-Based Identity Construction Among Americans with Low Levels of Education. † Poetics 25(2-3): 141-56. 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Tsunokai, Glenn, and Augustine Kposwa. 2002. â€Å"Asian Cangs in the United States: The Current State ofthe Research Literature. † Crime, Law and Social Change 37(l):37-50. Van Eijck, Koen. 200 L â€Å"Social Differentiation in Musical Taste Patterns. Social Eorces 79(3): 1163-85. Walser, Robert. 1993. Runningwith the Devil: Power, Cender, andMadness in Heavy Metal Music. Wesleyan University Press/University Press of New England. Weinstein, Deena. 2000. Heavy Metal: The Music and Its Culture. Da Capo Press. Willis, Paul. 1978. Profane Culture. Routledge and Keegan Paul. . 1990. Common Culture. Open Univer sity Press Wimsatt, William. 1994. We Use Words like ‘Mackadocious,'Bomb the Suburbs. Subway and Elevated Press. Wingood, Cina M. , Ralph DiClemente, Jay Bernhardt, Kathy Harrington, Susan Davies, Alyssa Robillard and Edward Hook. 2003. A Prospective Study of Exposure to Rap Music Videos and African-American Female Adolescents Health. † American Journal ofPublic Health 93(3):437-39. 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Descriptive Statistics for all Measures Variables Independent Measures Age Gender Do you identify yourself as Canadian Race Coding Years Male Female Mean/ Cases Percent 3331 1696 1700 2533 16. 62 49. 9 50. 1 74. 8 25. 39. 4 14. 2 11. 5 19. 3 15. 7 31. 5 68. 4 27. 0 73. 0 76. 7 23. 3 3. 26 Yes No White Black Asian South Asian Other 850 1334 Father Received Postsecondary Education Mother Received Postsecondary Education Two-Parent Family 480 391 653 531 1073 2327 Subjective Social Class 1 (poor) to 5 (rich) Z-score Cultural Capital Leisure (index o f frequency of involvement in playing a musical instrument, attending cultural events, volunteering, going to meetings/ belonging to organizations, going to the library, going to the symphony or opera, going to the museum, reading a book for pleasure, and involvement with hobbies, with an a=. O). Have been suspended from school at least once Have skipped school at least once Primarily receive â€Å"A† Grades Educational Stream Education is Important Part of Life Yes No Yes No Yes No 917 2483 2609 791 3032 3325 Yes No Yes No Yes No Educational General 450 2950 2493 907 1092 2308 2642 13. 2 86. 8 73. 3 26. 7 32. 1 7. 9 78. 0 22. 0 71. 8 28. 2 18. 7 81. 3 736 2309 Yes No 905 605 2625 3277 Dependent Measures Yes ~ Urban Music Enthusiasts No Social Injustice (index of amount of agreement or Z-score disagreement regarding the following statements: people from my racial group are more likely to be unfairly stopped and questioned by the police than people from other racial groups; discrimination makes it hard for people from my racial group to find a good job; discrimination makes it difficult for people from my racial group to get good marks in school; students from rich families have an easier time getting ahead than students from poor families; everyone has an equal chance of getting ahead in Canada; it is rare for an innocent person to be wrongly sent to jail, with an a=. 65). continued on the following page 722 †¢ Social Forces 88(2] Appendix A. ontinued Coding Variables Independent Measures Property Crime (index of frequency of involvement Z-score in breaking into cars, minor theft under $50, property damage, stealing bikes, breaking and entering into homes, ste aling cars, major theft over $50, and drug dealing, with an pi=. 86), _ . ^ Violent Crime (index of frequency of carrying a hidden Z-score weapon like a gun or knife in public, using physical force on another person to get money or other things; attacked someone with the idea of seriously hurting that person, hit or threatened to hit a parent or teacher, getting into a physical fight with someone, and taken part in a fight where a group of friends were up against another arouD. with an a=. 81). Mean/ Cases Percent 3344 3288 Copyright of Social Forces is the property of University of North Carolina Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or

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