2025/03/24 by Anis Jounaid, Abdelmajid Amine · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Music History and Culture #Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification #Media, Gender, and Advertising
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/0267257x.2025.2497051
openalex publication_date 2025/03/24 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/02
In the French assimilationist cultural setting, heavy metal (HM) culture and associated consumption activities are the target of negative social labelling by institutional and social actors who consider it a contested or even an illegitimate taste. This labelling affects HM fans, many of whom are teenagers who are in the taste-building phase, in different social settings. We used ethnographic research to study adolescent and post-teenage HM fans in France. This helped us find different types of negative labels attached to HM on a day-to-day basis. We also developed a taxonomy of adolescents’ response strategies to defend their taste and defuse the labelling tensions surrounding it. We conclude by examining the theoretical and managerial implications of the symbolic dimension of HM taste-related consumption practices.