Category Change in Cultural Fields: Practice deviation and the discursive maintenance of category meanings in jazz music
研究分析了1968至1975年间爵士乐评论，揭示当音乐人尝试新风格（如爵士融合）时，评论家如何通过话语调整类别标准，既扩展了爵士类别又保持了其语义连贯性。
Deviation from normative practices is common in established categories, stimulating category gatekeepers to reevaluate their approaches to defining and enforcing category boundaries and meanings. While scholars agree that categories are mutable and dynamic, we lack a theoretical framework explaining the mechanisms through which practice deviation stimulates category change. Using structural topic modeling and inductive hand-coding of a large text corpus, I analyse critical reviews of jazz records between 1968 and 1975 to show the discursive mechanisms through which gatekeepers codify change in cultural categories. As jazz musicians experimented with new practices associated with a style now known as jazz fusion, critics discursively reordered their criteria for assessing membership, quality, and value in jazz music, expanding the jazz category into new realms yet retaining its semantic coherence. This paper contributes to research on category dynamics including change and subcategorization, and extends knowledge of category maintenance and gatekeeping in cultural fields.