The Dogmatism of Freedom and the Freedom of Dogmatism

The research aims to bring the field of contemporary Hungarian jazz musicians into the centre of sociological investigation leaning mainly on the critical reinterpretation of Bourdieu’s relational theory of artistic fields. The first systematic sociological research investigating the contemporary Hungarian jazz scene aims to grasp the logic of symbolic and economic distinctions of the scene by analysing the dichotomy of free and mainstream jazz. The dichotomy is understood as a system of structuring oppositions that plays a more important with regards to the takings of positions and the construction of prestige of jazz musicians, than the mutually exclusive principles of autonomy and heteronomy as outlined in Bourdieu’s field theory. The analysis of qualitative data (25 interviews from 2014 Fall until 2016 Spring) shows evidence for the validity of our conceptual innovation: the implementation of a simultaneous aesthetic hierarchy that describes the peculiar logic of hierarchization in the Hungarian jazz scene.