Framing Hip Hop

TitleFraming Hip Hop: New Methodologies for New Times
Publication TypeArticle
Year of Publication2015
AuthorDimitriadis, Greg
Newspaper/MagazineUrban Education
Volume50
Number1
Pagination31-51
PublisherSage
Publication LanguageEnglish
KeywordsCulture, Ethnography, Hiphop, Urban Education

This article revisits the central impulse behind early advocacy for ethnographic approaches to hip hop—that critics should try as much as possible to limit their own certainties around what hip hop can and might mean. While ethnographic approaches can engender the kinds of personal dislocations that allow for this negotiation, they do not necessarily do so. Moreover, certain ethnographic approaches risk overly localizing the study of popular culture at a time when cultural phenomena need to be understood in global context. New forms of self-reflexivity are necessary for scholars and critics who look to “frame” hip hop as an object of analysis.